Bernice Cockram

This is a great intro book. It kinda finally decisively ended my ‘block’, where I thought crystals were going to be ‘hard’ to figure out. Obviously there is much more to learn after this, but it no longer feels ‘hard’, so to speak. I originally picked up in one of the free book boxes a very long, and semi-famous, book about crystals, but the length, and previous owner’s marginal comments, made me feel like it was ‘hard’. Then I bought an ebook which I started and learned some from, but by the time I got to the specific crystals section—I feel like there were first thirty and then 130 Crystal profiles—I felt like I would ‘have to be’ a ‘collector’, which would be ‘hard’. Now I’ll be able to go back to that book eventually; somehow knowing there’s one book you can finish makes another seem, like…. Like you don’t have to ask its permission to get it ‘perfect’, right…. But yeah, I read a little bit about crystals in those other books, and in a non-crystal specific book about witchy self-care—and I knew that I didn’t want to only know about Tarot, or tarot and runes, or just only very few topics, and in particular divination systems are great, but magic is not just craft: I knew I wanted to bring in non-human beings and non-designed things, right…. And now I’m starting this; I feel like it doesn’t seem ‘hard’, now.

But yeah: I found the first sentence very philosophically meaningful, in a way: she found crystals by accident. The guy I guess I’ll call Freddy the Philosopher, in his book about rejecting Victorian religion, wrote a few lines about how, great types have existed in the past: but always as an ~accident~, never as something intended by society, basically…. ~School is basically something that even today students have zero say in, essentially, and society isn’t teaching you to be great, or free—or anything, really. The best case in the intended scenario is you become a snob who learns to mock others with your speciality, even though, whoops! You can’t get your needs met! (And people generally mock and attack each other in our society.)…. And it’s like, things like algebra are taught basically because parents and adults don’t feel threatened by kids learning that stuff—and people can, almost comically, feel very threatened by little kids; they can feel threatened by everything. It’s just habits of colonialism that make no logical sense, really. Children generally should be exposed to maths like algebra so that they can discover if they have the calling for the higher maths, which is basically the point of algebra—it’s useless by itself, basically. And yet we—briefly—treat kids like they’re bad people if they don’t learn algebra…. Fully knowing that if they learn it, the parents or whoever who bullied them into learning it, in order to prove that they’re not prostitutes or something, don’t care in the slightest once it’s learned, you know. Other topics, like literature or art, are basically often or even usually taught as pedantry games and superiority quizzes, the actual life of the emotions that these things are about are totally indifferent in our education, at best. Yeah, but just to demand that everyone learn algebra, because for some totally illogical reason you imagine that some great majority is going to take to it and have their lives improved…. And anything alternative, is just dismissed like it’s monkey man from Africa talk, like it’s woman talk or something, because obviously our system works so well…. Although basically, our education being rationalist, the point of it is almost to be discontent, to be fault-finding, right: not least with the other members of their own society…. Which is indeed how the average, non-literati, of our society feels…. And many of the things that society does take pains to teach are just wrong, you know. Like the average person experiences mostly failure, not least because of their acting against themselves—say by looking at others as means to some short-term, end, right: and nothing more—although it is true that this plane is basically a plane of limitation~ those are its lessons…. But yeah, people act against themselves and experience pain, and then they project their delusions onto God, and call that religion, or heaven or hell, or judgment…. Or Marxism, perhaps…. And say that God is essentially judgment, rejection, and cruelty, when this is simply their own unhappy fantasy. God is love, and judges no one, you know.

But today everyone who learns that basically always learns it by accident. Society conspires either to contradict this, or to ignore it and view the whole question as monkey man from Africa talk, or whatever.

(shrugs) It’s like an unintelligent design, this society of ours. Most people don’t even start to learn the truth until their lives unravel, although by far the majority of the people whose lives unravel watch bad television and wonder what went wrong, in the idlest sense, you know.

So yeah—O happy accident, the gift of God. Sounds vaguely atheist, although also vaguely monastic (‘O happy fault’—as though the ordinary system were the real fault, right), which I find a little amusing.

…. But yeah, I am such a fucking philosopher, right.

I do think that this is a witchy book, general witchy psychology. Obviously this isn’t just Wicca, or just religion, even, but I do think it’s witchy in a specific way, whereas astrology does seem mainstream to me in a way witchy things aren’t: like there’s token astrology in “Elle” magazine, but I think that sometimes astrology fans, especially on that token level, might kinda go, Witches? You mean like from “Charmed”? Like “Harry Potter”. ~lol. I don’t think you quite get that from a crystal person, although obviously there’s overlap, both magical: shares a lot of personnel, especially on the well-informed level, especially the non-expert well-informed level, right. But yeah crystals I feel like are kinda witchy in a specific way, although it’s kinda an intentionally fuzzy-borders word, right. (Borders start wars, lol.)

But yeah: there could be Christians who are crystal people; it’s possible: actually realistically it’s probably at least as common, in gross/total numbers, right. When you’re looking at probably somewhere south of 1 million, and almost certainly somewhere north of 200 million or something crazy like that—in the USA, I mean—I mean, disproportionate representation can only get you so far, with base numbers like that. Not that it’s a competition—it isn’t. It really isn’t…. I mean, I do think there are systematic issues with Christianity, (I’m an Aquarius, so sometimes I can’t use words that other people use, right: “systemic” just sounds like…. Like the literal sound of the word gives me a pebble-in-shoe feeling: like, I’m being cheated out of a syllable here! (Rudolf the Christmas Reindeer song) O what a beautiful syllable, O what a beautiful syllable! You can’t fire me; I quit! Why! Can’t I fit in?…. ~Yeah, ok: I’m a nut….), but there are Christians who aren’t “those” Christians, right…. I guess I’m just not brave enough to think I can call myself a Christian and think I’m not going to have low-level Loony Tunes shit going on…. Like, I ~hated~ feeling ~responsible~, for ~them~, which made me very resentful of them, you know….

