Crystal expert Nicholas Pearson joins us to talk about these beautiful stones and the powers that they hold!

You can find his new pocket encyclopedia of crystals, Crystal Basics Pocket Encyclopedia: The Energetic, Healing, and Spiritual Power of 450 Gemstones, here on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3JhtdlL

Thanks Nicholas!

TRANSCRIPT

[intro music]

This is the Paranormal Podcast with Jim Harold.

JIM HAROLD: Welcome to the Paranormal Podcast. I am Jim Harold. So glad to be with you once again. Over the years, we have developed a roster of favorite guest on specific topics – people you know you can go to on a subject and they always have something interesting and insightful to offer.

And when it comes to crystals, the first name that comes to my mind is Nicholas Pearson. He’s been on the show multiple times. He’s been immersed in all aspects of the mineral kingdom for nearly 30 years. As one of the leading voices in the world of crystals today, he offers a unique blend of science and spirituality alongside a grounded, practical approach to working with crystals. He is the author of multiple books, including his latest, Crystal Basics Pocket Encyclopedia: The Energetic, Healing, and Spiritual Power of 450 Gemstones. That’s just out. And he lives in Orlando, Florida. You can find his website at theluminouspearl.com. Nicholas, welcome back to the show today.

NICHOLAS PEARSON: Thanks so much for having me again, Jim. I’m really looking forward to our conversation.

JIM HAROLD: It’s always good to speak with you, and I’m always amazed by what you bring forward in your various books. Some of your books you get very in-depth and so forth, and they’re large books. This is – thus the name, Crystal Basics Pocket Encyclopedia – what I love about this, as I was sharing before the show, this is a book if you’re going out to shop for crystals at a shop or maybe some kind of a show or something like that, you can take this with you, and it’s a resource. Literally when you’re right on the floor looking at crystals, you can look them up and find the different properties and what they’re good for and those kinds of things.

What was the genesis of this Pocket Encyclopedia?

NICHOLAS PEARSON: Truth be told, it wasn’t a project that I had high on my priority list. It wasn’t something I’d been dreaming of doing. It wasn’t this big “aha” moment. It was just lots of little realizations over time. As you mentioned, some of my books are pretty in-depth, and therefore that translates into being pretty hefty tomes. One of the pieces of feedback, one of the critiques I got for Crystal Basis, the big book that came out in 2020, was that it was less portable than some people wanted. I thought, I could work on that. Maybe we could see if there was a different edition or trim size we could do.

And then as I saw the various tiny reference books that are out there, they all serve their own function, they all tell that author’s perspective. It finally came into being where I thought, why don’t I do one of those myself? I can have more rocks in it than the big book and still manage to make it portable, with all-new content, and make it essentially a good companion guide as well as a standalone reference.

JIM HAROLD: Sure. There’s no reason you can’t have both. You have the big one for at home, you have this one when you’re on the go, or just maybe you’re lying in bed and don’t want to hold a big book. You can just read up on these. I love the idea.

As we discussed before we hit record, I think since the name of this book is Crystal Basics, maybe we should take it back a little bit. Maybe for people who are new to the world of crystals, who say, “Ooh, that’s always sounded interesting to me but I don’t know much about it” – I guess let’s start with the beginning. How do you define a crystal?

NICHOLAS PEARSON: This is a great place to get started. Oftentimes we’ll say in the greater spiritual world, we use terms colloquially that don’t necessarily echo their factual definition. Words like “crystal,” “rock,” “stone,” “gem,” we might use them interchangeably, but they do connote very specific things.

A crystal is generally recognized as a solid substance that has a regular composition – in other words, it’s always the same ingredients – and a repeating and symmetrical structure, so those ingredients are arranged in a three-dimensional scaffold or lattice that fills all the available space. When there’s enough room and time, those crystals, if they grow big enough for the naked eye to see, we’ll see that they are bound by external planes that are made out of regular faces and angles. So we can see that outer symmetry when we look at something like, for example, this piece of citrine from the Congo I’m holding up to the camera. We can see that it’s always going to be the same repetition of angles and faces and planes.

