Cover Photo: photo by indien-schmuckkunst/flickr
photo by indien-schmuckkunst/flickr

Amethyst: When You Seek Balance at All Costs

Maybe telling ourselves we’re balanced, that we’re in control, is almost as good as the real thing.

This is Personal Facets, a new column by Jaya Saxena exploring emotions, the magical properties and promises of crystals, and the real reasons people seek their powers.

A few months ago I was interviewing an eighty-year-old woman when she cut me off mid-sentence and asked (or declared), in a thick Cuban accent, “You’re a water sign, aren’t you?”

Either way, the promise of amethyst is control at all costs, and for those who buy into amethyst’s powers, emotions are barriers to truth, rather than harbingers of it.

But that’s always how it feels,That’s just what it’s like to be outside.

Steven Universe,

Steven Universe.

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I know what control looks like, and I cultivate it at every turn. Maybe these women simply saw my Scorpio shell; the ice crystallizing in my veins; the way I stop and smile and keep everything back even while my eyes shoot fire. Balance by force. Control by desire. Maybe this rock will be what I need because it cracks me open, lets the pendulum swing.

Jaya Saxena is a writer from New York. She's the co-author of Basic Witches