Musing Mystical

✨ A Gathering Place for Magical Readers and Writers ✨

Tag Archives: native american

First Nations Crystal Healing, by Luke Blue Eagle

First Nations Crystal Healing: Working with the Teachers of the Mineral Kingdom, by Luke Blue Eagle
Bear & Company,  9781591434276, 264 pages, October 2021

Luke Blue Eagle shares ways to use thirty-eight different crystals and stones for healing in his book First Nations Crystal Healing. As he says on the back cover:

“Crystals and stones come from Mother Earth and indigenous medicine people have been using them to help and to heal for millennia. Their techniques, although simple, have proven effective through the innumerable healers who have handed down these teachings across the generations.”1

For over twenty-five years, Blue Eagle studied with elders from several indigenous tribes in the US and Canada.  He writes a blog that includes articles on many subjects, from animal totems such as the moose or coyote to crystals or the latest work on his fragrances or his original music.  He is also featured in several audio interviews online. His career spans over forty years as a healer and practitioner. A recent blog announces that he has retired from active work, having trained quite a few people to carry on these techniques.

This book is organized into five parts:

  1. Preparing for a Healing Practice
  2. Crystal Attributes and Correspondences
  3. Principal Practices for Crystal Use and Care
  4. Advanced Healing Practices
  5. The Stones and Their Properties

I have been interested in crystals and gemstones for more than twenty years, so this book really resonated with me.  When my husband and I began to study mediumship, we learned about a few crystals that can support spirit communication. From that time, I’ve loved to use crystals for channeling, healing, and energy clearing.  I was interested to learn more from Blue Eagle about indigenous techniques and practices.

In the initial section, I learned that the indigenous way of healing is truly “holistic” in that it works to treat the whole body system: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.  Crystals are a natural part of the healing journey, since they come from Mother Earth.  Blue Eagle reviews the foundations of Native American practices and provides some preliminary information, including his own fundamental laws of healing.

Next, he discusses the attributes of crystals, including form and structure and the colors of crystals.  In the third section, he reviews ways to care for and use crystals and this was my favorite section.  From consecrating a crystal to programming a crystal, Blue Eagle gives the reader step-by-step instructions. He shares:

The consecration ceremony is a twenty-seven-day ritual that will help you commune with your crystal and perceive its specific gifts and then apply them to healing situations.  We use this ceremony to consecrate the crystal to act in a specific way, and in specific circumstances, in a sacred manner. All healing has a sacred component to it, if you understand the notion of holistic healing. The best time to start a consecration ritual is on the new moon.  If not possible on the new moon, any other time will do.2

After he covers how to “program” a crystal, he also discusses the importance of creating “sacred space” for all healing.  I loved the “Heart Meditation” that he shared in the book, which is a three-part meditation and is the first practice he teaches in all of his classes.

In the center of the book are color photos of the thirty-eight crystals, including several of the clear quartz crystal, which is the primary crystal that he uses for healing work.  In the next section, he covers all of the different colors of crystals and how each color plays a role in healing. He does a brief introduction of the color, or “color ray” as he calls it, and then lists specific crystals in that color and shares information about working with that crystal.  

Throughout the book, Blue Eagle adds what he calls a “Teaching Story” that contains a specific reference to an experience he has had that relates to the crystal or practice or healing technique.  One of my favorites was the one shared about Clear Quartz, in which he put a crystal around the neck of a beginning student.  The woman was helping him in his booth at a wellness fair and was becoming overwhelmed by the energy of the many people coming through the booth.  After he put on the crystal, she was able to work the rest of the day with ease and no dip in her energy.3

I was unaware of the ability of clear quartz to be used in this way.  I decided to test it out and wore a necklace I have with a clear quartz crystal point one day when I was going to my granddaughter’s gymnastics meet.  That day, I was able to stay longer than usual and did not feel my energy dip after I had been in the large gym for four hours.  I can’t wait to test out more of his practices and techniques, including his distance healing techniques and many of the meditations. 