JIM HAROLD: Some people will look at crystals and say, “Ooh, I like the pretty rocks.” [laughs] Kind of that idea of “I like them for their ornamental beauty,” “I like them because of the way the light shimmers,” a conversation piece, those kinds of things. I think that’s all well and good, but I know you are a firm believer in the fact that they’re much, much more than just beautiful and attractive ornamental pieces – that they are actually, some of them, imbued with powers. Can you talk about that a little bit? Because that might be something a person new to it might say, “How does that work?” So I’ll ask you: How does that work?

NICHOLAS PEARSON: Firstly, let’s celebrate the people who are drawn to them for their beauty or who collect them as works of art, because I think that is a commendable thing as well – and it’s something that’s been going on since the very beginning of time. We have archeological evidence that shows us that humanlike things have collected crystals for upwards of several hundred thousand years. So we know that this is something that is visceral, that’s embedded deep within the collective psyche, that’s part of the history of Earth itself.

So we can’t really separate, in that great expanse of time, the aesthetic from the cultural from the symbolic from the mystical. I would say for the majority of human history, the idea that gems had certain virtues or powers was as inseparable to their nature as their inherent color and shape and form. Over the eons, there’ve been a lot of different models that have been used to describe how this works, but by and large, I like to look at the metaphor of physics. If we look at how their physical stuff comes together, it gives us an idea of how their energetic stuff also comes together.

Thanks to the regular, rigid, coherent or harmonious structure, we can determine that they’re also going to have very harmonious energies. So when their energies come into contact with ours, when they start that conversation on a subtle level between the human energy field and a crystal’s energy field, they start to show us, to demonstrate what it’s like to be more coherent, to be more harmonized or synchronized or aligned.

There are a number of studies out there through lots of different fields of science and medicine that demonstrate that a more coherent electromagnetic field, particularly when the brain and the heart’s fields are more coherent or more synchronized, that is a sign of wellbeing. Now, science is really clear on the language there; they’re not necessarily saying this is causative. One doesn’t always cause the other. But they tend to follow one another.

So if it is possible that a crystal’s harmonious energy teaches us to be more harmonious, and if it’s possible that harmonious state can beget health, then it stands to reason, as we become more coherent on a subtle energetic level, we become more coherent on an electromagnetic level, it begins to work its way down through our mood, our perception. Those things trigger electrical and chemical transmitters that cascade through the body and begin to affect our pathology. So in a way, a very roundabout way, it’s very possible for crystal energy to supersede the other stuff going on in the background.

And that’s just using a model rooted in science and physics. That doesn’t take into account there are things we can’t measure, and maybe we never will. There’s the spiritual side of it, the consciousness-driven side of it. I definitely believe that stones are kind of like our partners here on Earth. They’re here to support us in many ways, and when we approach that consciously and conscientiously, that relationship begets a change as well.

JIM HAROLD: Do you also believe that crystals can attract things like – or help attract, because I don’t think in any instance you’re saying it’s the crystal by itself – or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you are. But I don’t think you are. But let me ask you: Can it help you attract things like wealth, love, success? Can crystals help you attract those things as well?

NICHOLAS PEARSON: The model that I like to use is one that’s very relational. It’s partnership-driven. Whether we want to lean into the woo and talk about energy and manifestation and the spirit of crystals working with us on that level, or we want to think of them as metaphors and touchstones – either way, we have this really tangible representation of our goals. Whether we carry a piece of citrine for abundance or meditate with rose quartz for emotional wellbeing, they become these discreet reminders of the things we’re working towards.

I also believe there’s that energetic component, there’s that spiritual component that’s driving us toward those ends, toward those goals. But what if we couldn’t prove any of that? Which we largely can’t. We still have this piece of really good psychology, this conscious reminder that this object, this tool, this symbol, is keeping us aligned with, focused on, and working towards whatever that outcome might be. And that’s really powerful.