…. I mean, it’s unrealistic for you to imagine that the existence of the Christian religion has zero impact on your life, or that your mind/patterns will ever be 100% un-influenced by it, right; and not all of it is the same, or all bad; but it can feel very limiting to have to kinda run your finger down the list of “Christian” things, like, gotta ~save~ some of this shit…. So I can associate with people who think I should have…. Yeah, yeah.

(shrugs) But anyway. I mean, I find it very curious, very information-y, that in this book and the other book I started, the list of/description of things to prepare the crystal to start to work with it, are basically very similar, but also, just slightly different, right…. Yes, yes, Sister Moon; we’re gaining the informations…. (giggles)

…. It’s so obvious, and yet it’s not, right. It’s so obvious, ~for a witch~, and it’s not obvious ~to be a witch~, that you need to use your intuition and not just what you read in books. Which in my case means working on the stubborn coating of low-level fear I wrap myself in, which can tend to obscure my intuition, right.

…. But yeah, I like the very brief crystal profiles: when I read about one crystal for like two pages or even more, and then on and on like that for like thirty crystals, I feel weird walking away like, Yeah, I’ll get, one, of those, right: ~but realistically, things happen in stages, right….

Yeah, and the theory of colors, right: ie black, brown, and red are good for grounding, gives you at least a vague idea of what different crystals will be like, that you’re not familiar with, so that makes it ideal intro/high-level stuff, you know. It’s a good book.

…. So yeah: I am someone you’ve never heard of. And I approve this message. 👌

…. Oh, and one other thing: some books have very detailed descriptions of crystals, and I think it’s good to get books like that sometimes, both to use as references for crystals you have gotten, whether from finding them in books and looking them up, or through browsing, and also to read through those longer detailed books eventually to kinda get detailed information on many crystals. (Although different people describe crystals differently, even apart from length. People have different experiences, in so many different fields of life, right.) But I also think—I mean, when I still had the ‘block’, like, ‘crystals are hard’, I thought: “But one day I’ll overcome, and I’ll, Read the Book, and I’ll have, Good Information, and I won’t need to reply on the little piece of paper taped onto the bowl in the metaphysical shop, right!” And, certainly: read all you can, and see what you experience. But even the stupid little piece of paper on the crystal in the metaphysical shop is a source of information, a valid source of information, and might be helpful in giving yourself the initial go-ahead to see if you want to try working with that stone spirit, and that little piece of paper might have almost as much information as a short entry in a short book on crystals, you know: and I don’t think that we should rush to judge either of those sources because of that, right. I’m starting to think that the little white piece of paper taped to the bowl of crystals in the metaphysical shop is NOT the same value—ie, none, basically, or negligible—as the “little white book” that a tarot deck comes with if it doesn’t have a real book. Tarot decks have 78 symbols they use to describe the entire universe. Using a single line of text to describe any of those symbols is a non-starter; you might as well remain silent. But crystals are different, I think. There are many more of them than 78 in the world, more than any tarot or oracle deck, and they are kinda primal: even just looking at their color gives you a very rough, basic idea of their energy, although there are many other factors and layers, too. And although they can do many things, they won’t do what you don’t program them to do, so you don’t have to necessarily know everything about them, in a pinch, unlike a tarot card, where if you have a very un-realistic, one-sided notion about XVIII the Moon, you may very well get very distorted readings and understand very few of the things that that card is trying to tell you, right…. Not that it’s ever desirable not to know, everything else being equal, as the saying goes. But crystals and cards are rather different. I feel like stone spirits are more primal—not stupid, but any flight in imagination, but, it’s odd—I understand less about them than I do about tarot cards, (not that I’m a tarot expert, because I’m not), but I feel like they don’t have the same sense of being a teacher more verging on “fuss and feathers” (“Little Women”), if you like—and to reference a scene I do feel rather ambivalent about. Greta Gerwig is a genius, but I feel like in print there’s more time to play out the ambiguity in the scene, and I still don’t know how I feel about it, really, you know.

But I digress.… (altro)

Of late, I had a surprising number of books about crystals to review - and this one was one of my favorites.

Why?

The writing was clear, easy to understand, and didn't talk down to me or use woo-woo language to explain anything. I appreciated the sections on chakras especially, as well as how to prepare your crystals for use.

Each chapter's title explains succinctly what it covers, and then it does. There isn't too much information in here, nor too little - it's a good primer for someone learning about crystal work without fluff or grandieur.

Still, there was nothing wow about this book, although I did appreciate the author's explanation as to what crystals can do for us. Quote, they... "can help us shift energy and emotions that we have been holding on to".… (altro)

This book is ideal if you want to learn how to use crystals. There are detailed instructions on how to use crystals, how to cleanse and charge them, which crystal works best with which chakra, how to use your aura, how to use a crystal net, etc. There is also a picture guide to crystals of different colours and their properties.

It is all explained in this small book which I would recommend to beginners and advanced practitioners of crystal work - I intentionally didn't write crystal healers, because it is not all healing work that is done with crystals.… (altro)

In Focus Crystals by Bernice Cockram

Interested in learning about the properties and uses of crystals? They are more than just stones. Their colors and abilities are discussed in this book along with which ones are best for what purpose. This book is jam packed with information to absorb that will help you understand a bit more about the subject. I believe this is a subject that may require time to fully understand and believe that I would keep it at hand when thinking about buying crystals or planning to use them. I look forward to sitting with this book, reading a bit, trying out some of the ideas and seeing what happens.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing for the ARC - This is my honest review.

4 Stars… (altro)