On the last page of the book, Blue Eagle shares what he calls “the three fundamental laws of healing: unconditional love, nonattachment and intention.  The philosophical foundations that countless elders have passed down through the generations have great validity.  We must meditate on them so that we tread on solid ground, protecting ourselves and others with insight and wisdom.”4

Blue Eagle’s writing style is very conversational, and I appreciate the depth of his knowledge and experience.  It shines through on every page. The structure of the book is well-conceived, and the “Table of Contents” is handy for reference.  He also has an index, which is always helpful later, when you want to find and review a specific idea. 

In this easy-to-read book, Blue Eagle provides lots of tools and techniques that just about anyone can follow.  He recommends that you read First Nations Crystal Healing from front to back to fully understand the Native American way of living in harmony with Mother Earth. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about crystals, as well know and understand Native American healing techniques and sacred ceremonies.

Without Reservation, by Randy Kritkausky

Without Reservation: Awakening to Native American Spirituality and the Ways of Our Ancestors, by Randy Kritkausky
Bear & Company, 978-1591433842, 288 pages, September 2020

“While most of our journeys take us away from our immediate daily setting, the journey described in this book has not been a journey away from home. It is a journey, yet incomplete, homeward…”1

Without Reservation: Awakening to Native American Spirituality and the Ways of Our Ancestors by Randy Kritkausky is a powerful book, relating the author’s journey of self-identification and awakening the connections to what his ancestry holds as wisdom and an authentic sense of personal and collective spirituality. The overarching message of the book is one of a gentle encouragement by the author to explore your own uniqueness, your own histories, your own lineage and by so doing becoming more wholly who you are.

I will share a quote from “Chapter 17: Microbes and Black Swans,” which speaks eloquently to Kritkausky’s intent for himself and the world at large. This chapter relates the author’s continued experiences as COVID-19 spread throughout the world and the arising of his wish for society’s healing anchored from a Native American perspective:

Native Americans know how to cope with a more powerful adversary while maintaining our dignity. We make necessary accommodations as best we can. . . Crisis can be a time to dig into our historical narratives and to gather their wisdom. The isolation and time-outs imposed on us in the form of quarantines may be a hidden gift, a pause button encouraging reflection. Imagine our families and communities gathered in small groups around a fire, exchanging stories of ancestral wisdom and reimagining our future. Imagine the cultural enrichment that might come if this became routine…2

Without Reservation is separated into seventeen chapters and ends with a powerful writing of the “Conclusion: Untangling Threads of Historical Narrative”, which speaks to what the author’s journey has truly revealed for him…

What I did not anticipate is that in, around, and through my personal reflections, another more complex image would emerge and come into focus-that of “Indianness” writ large. I now see unfolding before me something like a five-dimensional hologram of my collective tribal history through time, and even beyond that, an emerging image of our continent’s human history…3

This historical narrative is not one that is found in academic teachings, but rather one that can only be derived by the understanding and wisdom gained in making the time and taking the effort to step fully into the wisdom of the ancestors and nature and seeing through their eyes the true story.  

I appreciated that the author included a Glossary of Indian Words, chapter Notes and a robust and very thorough Bibliography. These were excellent tools that serve to deepen the reader’s understanding of the importance and profound impact this journey “homeward” had for Kritkausky, while giving insight into the wealth of wisdom held by the Native peoples.

One of the things that sets this book apart from many other books about Native American Spirituality or Native biographies is that Kritkausky is one of Native American descent who did not grow up on a Native American reservation, and so he did not have the first hand cultural and ancestral experiences that arise from those daily interactions within community and family. Additionally, he describes himself as frequently standing…

“… before a mirror. . . The face that stares back at me always has hazel eyes, light brown hair, light skin and northern European bone structure. I am continually reminded that I look more like my adopted family’s Lithuanian ancestors than my biological family’s Potawatomi ancestors.”4

And it was this self-reflection that ignited the flame within him to seek “home”.  He goes on to remind the reader that…

“Who we are and who we think we are is not merely a social construct rooted in the fleeting here and now. Who we are and who we think we are is rooted in historical connections with those who have walked on but continue to be with us. Our identity is rooted in our relationships with the land and with a sentient natural world that shares an active understanding with us. When we wander too far from our roots, our ancestors and kin in the natural world call us home, sometimes with gentle whispers and sometimes with loud voices sounding alarms…5

Each chapter gives a thoughtful amount of Kritkausky’s personal background and how he was raised apart from the Native traditions of the Potawatomi tribe, despite the Native heritage on his mother’s side. The reader is privy to the spiritual uncertainty that arose when his mother remarried a man of Lithuanian descent, who became his adopted father, and life in a geographical location lacking in ethnic diversity or non-traditional options to pursue spirituality. 