Then we add to that the subtle levels that we can’t yet measure and we get a really profound alchemy with the psychology of it, the so-called placebo effect – but then stuff we can’t measure. The very few – we’ll say not quite peer-reviewed studies, but the few cursory studies that have been done show that crystals do work better than placebos for the most part. But we don’t have really rich, robust data yet. So I believe, my personal experience, is yes, absolutely, they help us with this. I think we’re still in search of what that cause is going to be in a scientific way, and that’s what leads us into the paranormal. If we can’t describe it by normal means, we have to go beyond that.

JIM HAROLD: So when it comes to crystals, do you have to have a level of caution? Let me explain why. Let’s say that there’s something wrong with your car, and you try to fix your car but you put transmission fluid in the place where you’re supposed to put the oil. It can blow up your car. I’m not saying anything that drastic, but do you need to make sure that if you’re using crystals in a way to try to improve your life, that if you want to let’s say attract success, that you pick the right crystal because if you pick the wrong crystal, it may have unintended consequences? Is it that strong?

NICHOLAS PEARSON: Yes and no. Let’s start with moving away from sweeping generalizations, because so often, in the world in which we live, we want things to be basic, we want things to be universal, we want things to be easy little soundbites to remember. Everything has been meme-ified, right? The book itself is kind of written in that format. But we have to start asking ourselves the really important question for any specific thing we’re working on. Not just “What is the general theme?”, but “What are the specifics we’re trying to overcome?”

If I want to attract abundance and the specific thing I’m trying to overcome is lack of motivation, that’s very different from lack of vision or lack of opportunity. So if we work with a crystal that helps us with lack of opportunity but we just never follow through, that’s not the right crystal for the circumstance. It’s not so much that they will cause harm so much as they could fizzle out.

There definitely are instances I’ve seen where people are very, very sensitive to subtle energies, to all kinds of vibes that might be out there, and there are crystals that can evoke feelings of discomfort or disharmony as they work through our – we’ll call it our psychic “stuff.” That’s a nicer word than I’d like to call it. As it lifts that up to the concsious to view, that can be a really theraptui process in the long run, but as we’re sorting through the mire of stuff, that can be unpleasant sometimes.

So there are caveats in there. There are places where we do need some caution, but I think it’s more about just good common sense. If you want to be a better communicator, is it you don’t know the words, you don’t have the right audience, or you lack the confidence to go after that? I think we work too big in the holistic movement as a whole, not just crystals – thinking about things with these broad generalizations rather than actually being holistic to the individual. So it’s about funneling in on the specifics of what you’re working on and then matching the crystal that best represents that to you. And that’s a relational thing, that’s a personal thing. You can’t subtract you from that equation. We can’t just go, “Oh, citrine is for abundance” and leave it at that.

JIM HAROLD: He’s always got such great information. Nicholas Pearson is our guest on the Paranormal Podcast. The book is Crystal Basics Pocket Encyclopedia. We get a lot of books that come through here, and I can’t hang on to all of them. I’m very grateful to the publishers who send them along. But I always keep Nicholas’s books, and this one, definitely. I love this idea. This is an awesome book. And we’ll talk more about it right after this on the Paranormal Podcast.

Happy spring, everybody! Spring is springing, believe it or not, and it can’t come soon enough. As I’m sure you’re going to be out and about, you’re going to get out in the great outdoors again and start doing things, I’m sure you’re going to be in need of some audio entertainment. Now, of course, we have our free shows, but we also have our Paranormal Plus Club, and I would highly recommend that you check it out.

Basically, the Paranormal Plus Club is where you can go and get all of the archives going back to 2005. That includes a few hundred Campfires no longer on the free feeds. That includes several hundred editions of the Paranormal Podcast not on the free feeds. That includes hundreds of Plus shows that people don’t realize that we do each and every month. We do eight exclusive episodes for our Plus members. There are shows like UFO Encounters, Ghost Insight, The Cryptid Report, the list goes on. The Other Side. The thing is, people don’t know that we do all these extra shows. Even the members, I have to remind them from time to time. If you’re listening to this and you’re a member, make sure that you’re checking out those shows because those are part of your membership.

