Cleansing Gemstones

In this article I discuss a number of different energetic cleansing methods for gemstones. You can clean gemstones in different ways depending on what feels right for you at a specific moment. The methods are ritual in nature, and it is about your experience and the meaning you give to what you perform.

In general, you can clean gemstones based on the different elements; water, earth, fire and air. Cleansing therefore takes place via water, earth, smoke (air & fire).

Water Cleansing

Water cleansing is probably the method you will use most often. After use, you always want to rinse your stone under the tap, so it is nice to immediately carry out an energetic cleansing, by imagining that energies that the stone has absorbed are being washed away while rinsing under lukewarm to cool running water. You can then pause for a moment to reflect on what you have been able to let go of, and feel your gratitude for this. You can enhance the effect of water cleansing by adding some sea salt to the water in which you rinse the egg.

You can also take the egg to a river or even waterfall and hold it there in the flowing water, again imagining how energies are drained away.

Earth Cleansing

Bury the stone in the earth, preferably during the new moon. If you don't have a garden, or you don't want to bury the stone in a public place, you can also place the stone in the soil in a plant pot.

You can also place your stone on a bed of (or near) grounding gemstones, such as hematite or tiger's eye.

Air Cleaning

By placing your egg in a nice place (preferably outside), the air will brush against the egg, and you can imagine how it removes and cleanses absorbed energies. You can also use a feather to let wind flow past the egg. You can further enhance this effect by, for example, burning sage or palo santo and spreading it along the egg.

Fire Cleansing

Of course you have to be careful with gemstones and large temperature fluctuations, but the above cleaning method in which you burn herbs and spread the air around your egg is a nice method. You can also put the egg in a box in which you collect the smoke from the burnt herbs. You can also do a fire cleansing by meditating with the egg in your hands and imagining that your inner fire is burning what needs to be transformed.

What type of gemstone & what type of cleaning

Most gemstones match a certain element, and therefore a certain type of cleansing will be better suited to a specific gemstone.