The elders walk with one foot in yesterday and one foot in today.
The young walk with one foot in today and one foot in tomorrow.
Those in the middle act as a bridge between the two.
This path carries the ancient traditional ways into
the reality of modern practice.
The elders keep us grounded,
the middle age keep us connected,
and the young are open to incorporating
positive changes with a culturally sensitive perspective.
Together we can walk into the future proud.
Aniyunwiwa, the Principal People, the Cherokee People

This crystal information is dedicated to the seed of wisdom in every being, and to all those healers who are prepared to alleviate patterns of suffering for the benefit of beings in this and all worlds. It is my hope to give you good medicine to take home to your families, your clans, your friends, your associates, and the very land that you live on.

By tradition there are certain things to follow before even beginning a discussion of crystals. First there are smoke offerings of sage.

May each person who reads this make a prayer and give thanks for the gifts you have received from kind teachers.

'Oh, Grandparents, who have passed this information, stand by and guide us so our hearts and minds may be ready to see the beauty of what is. Father sky, Mother Earth, hear us, your children. In our hearts we see what to be, ever in harmony. Let the wisdom of what is, clearly shine in our hearts and our actions. '

What I will share with you are very simple and practical teachings that one can immediately test and apply. One of the most important lessons that I received from my elders is that it is better to know than to believe. So I invite you to test all that follows.

These traditional teachings that I share with you come from the stream of the Aniyunwiwa, the Principal People, the Cherokee People. They actually come through the way of Cherokee medicine. From the Pleiades, the Seven Stars, this medicine has come to guide you through a very long line of teachers, healers, priests and priestesses who have maintained these traditions. And from the constellation of the Bear comes the wisdom of the Catawba People. (With the Catawba the number is nine, whereas with the Cherokee people the focus of the energy is through/with the number seven.)

It is in our ancient oral tradition that all people have a special gift, and our gift is to keep the sound of the crystals, and to give the tuning again to the Earth, for the benefit of all beings. The crystal is the center of Cherokee spiritual technology, and harkens back to the time in which an ark, a specially built wooden box, contained the sacred crystal for the People.

The method whereby the crystal impinges with the mind of the spiritual practitioner is through a process called resonance coupling. In our traditional way, people were trained quite specifically for years before they actually worked with crystals, to be sure their heart, mind and nervous system were resonating freely with the pulse of the earth and the universe.

In its function in healing, multi dimensions--the ideal of the medicine person is to be so at one with everything that your prayers resonate into the crystal, increasing harmony to the body of the human family as well as its members. And that gift, that understanding, is within each of us. As we first touch the crystal, when it first becomes our friend, we realize how much of our own thinking is calling to be transmuted. And in this time the crystals stand by to help each one in that process of transmutation. This is a continuous process. At some point these crystals were opaque. So it is with the consciousness of human beings: from the carbon of experience comes the diamond, complete assimilation, understanding. In our hearts we look to that, and the crystal is the representation and the symbol of that perfection which is within ourselves. In mind are these teachings.

It is well understood these days, the concept of Schumann frequency as the pulse beat of the Earth, to which our very craniums and sacrums vibrate. More and more the scientist recognizes the wisdom of the mystics and sees revealed the importance of light as the gong that rings the bell of awareness. Just as the crystal can be energized by light, color, sound, movement, so, too, is the human body thus energized. In preparation for awakening this deep sense of resonance coupling, [traditionally?] one would do a set of exercises to attune more consciously to the impact of each direction. The end result would be a deep awareness within the brain of the magnetic currents of the earth and their flow patterns. As one is becoming aware of the movement of the directions, there is also an understanding of emotions as vehicles of deeper understanding and as streams of connection to other beings, other humans, and the earth herself.

As children we were taught that it was our spiritual duty, a joyful spiritual duty, to generate thoughts of joy and appreciation, for this truly benefits the earth and the people. In fact, that the earth exists today would be an indication of a bio-ciprocal relationship between our thought and the earth herself. Just as we use the crystal in the telecommunication age, the very crystal matrix, the heart of the earth herself, is in communication with a larger voice that emanates from the heart of this galaxy, the very heart of the universe itself. So already we are linked to a field far more vast than that which we see before our eyes. One way that our elders would make this very clear to us would be through creating a fire and placing or holding a crystal in front of that fire, and actually transferring the heat from that fire (and in some instances from the sun) to create another fire. This gave an understanding of the fire hidden within the air, within the stone, and our elders would say that this invisible fire was the support of all of our dreams and our actions.

We have a story about Ukdena. Ukdena is a magical dragon being that in the past moved upon the surface of the earth. This dragon being would respond to the direction of medicine people of good heart and skillful means. The "good heart" is that they were committed to benefiting the earth and keeping free her pathways, much as an acupuncturist is concerned with the free flow of energy within a human being. These special priests and priestesses were able to invite the dragons (which have now gone deep into the earth or far away into the sky) to protect the environment. Sometimes when I was a child I thought that these dragons were allegories of ley lines, and the elders would remind me that they did in fact exist, as physical appearances able to leave their marks on the earth as they moved.

Anyway, the most powerful crystal is the one that is taken from the forehead of this dragon called Ukdena, and this crystal has within it traces of color and the appearance of phantom crystals inside. These special crystals could only be acquired by a person pure and brave of heart, and once acquired they were for the benefit of the people and the land and present and future generations. Such crystals were kept in a very special place, where they would be regularly fed with sound of prayer, vibration of drumming and dance, and occasionally brought out to be viewed, like a television, to give an indication of what the next year had in store for individuals.