All told, it’s well over 2,000 episodes that you can’t get if you’re on the free feeds, so what are you waiting for? Go over to jimharoldplus.com and click on the banner with my face. It’ll take you to a page where it explains the Plus Club. There’s two different versions; there’s our classic Libsyn version where you have an app that you install on your device and you can listen on Apple devices, you can listen via Android devices, you can listen via Amazon device, you can listen via your computer. That’s for people who are like, “Hey, I want to be able to change from device to device, ecosystem to ecosystem. I want to be able to operate in any environment and listen to my Plus Club content.” And that’s great. They’ve been with us for years. They do a great job, and people love that Spooky Studio app.

This last year, we added another version, and it’s just as great. It’s like chocolate and vanilla, which one do you prefer. It’s the Apple Podcast version. If you tell me, “Jim, I’m not interested in a lot of different devices. I am an Apple device person and that’s all I want to listen on, and I listen in Apple Podcasts,” then I say the Apple Podcast version is for you. Now, with both systems you get a great deal. There are great discounts for the Libsyn version where you can get great discounts on monthly and yearly membership, and on Apple, they do something a little different. You can get a free trial, which is something Libsyn doesn’t do.

So each system has its own pluses. It’s just up to you to figure out which one you prefer. But the good news is, you get all those Campfires, you get all those Paranormal Podcasts on both versions, you get shows like UFO Encounters, Ghost Insight, The Other Side, The Cryptid Report – that Plus content, you get it on both systems. Get it today. Don’t delay. Go to jimharoldplus.com. That’s jimharoldplus.com. Make sure to click on the banner with my face on it at jimharoldplus.com. And thanks!

If you love the Paranormal Podcast, be sure to check out Jim Harold’s Campfire, where ordinary people share their extraordinary stories of ghosts, UFOs, cryptids, and terrifying encounters. Find it for free wherever you listen to this podcast. Tune in to Jim Harold’s Campfire today. Now, we return to the Paranormal Podcast.

JIM HAROLD: We’re back on the Paranormal Podcast. Our guest is Nicholas Pearson, and we’re talking about his latest book – and it’s one that I really, really like – Crystal Basics Pocket Encyclopedia: The Energetic, Healing, and Spiritual Power of 450 Gemstones. I’ll stop right there, Nicholas, and I’ll ask you: 450 gemstones. I’m sure that there are hundreds of thousands in nature, maybe more. Why did you pick, and how did a particular crystal make the cut of this book to be one of the 450 featured?

NICHOLAS PEARSON: It was not an easy process, to be honest. I started with the 200 that appeared in Crystal Basics, and I thought, well, we could probably throw an extra 100 in there. I’ve got room. And then my list just got really big and unwieldy. I think at one point I had a working list of around 600, which wasn’t very pocket-sized by the time we added pictures and formatting. So I had to take the red pen to my list. There were a few things I tried to accomplish.

Firstly, I wanted to ensure that there were lots of accessible things. I definitely wanted the weird, the unusual, the hard-to-find, because you need them to appear in reference books at some point, but the majority of the crystals are things that people are going to be able to find.

I also wanted to reflect some changes in the market, some things that were seemingly going to be very popular, or were at least exciting to me when I was writing the big Crystal Basics, which came out in 2020, didn’t make the cut because they tapered off, or I found more exciting things to put into this.

Another category of things that I wanted to ensure made it in were things that I was fascinated by that I couldn’t find in other books. So through personal experimentation and my own research and partnering with friends and colleagues and students, I have a small number of crystals that appear in this book and, to my knowledge, nowhere else – at least yet. As new crystal books come out, of course, we’ll see them pop up.

