Crystal Grimoire
Amber
Chakras: Solar Plexus
Zodiac: Leo
Planets: Sun
Elements: Earth, Fire
Summary
Amber is associated with the Solar Plexus Chakra and is believed to increase life force, optimize energy flow, foster warmth, health, and well-being, bring good luck and prosperity, increase inner radiance, strengthen self-esteem, and enhance emotional and spiritual healing by opening a path to recovery and providing courage to heal.
Keywords
Often associated with: vitality, warmth, well-being, prosperity, inner radiance, self-esteem
Fun facts
Ancient Greeks called amber 'elektron,' which became the root of our modern word 'electricity': they had noticed it builds a static charge when rubbed. Amber was being traded from the Baltic coast to Egypt, Greece, and Rome as early as 3000 BCE along the ancient Amber Road, and Baltic amber beads were found in the breast ornament of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Perhaps the most startling thing about amber: it sometimes contains perfectly preserved insects, plants, and even small lizards trapped in resin millions of years ago: a literal window into prehistoric life.
History and lore
In history and lore: Pliny the Elder wrote that peasant women beyond the river Po wore amber necklaces as ornaments but also for their 'remedial virtues,' since amber was widely believed good for ailments of the throat. He added that amber was tied on infants as an amulet, and recorded the Greek writer Callistratus, who held that amber worn upon the neck was a cure for fevers. Li Shih-chen's sixteenth-century Chinese natural history, the Pen ts'ao kang mu, as Berthold Laufer translated it in 1907, explained the Chinese name for amber, 'tiger's soul', by saying that when a tiger died its soul penetrated into the earth and became a stone.
About the sources
- Pliny the Elder, Roman author of The Natural History; its Book 37 is read here in the English translation by John Bostock and H. T. Riley (1855).
- Callistratus, a Greek writer known here only as Pliny cites him.
- Li Shih-chen, author of the Pen ts'ao kang mu, a sixteenth-century Chinese natural history, read here in Berthold Laufer's translation (1907).
- Berthold Laufer, author of Historical Jottings on Amber in Asia (1907), Jade: A Study in Chinese Archaeology and Religion (Field Museum, 1912) and Notes on Turquois in the East (Field Museum of Natural History, 1913).