“Chapter 2: The Awakening” and “Chapter 3: Before the Awakening” recount the synchronistic events and imminent death of his mother, that brought Kritkausky into the wisdom of his Native extended family and their spiritual practices through a tradition of understanding of and collaboration with the natural world. It is often said of important matters that when the student is ready, the teacher will come. For Kritkausky, the teachers took on the forms of ancestral spirits, animal spirits, aunts, uncles, and kin.

“Chapter 4: Pathways to Knowing” is my favorite chapter of Without Reservation. This chapter provides the reader with tools for consideration as the process of awakening to the Native ways of spirituality begins. Kritkausky outlines them in this way:

• Visitations and Connections: “The most astounding and sometimes the most perplexing encounters involve wonderful, unintended and typically unexpected visitations from ancestral spirits…. direct connections with the natural world, (are) moments when the consciousness of other living beings, flora and fauna, becomes accessible…”6

• Observation: “… comes through intended highly conscious, close observation of the world of nature and the lessons that flora and fauna bring, if we take the time to see and listen…”7   

• Reflection: “This mode of coming to know and understanding requires time and critical self-examination, even an element of skepticism. It often requires asking ourselves hard questions…”8

The questions that are posited are found in many other spiritual journeys, all with the intention of verifying what has been intuited, maintaining a level of integrity around the intention and deepening the resonance of integration of what information is received. 

The last pathway, for me, was the most profound and is that of storytelling, described as…

“… profoundly social rather than introspective and private. By sharing or publishing knowledge and wisdom we have been given, we become teachers and conduits of culture…Our friends, families and communities challenge and confirm us, For Native Americans with millennia-old oral traditions, storytelling comes naturally. For others, this is nearly a lost art form…”9

I love this particular intention and pathway. You can feel the power and deep connectedness arising just in reading the author’s words of description. The reader is reminded that these paths intersect, informing one another and creating the point of resonance that will call to the wisdom of the ancestors, the support of the natural world, and the strength of heritage to find a place of cultural home. 

Without Reservation is a moving and intimate recounting of the author’s desire to know more about who he is in his “Indianness.” This book is dynamic with emotion, historical truths, technique, and masterful weaving of a personal account of seeking family. At the level of nuance, this title evokes in the reader a yearning for a simpler, yet deeply connected relationship with the knowingness of who you are in heritage, in spirit and in the network of ancestry.

For me, personally, it struck an emotional chord.  As Kritkausky relates in the beginning of the book, many Americans know of their Native American lineage, but lack the proof required for recognition by the US government and/or the various Tribal Nations themselves. They remain disenfranchised from their roots and find it easier to remain entrenched in the expectations of the society and cultural experiences they were raised in; taking on an identity that is incomplete and unfulfilling. What knowledge they may have of this other heritage is often fleeting or merely a glimpse of some memento or artifact at best, or a random comment made in passing that may indicate that they are something more.

In my case, it was a picture of my great-great grandmother and the telling of a story by my grandmother about her grandmother. The picture portrayed a beautiful Native woman with braids and clothing, presumably Cherokee. My grandmother did not know much other than what she was briefly told by her mother and when my grandmother died, the picture disappeared.

Without Reservation awakened within me the desire to know more about that neglected aspect of myself. And, I would broadly say that the approach and fervent desire that Kritkausky shared could be applied to anyone’s lineage-European, Asian, African, etc. All have historical narratives and ancestral stories to tell. And, as was true for Kritkausky, in connecting with the wisdom of your history, we can better be suited towards living in harmony and respect for one another and ultimately deepen the connections to nature that all indigenous peoples revere.