And then finally, I wanted common rocks to be in here because among holistic modalities, among forms of energy medicine, it is kind of really unusual that crystal healing in particular is a very consumer thing. You have to keep buying tools. If you want a big toolbox, it’s not skills that you develop, it’s not a training your receive once and use; you keep buying rocks. But if we look at the historical record, people have treated pretty ordinary rocks, like slate and chalk and granite, with equal amount of reverence to things like amethyst and emerald and ruby. So I made sure that I covered some of the things we’re going to find in our backyards to remind us that rocks are made out of minerals, and minerals are nothing more than inorganic naturally occurring crystals.

I made sure that there are some things in there to remind us that we don’t always have to go out and buy the shiny new toy. There is really powerful magic in the land beneath our feet.

JIM HAROLD: I’m looking here – oddly enough, you mentioned amethyst; I was turned right to that page. This goes for all of the different crystals: you go show the formula, the hardness, crystal system, formation process, chakra, correspondences, physical healing, psychological healing, spiritual healing. So talk to us about this idea of a crystal system. What is a crystal system?

NICHOLAS PEARSON: Here’s where my geology nerd gets to shine through. When we look at how the physical matter itself is organized, the shapes it forms, there are patterns that emerge. Patterns that are governed by the internal axes. If you draw imaginary lines through the planes of symmetry and look at how they reflect, how they’re ordered, we come up with these seven main groupings that start with the most regular – axes of equal length that meet at 90-degree angles – to those that are less symmetrical, but still somehow have their symmetry in there. They’re all at unequal lengths and all meet at different angles.

So the crystal system is just a reflection of how those little points are ordered through the space of a stone. Energetically, this is important because it kind of represents – we’ll say the energetic personality of the stone. If you look at something that is an isometric or cubic crystal system – this could be things that actually form cubes that we can see with the naked eye, like maybe pyrite, halite, or fluorite, or even things that belong to the same level of organization – like garnet could be a good example. It doesn’t really form cubes, but it has the same length of axes. They’re very solid. They’re reassuring. There’s something very orderly about them that anchors and grounds us.

Whereas if we look at something that’s got maybe a trigonal, a threefold organization within, that pattern of three has long been a symbol of change and transformation. Lots of really popular gems that we work with in crystal healing have that same kind of crystal grouping. They belong to the trigonal crystal system and therefore invite change. This could be all of our quartzes, like amethyst and clear quartz and smoky quartz and agate and jasper, as well as things like calcite. Those all can be examples of that.

So knowing what they’re made out of, the process that brought them together, and the shapes that they form at that molecular level give us clues as to the energy present in a stone. This being a pocket encyclopedia, we didn’t go really in-depth in that, but there’s a short explanation of that in one of the opening chapters. And if you want to learn more, you can always cross-reference with the big Crystal Basics.

JIM HAROLD: Now, I won’t totally put you on the spot with this question; only partially. I won’t go as far as to ask you what your favorite crystal is because I don’t think that’s fair. There’s too many to choose from. But I’ll ask you what some – so that means multiple – of your favorite crystals are and why.

NICHOLAS PEARSON: I love this. Thank you for the grace, because when people put me on the spot I have three different answers depending on the context of that question. So this allows me to give you multiple answers without breaking the rules.

One of my favorite things to collect, and will remain one of my favorite things to collect until the end of time, is quartz. Quartz comes to us in a variety of shapes and colors and is found worldwide, and it has such strong personalities depending on the circumstances in which it formed, the other minerals present. You never get tired of collecting quartz because there’s always something new – not to mention energetically, it’s kind of a powerhouse. It comes in all these forms and varieties and as a very broad spectrum healing stone. At the beginning of the crystal healing movement, it was the foundation stone. There are more books written about just working with quartz crystal than about anything else in the crystal world. So I think it’s a really good and accessible tool for us all.

