I've become fascinated with crystals and stones, Tigg. I'm glad you started this thread and got me interested in the subject.
When we were in Barbados, I bought a necklace made of hematite and the only piece of metal on it was the small clasp. I thought maybe this would be OK to wear. It turns out that wearing the necklace doesn't bother me at the time... but even just wearing it for one day- I can feel the thing on my neck still for 4-5 days afterwards.
![Shocked :shock:](./images/smilies/icon_eek.gif)
It was really kind of weird.
So, I started experimenting with different sorts of stones. I had a turquoise
O shaped pendant on a string, with a metal horsehead on it- so I disassembled it, took the metal horsehead off, put it back together, and wore it for several days with no strange effects, other than feeling a bit more outgoing than normal.
A jade chip necklace didn't bother me, either. I can't say if it helped anything, or not... but it didn't leave a long lasting imprint like the hematite did, either!
Finally I dug out a specimen of quartz crystal that my father had given me years ago and meditated while gazing at it, and found it to be a dramatic aid in visualizing healing energy flow! If I got a headache, I could just imagine putting that crystal to my head and flooding my head with healing energy, and the headache would just fade away! This lasted for about a week. I guess I need to stare at it a while again, to get the feel of it in my hand again, so it will work again.
I read in a book that after you use stones like this, they need to be cleansed of the psychic energy, and this can best be accomplished by leaving them out in the sunlight for a few days. I tried this with all my rock jewelry last weekend, but haven't tried wearing any of it yet. I'm kind of hesitant to wear that hematite one again, since it "imprints" on my neck for so long! I don't know what it's useful for except for "grounding" one. Do I need to be grounded more than I am???
Anyway, the quartz was particularly cool, and I recently bought an "opal boulder" on Ebay, and tried meditating while holding that. It brought me a strange, strange dream (usually mine are boring, slice of life dreams) but nothing else so far. Interesting stuff!