Last Friday, I posted about some of the ethical concerns surrounding the use of crystals. If that has you feeling a way about your own collection, you aren’t alone. The stones are already dug up, so there’s no putting that horse back in the barn — so what can you do to help remedy the situation?

It’s important to look at this from a few angles. On one side, there’s the human cost of bringing crystals to market. On the other, there’s the environmental impact. On the other other, there’s the energetic impact on the stones themselves.

The Human Side

Mining is difficult, hazardous work. Sometimes, it’s even done by children whose families have limited options for survival — you don’t put your kids to work like that unless the danger of starving is bigger than the danger of a mine collapse. Contributing to humanitarian causes to help lift families out of poverty is one way to reduce child labor, by eliminating the need for kids to have jobs in the first place.

Supporting ethical crystal suppliers is another key. As I touched on in last Friday’s post, altering market pressures to disincentivize unethical gemstones is one thing we can all begin to do on an individual level. If people don’t buy crystals from questionable suppliers, it won’t be worth it for them to stay in business. It takes a long time to do, but it’s currently the best weapon we have against the unethical gemstone trade. (There are other, very complex issues tied up in supporting exploitative businesses, but those are outside of the scope of this post.)

The first step to correcting any problem is being willing to surrender the benefits that came with it. In this case, that’s an abundance of inexpensive and readily-available crystals. From an energetic standpoint, look at things like donation as a sacrifice — you give up your time or money (a tangible representation of the energy it took to earn) to try to bring balance back to the world.

The Environmental Side

Healing the environmental scars left behind by crystal mining is similar to working on the human side — removing the incentive for environmentally-destructive practices. Businesses are run by humans, and humans respond pretty predictably to the removal of extrinsic motivation. So, by refusing to buy from high-impact mining operations, it’s possible to (eventually) disincentivize environmental destruction.

In some cases, doing this may limit the kind of crystals you have available to you, but that’s not really a bad thing. There are even mines that allow you to visit and gather your own crystals, which is a brilliant means of fostering a connection to them in a low-impact, ethical way.

There are also environmental initiatives and conservation efforts that work to combat some of the destruction caused by mining. Though these are less direct at addressing the problem itself, they are no less integral to helping mining-affected areas recover.

The Crystal Side

Lastly, you have the stones themselves. Sure, you can cleanse them, but is some incense smoke or running water enough to heal the wounds of their origins?

Sometimes, stones take more than a one-off cleansing to prepare them. It can take months of regular cleansing and handling to bring them back to equilibrium. I don’t necessarily recommend going through this before you ever work with a crystal, though. If your work and intentions are pure and focused, just using the stone is a form of recalibration in itself. Magic has a residual effect on the things it touches. Just like other tools are affected by regular work, stones are the same.

I have known witches and lightworkers who obtained crystals from people who got in over their heads, magically speaking — jumping into baneful things and spiritwork they weren’t prepared for, and leaving all kinds of energetic dross behind in the process. The crystals’ new owners ended up doing things from rolling them in wet leaves, to stashing them in the forks of trees, to singing or playing music to them every day. Feel out the energy of your stones, and do whatever calls to you. This is a pretty heavy energetic burden to bear, so work on lightening it, even if it feels a little (or very) silly. A lot of magic involves being playful, uninhibited, and occasionally ridiculous. Get weird, if that’s what resonates. Be the airbrushed t-shirt unicorn you want to see in the world. 

In a perfect world, all of this would never be an issue. There would be no incentive for child labor, unsafe working conditions, or environmental harm, and we’d all know exactly where everything we buy comes from. Unfortunately, that isn’t the world we live in right now, but there are ways we can try to offset the impact of crystal mining and begin to heal some of the scars it leaves behind.