I really adore rhodonite. Rhodonite is a manganese and calcium silicate mineral. I have a piece right here that’s a really deep ruby red, but often it’s a pale opaque pink. This is a stone that for me has been really nurturing on an emotional level. I’m a little high strung. In real life, outside of my office space – even inside my office space – I tend to run a little hot. So when I feel a little over-anxious, a little in need of grounding and cooling off emotionally, rhodonite is always that stone that’s there to support me. It’s helped me through a lot of change and transition in my life – something that I’m eternally grateful for.

Another rock – we’ll do a rock instead of a single mineral this time – that I work with a lot in my everyday life geologically is known as dolerite. Specifically, there’s a variety of dolerite that comes from Pembrokeshire in Wales, the southwestern part of Great Britain. It is one of the materials that was used in the construction of Stonehenge, but there are over 100 other sites that use this unusual kind of dolerite known as Preseli Bluestone. Ever since my introduction to it, I’ve just been really fascinated. The geology of this particular kind of dolerite, this particular bluestone, is unique and wonderful. The fact that it was transported hundreds of miles to places far away from the Preseli Hills to build these ancient structures – it obviously carried a lot of depth and meaning. It’s woven into myth and legend, and the landscape itself. It’s a very grounding but expansive stone at the same time.

I like power tools that have more than one function. It’s kind of like we could say an upper and a downer at once. Do you need more grounding? Do you need that expanded state of consciousness? It can help us mediate between the two, and therefore has been a really helpful tool for me. And when I do travel a lot, it’s great because it helps me really keep my center, no matter what’s changing around me.

JIM HAROLD: I’d asked you before if there are crystals that can be counterproductive in certain contexts. Are there certain crystals that can conflict with each other? You know, can you have one crystal sitting next to another one where you want to get X from the one crystal, but the Y counteracts that and goes against it?

NICHOLAS PEARSON: This is a really good question. There are two different kinds of answers. On the most fundamental and universal level, do crystals harm one another’s energy? No, because they’re all part of the earth. They all exist within the lithosphere, that hard, stony part of the earth. They all contribute to we’ll say the greater grid that is our planet.

But then we move from the general to the specific, and it is truthful that not all crystals are necessarily aligned towards the same ends that we might be working toward. So it’s up to us to have the sensitivity to ourselves, our personal needs, our environment, and the stones within them to see that they’re all working in the same direction.

And it’s not even just rocks. It’s ourselves. How many times do we, as woo-woo people, decide, “I want to manifest A, B, C, D, E, and F,” and we try to do it all at the same time? It’s like having too many browser tabs open on your computer, especially before the current age of the internet. Go to the early 2000s. One browser tab too many and everything crashes. I think it’s kind of the same with our crystal work. Sometimes, less is more. Sometimes, the laser-like focus is what we need to achieve excellent results.

And that doesn’t mean we can’t mix and match crystals. They don’t inherently cancel themselves out. But it is a matter of, “Do these integrate in a way that is meaningful to me and algin with my goals?” The only one who’s going to know that is you, and you have to do that with self-reflection. There’s no easy answer, but there’s also therefore no fear that if I carry these two stones, they’re automatically going to cancel each other out.

I sometimes see this dialogue on the internet, and there’s no universal rule you can’t carry quartz with obsidian. There’s nothing out there. But you’ve got to feel out what’s working for you and what isn’t.

JIM HAROLD: I’m going to ask you another unfair question. I’m going to give you a few different areas, and if you can tell me one of your favorite accessible things that are relatively inexpensive, people can get on the market, for a particular – as though you were a physician giving a prescription. Let’s say that somebody comes to you and says, “I would like to attract relationship, love in my life.” Is there any particular crystal or crystals you would recommend?

NICHOLAS PEARSON: The specifics supersede, but generally some trends that I would look at – I love working with emeralds for this. Jade could be really lovely. Rose quartz is a popular one, but I use that more for internal work rather than the interpersonal romantic kind of love. And ruby is also great.

