Yes, next Thursday will be the shortest day of the year ! Yay ! Then the days slowly get longer and ( hopefully a bit warmer.) well, for all of us down under in the Southern Hemisphere of course as this is our Winter Solstice.

In times past this was a much more important celebration. The return of Summer was not a foregone conclusion. Just perhaps, Winter would stay forever ! In that case, definitely you’d celebrate with a genuine sense of relief when you saw the Summer Sun was slowly stirring and thinking about getting up earlier :-)

Really the Winter Solstice is the start of the New Year, as it is up North, and we wish you all a happy one. New beginnings. Old problems resolved.

Here at the Heart it’s been a cold quiet Winter but at last I’ve finished all the uploads from the last trip, just in time for a surprise package from Paul who got some work completed earlier than usual.

There’s also been lots of stress negotiating a new lease, but thankfully that’s just been resolved and yes we are here to stay :-)

So yes, for me this is a pretty good solstice with the problems of last year being put to bed and leaving me clear for the new one.

Thinking about those Ancients who viewed the world in a very different way, based more on creative intuition than science, reminds me of how I meditate with Crystals. That naive intuitive way of looking at things is a state I naturally conjure up in myself whenever I look at a new crystal or gemstone. I allow myself to be entranced by it, just gaze openly without any knowledge but an open Heart so I can see it with fresh eyes and establish a communication between our energies.

I was lucky, back in the Himalayas in 1980, when all this began for me because at that time there weren’t any books around to fill my mind with preconceptions ! I had to learn it all myself from first principles, including that meditative contact. It was fun sensing where and how each Crystal energy was affecting mine. Still being a bit scientific, I wrote down where and how I felt the energy of the crystal affecting me.

When I did get back to the West and find some Crystal Healing books I was very happy to find that more or less they were in agreement with my results :-) So for me that was 'case proven.'  These Gemstone really do uplift our energies ! 40 years later I’m still having fun and can still be blown away by a particularly nice specimen.

TBH one of my great joys in life is working out things for myself ~ that's how you really master a subject, and so my Crystal adventure had an unforeseen outcome. I opened my little stall in 1986 and of course spent most of my days back then explaining how crystals work ! This led to me writing the Practical Guide to Crystal Healing, long out of print but an Australian bestseller for 10 years. This had a double value when we moved to Carlton in 1990. Not a good year to start a business ~ it was the year of " the Recession we had to have " but we published a new edition with the Carlton Store mentioned and that really helped to put us on the map as a serious crystal shop.

I've written the Crystal Chart for the shop, all the tags and of course the descriptions on the website. In all cases I still use the same technique to connect with the stone and how it affects my energy. Sometimes this happens immediately, other times the stone hits a block in me so I have to carry it around for a while until the penny drops, as it were.

One has to be careful here. Just because a crystal does this for me doesn't mean it's a Universal Meaning for everyone ! To counter that, I really strive to capture the root essence of each stone. What is it's peculiar quality. What is it's unique function. Lots of stones deal with Love for example ~ but there's so many different paths for the root energy of Love. Rose quartz , for example, is more interested in the pure love emotion. Rhodonite, as a jasper, shows how love affects the physical. Morganite connects more to Divine Love. And so on.

Crystals can heal. Outrageous statement for the Medical World ! OK if you have a headache an aspirin can help. But Crystal healing is more to do with energy. The first question here is ~ why do you have a headache ? The answer may be more psychological, to do with stress etc. But Crystal Healing goes beyond that to the energy that lies behind the psychology. Resolve the energy block, allow it to rediscover it's natural flow and the physical problems can disappear.

Well. More on that later ? We've gone a along way from Happy Solstice ! If there's anyone out there good at writing Mobile  Apps I'd love to write the real crystal book in that format ...??????....

Enough about me. Thanks as always to all my wonderful customers on line and in the shop. Your positive feedback really helps me carry on. Thanks to all the guys who make such fantastic Gemstone Jewellery for us. Thanks to all the people who make a business out of this but only because they love the stones. Thanks to my team at the Heart. Yes. This is the Winter Solstice speaking. Gratitude for all that has been, and the promise of what will be.

Have a great New Year ! May promises be honoured and Karma be mild.

Love from the Heart as always.

Marc