Hi kids,

in searching for a topic Graham suggest I talk about birth stones. He had noticed that when I put the chart up at the markets, many of you stopped to look at it and to ask questions.

So this is my belief about birthstones.

There has been a long tradition that. depending on when you were born, certain crystals were especially good for you, and they became known as birthstones.

Somehow it became best known that the birthstones for your birthday with those that were very valuable such as Emerald, Ruby, Topaz, Diamond, and so on. I suspect this was because the makers of jewellery wanted to sell their products and of course they would want to sell valuable things to keep in business.

Jewellery is always a special gift for someone to be given, and so to receive your birthstone in jewellery added an extra excitement to receiving it.

Of course emeralds, opals, and diamonds are also very expensive and not all of us can have a large crystal to wear or have in our crystal collection. So don't be disappointed because there are many stones that work really well for you too.

And so when I talk about birthstones, I include all the rocks and crystals that will help you. There really is no difference in the healing help from high quality emerald as compared a rough clear quartz - they both help they help differently. And they are both beautiful to look at in their own way.

So how did birthstones and your birth date get matched up? I do believe it did come from observation long ago when energy was believed in. This was before the Scientific Age when all of this was then seen by scientists as "not provable and therefore not real". We are now back in time where we honour scientific method but we also understand that there are things that science cannot yet explain. And so we find ourselves in a time where again many do believe that they can feel the healing power of crystals and rocks.

So without using a particular birthstone example here is how birthstones work.

It is believed that when you were born, you come in with certain abilities and also certain things that you will find difficult to do. For example you could be very logical and so very good at mathematics, but you are not comfortable letting people really know how you feel. We are not going to go into why that may have occurred.

Now the pattern will be stronger for people born under a particular star sign, a particular time of the year. And so a crystal or rock that can help a person become more comfortable in being able to tell others how they feel (that particular birth group) becomes known as a birth stone. That is a stone that helps them to become happier because they had help to be able to talk about their real feelings. And so sapphire, a crystal whose energies help with this, becomes a birthstone for that time of year.

If you are someone who gets anxious very easily then you will find amethyst helps you. Again this pattern is believed to occur more for people born at certain time of the year and it becomes the birthstone for that group.

It is not about judging yourself because you have something that does not come easily to you. It is about being excited that there are crystals that can help you do it more easily. You still need to do the work to overcome your fear, your thoughts and your patterns of behaviour that make you anxious or tongue tied or .... but crystals can make it easier and together you bring about a change that makes your life happier.

So here is a list of some birthstones based on when you were born. If you look at the crystal book or check out this website you will get an idea of why this crystal will help you. As always if it does not feel it is what you need then it is not right for you.

You will notice in my on-line shop on the left-hand side, I have a section called "crystals by birthday/astrology". Here is a list of all the stones that I have, which the crystal books say will help people looking from their birthstones. You will see it is a very big list because of many wonderful stones out there to help you.

So birthstones are a guide as to what can help you. However, picking crystals for yourself or someone else is always best done by feeling your heart to select which crystals feel right for you want to take home.

This pendant has lots of birthstones:

• turquoise

• amethyst

• ruby

• sapphire

• pearl

• opal

• rose quartz

• emerald

• topaz

Can you match their names to the picture?