JIM HAROLD: What about business success and wealth? Again, when I say “wealth,” I don’t mean that you’re going to become wealthy – you’re not going to automatically put a crystal on your desk and become a multimillionaire – but that it can help you in the process to build your wealth and build your business and those kind of things.

NICHOLAS PEARSON: Citrine is the classic one. Citrine’s bigger mission in life is helping you fulfill your potential. A fully realized person, going through that process of self-actualization, could incur financial wealth. But it also incurs an enormous amount of other resources – time, fulfillment, support, health, and other ways that we might measure abundance. Another one that I work with a lot that’s really undervalued for this is called leopard skin jasper. It’s not a true jasper. We won’t get into the specifics of the geology for it, but it’s definitely a stone that I think of as helping us sync up with opportunities. The right place, right time kind of stone. And sometimes that’s what we need. It gets us to recognize when it’s the right place and the right time.

JIM HAROLD: And if somebody wanted to over their bases, there would be no harm in buying both, right?

NICHOLAS PEARSON: Correct.

JIM HAROLD: [laughs] Put all the energy out there. I think it is great. I guess I’ll get kind of personal here; other than your business and your books and things, how have crystals helped you in your life, do you think?

NICHOLAS PEARSON: Oh gosh, so many ways. The biggest part of the picture is that working with rocks and minerals helps me feel fulfilled as a human being because it’s something that I love, and they afford me the opportunity to do something that I love that positively impacts others. And that’s where the magic is. The fact that there happens to be a paycheck attached to that, at least some days, is really great.

But on the quieter side of that, the things that happen behind the surface – I mentioned being a little high strung, being a little anxious. Working with gemstones has been a way that, among other tradition means of managing that, helps me stay more grounded, stay more present. I’ve been in emergency situations where that tangible touch stone of rhodonite is the thing that’s helped me keep a level head and show up for others.

I’ve also seen some incredible opportunities manifest in my life that, for lack of any other discernible cause, I suppose, might actually be from my spiritual practice. Whether that’s getting the email back from my publisher for that first weird project I sent in as a relative nobody in the world, or invitations to travel and speak and do all these other things – those are things that I not just enjoy, but have been actively working towards and working with crystals and ways to manifest. To see those things play out in my everyday life is really humbling. So crystals have changed the fabric of my life from top to bottom.

JIM HAROLD: Let’s say somebody is saying, “Hey Nicholas, I’m going to get the book. I’m into it.” And we’re going to reiterate at the end where everybody can get the book. But they say, “I also would like to buy some crystals.” It strikes me there’s probably some really good people out there selling crystals that are what they say they are and things. But there’s also – it’s like the internet. There are some great things on the internet and there’s a lot of crap. I’m guessing it’s probably the same in the world of online crystal sales. So if people want to buy crystals and make sure they’re getting what they think they’re getting, what are your best practices?

NICHOLAS PEARSON: Firstly, stay curious. That’s going to be twofold. Be as informed as you can be. Learn about the material side of it. What is this particular rock or mineral? Where does it come from? How is it formed? What does the act of polishing look like? If you know the general ins and outs of the market, then you know what to expect. If someone’s selling you something that has been heat treated or dyed, you’re more likely to recognize that if you’ve been curious.

The other side of “stay curious” is ask questions. When we ask them as genuinely curious people, it tends to be less off-putting to retailers. If the question is, “Hey, where was this material mined?” versus “Where does this come from?” – that’s two different ways to ask the same question. When it comes to the genuine curiosity, people want to cultivate that because it’s a way that we build relationship with the stones. We find meaning in their stories. And that can also give us clues.

We can ask outright, “Has this been treated? Where did it come from? Do you know if this material’s ever simulated? Are there fakes out there?” You can ask someone, “How do you tell the difference?” If they genuinely don’t know, they’ll probably tell you that. I think a good rule of thumb is most people do the best they can with the tools they’ve got. Not everyone’s tools are equal. I’ve got almost 30 years of collecting, a background in the science field, I worked in a neuroscience museum. I know rocks and minerals super well. So what I can see as a fake from a mile away, someone else might not have the skillset to do.

