There is no end to what you can sell to the gullible. A product for serious contemplation of the entirely fantastical is a wonderful book that surfaced recently in the newsroom — Healing with Gemstones and Crystals by Diane Stein. It offers the reader several instructive lessons in the manipulation of the gullible by the deft use of mumbo-jumbo and pseudo-scientific language. It is a tour de force of fantasy posing as science.
The book, avers Ms Stein setting the tone in her acknowledgements for the pseudo-science to follow, “could not have been written without the discarnate help of Brede (Bride, Bridget) who lovingly channeled it through me.” For “discarnate” read “dead” and for goodness sake, make your mind up about her name.
Gemstones and crystals are magickal, Stein says, “in the true meaning of magick which is defined as part of the natural wonders of the earth.” Conveniently leaving aside the meaning of magick — the power to influence by supernatural means and generalizing it, she fails to include as “part of the natural wonders of the earth” its less attractive aspects — the wonder of deadly half alive entities that are viruses or the magick of decay. Clearly you cannot sell these on expensive gold chains and show them to your friends although they would be a conversation stopper over a bowl of hand-knitted organic muesli at dinner parties in the smarter parts of San Franciso.
Thus far, we haven’t got past page one of the introduction. There is more; lots more.
When Ms Stein is wrong, at least she does it in style and is sets a benchmark for wrongness that is unassailable. In the best traditions of pseudo-science, she combines wishful thinking with enough inaccuracy to further her purpose, which I suspect very strongly is selling more books. She also fails to define two of the commonest words in her book — crystal and gemstone — and far less to distinguish between macro, micro and crypto-crystalline. This leads her to describe obsidian (volcanic glass) as a crystal which it is not. It is a super-cooled liquid with no crystal structure.
“Quartz,” she says blithely, “is fossilized water and our bodies are 98 percent water.” An average adult body is 50 to 65 percent water. Men however are more watery than women. A man’s body is 60 to 65 percent water, compared with 50 to 60 percent for a woman. In infants it can be as high as 70 percent. Quartz — silicon oxide — is not and never has been water. The nearest it ever got to water is dissolved in it as a super-saturated solution whence it crystallized.
Not content with a simple discussion of crystals, Stein expands her purview and her generalizations to encompass the whole earth and then the universe. There is no stopping the woman.
The earth’s “mental energy aura grid is a series of giant tuning crystals, some of them not clear quartz, but other gemstones. They are mostly underground or under water.” Revelatory stuff; “underground.” Apparently these crystals “have been deactivated” at a time when “human DNA was willfully unplugged in a war between other interplanetary forces over control of the developing earth.” Apparently the crystal grid is reawakening. Little gemstones she encourages us to buy gradually increase their healing influence over us as the earth’s crystal grid repairs itself. Naturally she does not support her contention with a shred of evidence or even a reference. Indeed, in the entire book and its acknowledgements, there is not a mention of a gemological book or source.
Getting down to the nitty gritty of choosing the gemstone that will do you most good, Stein says that when you hold the right one in your hand “There may be sounds of bells, rain or music.” Much like any Manchester suburb on the Sabbath.
Clearing the selected gemstones — of what she does not mention — involves soaking them in water, sometimes salty or even suspending them in trees in the rain. I have an image of a flock of smock and sandal-clad maidens led by La Stein clambering through trees in a suburban neighborhood hanging chunks of stone on branches and explaining auras to the local constabulary.
This book is a garden of irreverent delights! Once “cleared” then apparently you can “reprogram” the crystal. You cannot accuse La Stein of not living in the computer age; perhaps even she has made the link between computers and silicon. “The life force within the stone has an intelligence that led it to you,” she says. If the stone refuses to accept your plan for it, then the crystal has chosen its own programming. I just thought you needed to know that. Some stones are so disobedient.
For the remaining 32 pages of text, Stein leads us by the nose through auras, charkas and assorted energy lines and describes how to use inert lumps of mineral to better your life and bring healing. There follows a 110-page list of gemstones (a catholic collection that includes wood and pearl, neither of which is crystal or even stone) and their attributes. Wondrous howlers finally destroy any shred of credibility that Stein might have had.
To select one of many, remember quartz was, according to her, “fossilized water.” She describes it a little later (page 126) as “Quartz-Tourmaline.” Magyck transmogrification no doubt. Tourmaline — chemical formula usually accepted as Na1+, Ca2+)(Li1+, Mg2+, Al3+). (Al3+, Fe3+, Mn3+)6(BO3)3 (Si6O18) (OH)4 — and quartz, SiO2, are not even remotely related. But why mess up a good fantasy with solid scientific fact?
This is a wonderful book; buy it at once! It is an object lesson to anyone who believes that mumbo-jumbo does not rule the world. To the thinking reader, it will surely encourage a second look at the arrant twaddle frequently offered as science and fact in other disciplines as well. It is a salutary reminder to develop and hone your critical faculties.
You can sell the gullible anything, even political policies!