The crystal that is most significant, at least in terms of our Cherokee healing tradition, is the quartz crystal. Hexagonal in nature (that is, six-sided), composed of silica dioxide, crystal literally is a homogeneous portion of matter with a definite atomic structure, and the outward form is bounded by smooth plane surfaces. (Microsoft Encarta, 1993) Quartz also includes amethyst, made purple by the addition of mineral salts, as well as citrine, tiger eye, cat's eye and jasper, in that they, too, are silica dioxide.

What is most significant about the crystal matrix , at least in terms of how we intuitively perceive it, is that the crystal, through its reception of light, actually exists in third, fourth, fifth and higher dimensions. The way in which we were taught this was to drum with a water drum at a certain frequency until the crystal disappeared and then reappeared. That was to remind us that the crystal was moving in many planes at once and that we, too, had the same opportunity. This movement from plane to plane and beyond the confines of time and space denotes the more pristine and protected of the crystal teachings, which we will talk about in more detail.

At this time there is a great resurgence of interest in sacred geometry, and it has expanded the early lessons received with stones placed in geometrical patterns. To awaken a sense of our awareness radiating through space and inseparable from that space, simple form of stones laid out in patterns--of triangles, diamonds (the diamond shape itself said to represent the heart of everything)--were placed upon the ground or the floor for our contemplation. When the stones were placed in a diamond shape, we were invited to create--with our heart, our belly and our inner vision--three convergent beams reaching through that diamond shape to the heart of the earth's crystalline structure and back to ourselves. While apparently a very simple exercise, the results were often quite profound, in that we would directly perceive, within our sacrum and cranium, the pulse beat of the earth. Sometimes these geometric figures would also be drawn with colored cornmeal or ground-up stones. Focusing our inner vision, our heart, and our awareness that we are in the womb of the earth's atmosphere, these three points of reference, then reaching through the geometric form and circling back, this was also a means of communicating with relatives who were far away--and still is utilized for the same purpose. So the earth's sound is a carrier wave for our prayers and thoughts and messages to one another. The very fact that others could perceive my thought and feeling over distance was a clear example of the importance of kind thought, word and deed...because such thoughts did indeed flow out through the pulsing of the earth.

For your own understanding, I invite you to select a plate--or, better yet, a serving tray that is silver plated--and gather some soil from near your home. Place the soil upon the plate and set in the center a 2-3 inch crystal, clear quartz. As you inhale, sense the pulse of the earth rising up through you, and as you exhale, be aware of the descending waves of grace or the sky pulse moving through you. Inhaling earth, exhaling, and as you exhale you are filled with the energy of the sky. More specifically, you become more aware of wisdom as a natural vibration frequency pulsing through the earth's network, and from the sky you recognize your potential to skillfully apply your intellect and your feeling into action that is beneficial to all of your relations. By making this very simple connection and observing one's own pulse and respiration as we create a path of communication with the crystal, the earth and the crystal heart of the earth, one can then clearly access the healing potential of crystals.

The wisdom expressed in the sacred iconography of Native Americans is a blueprint for pathways of form arising, a schematic of vibration frequencies energized by our prayer and action and generated in the vastness of space. One way in which this lesson of shape affecting perception was applied was through seeing this two-dimensional diagram become three-dimensional and then multidimensional, and my awareness inseparable from vast space. Then noticing common carrier wave resonating even in the most subtle form of hydrogen helium also resonating within the helixes of the heart.

So, first contact with the crystal, for those who are committed to healing: Observe its symmetry and shape, its clarity and beauty, and recognize that even within our own bodies the same beauteous forms exist. By looking at the spinning tetrahedron, the carrier wave of unmanifest potential makes clear its pathways of manifestation.: Quartz crystal, a tender friend, received as a gift: awaken it with an introduction of yourself speaking, sensing the pulses circling. May the crystal ring like a bell, awakening the wisdom in each and every cell, like a tuning fork, returning all cells to their healthy vibration. Wash the crystal in lukewarm running water in the new moon time, making a commitment to explore the very nature of your mind. Wash the crystal, symbolic of illusions falling away, to reveal one's own lucent nature. Then the crystal is wrapped in dark cloth and put away, to be awakened again on a full moon day and placed in the earth for observation, contemplation, of how life's circuits are made complete.

Invocation
Oh Great Spirit! Hear me as I light the sacred herbs in

fellowship with my Plant brothers. Honor and blessings to

all. Guide and protect me on my journey.

Honor and blessings to the North. Direct my steps to places that balance the physical.

Honor and blessings to the East. Guide me in my journey to knowledge and wisdom.

Honor and blessings to the South. Lead me to spiritual strength and courage.

Honor and blessings to the West. Teach me the gentle ways of emotional balance.

Be with me all, protecting and guiding me in my search for true wisdom in Spirit's love and light.

Dismissal

Oh Great Spirit, thank you for your guidance, blessings

and protection. Thank you Plant brothers for

joining me and sharing your energies and blessings with me.

Go with my blessings, Spirits of the North. My thanks for your help now and to come in empowering my physical life.

Go with my blessings, Spirits of the East. My thanks for your help now and to come in empowering my mental life.

Go with my blessings, Spirits of the South. My thanks for your help now and to come in empowering my spiritual life.

Go with my blessings, Spirits of the West. My thanks for your help now and to come in empowering my emotional life.

In Spirit's name, love and blessings to all spirits and creatures of the worlds. My thanks for blessing, guiding and protecting me on my sacred journey. So be it!
by Ven. Dhyani Ywahoo