It’s just taking it one step at a time. If we stay curious, it really helps us learn a little bit more every day. I continue to learn a little bit more every day, and hope that I will until the day I die.

JIM HAROLD: It strikes me something like this book could become really an ongoing classic with the opportunity for updated editions and all of these things. I think of people who have coin books. I don’t know if there still is, but when I was a kid, I was really interested in coins, and there was this little red book – I’m sure they still make it – that’s like the reference book for coins. I could see this becoming something like that. So really, congratulations on this. I think on the face of it, it seems like an obvious idea, but putting it into practice and making it happen, and having the physical copy right here, I really think this is huge. Ironically, since it’s a small book. But it’s not small – it’s the right size because you’ve got all the content here, but it’s very convenient to carry with you.

Nicholas, where can people find the book and find more information about everything you do?

NICHOLAS PEARSON: Thank you so much for all those kind words. The book, hopefully you’ll be able to find it anywhere books are sold. It is officially out as of the day that we are recording, so that’s all your major online and in-person retailers. Go visit your local independent bookstores, your local metaphysical stories, your crystal shops. If they don’t carry it, I’m sure they’re happy to order it for you. You can also get it direct from my publisher at innertraditions.com.

And if you’d like a signed copy, I have them on my website at theluminouspearl.com. If you want to contact me, find out what I’m doing, what classes I’ve got coming up, check out the website or find me on social media. I’m @theluminouspearl in most places. I’m always eager to connect with readers and other members of my audience.

JIM HAROLD: Nicholas, it is always a pleasure to talk with you about crystals. Congratulations on Crystal Basics Pocket Encyclopedia, and thank you for joining us today.

NICHOLAS PEARSON: My pleasure. Thanks so much, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: Thanks for tuning in to the Paranormal Podcast. We appreciate it. Always love to speak with Nicholas. What a great little book that is. I highly recommend it.

And speaking of books, I want to tell you how to get a free eBook. It’s very easy. You know I do my Campfire books. Done five of them, hoping to get a sixth out this year. We’ll see how it goes. We’ve got a lot in the works, a lot happening behind the scenes, so we’ll see how we do with that sixth one. But what I did was I took those five books and I took 10 stories, 10 of my favorites, and I created a little eBook. And I’m not selling it; I’m giving it away! We’re crazy over here at the Spooky Studio! Crazy, I tell ya!

So anyway, do you want a free eBook of 10 great Campfire stories? Very easy to get. Go over to jimharold.com. That’s jimharold.com. That is my website. Click on the orange button at the top of the page that says “Click here to get your free Campfire eBook.” There you’ll be directed where you can sign up to my free email newsletter list. That just keeps you informed of everything going on in the Spooky Studio. We don’t spam you; we just typically send you a weekly email. And if something super special is coming up, we’ll send out separate emails. But it’s very laidback. We won’t spam you, we won’t sell your information, nothing like that.

But anyway, you can get your free eBook by going over there, clicking on that orange button over at jimharold.com, “Click here to get your free Campfire eBook,” and it’s as simple as that. I hope that you’ll take me up on it, and I hope that you’ll enjoy the eBook and the newsletter. The newsletter is great, honestly, because what I find is it’s so frustrating; so many times, we’ll post about a show or a special guest or something coming up or a live video or a video we posted, and on our Campfire group, we have over 23,000 people signed up to our Virtual Campfire Group, and maybe 500 people will see it because the social media companies are in the business to sell ads. So they don’t give you access to your own audience. [laughs]

But with email, if you sign up, you get the emails. You choose to open them or not, but you’re always up to date on everything going on in the Spooky Studio. And we have so much going on, I think people don’t realize. And that’s where the email newsletter comes in. So I hope you’ll go get that free Campfire eBook.

We thank you so much. We’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week, everybody, and as always, stay safe and stay spooky. Bye-bye.

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