I was inspired today by pulling the Tiger Eye Crystal Ally Card. It’s all about balance and strength. Most tiger eye is found in South Africa. It’s composed of quartz and asbestos, but not to worry – it won’t hurt you. Tiger eye naturally comes in brown and blue (Hawk’s Eye) with black striations. Tiger eye is also sometimes heated to color it red.
I have found the more balance I have, in every sense of the word, the more strength I have. And conversely, the more strength I have, the more I feel in balance. How do we develop strength and balance? Here are two basic, fundamental ways I have found to successfully keep myself in balance.
Physical core strength and flexibility gives you balance – keeps your back strong, keeps you from falling, makes you more coordinated, feels empowering. Whether you develop it through a gym class, yoga, or a sport, core strength and flexibility are essential elements in balance. I see this as representing the physical earth energies.
Connection with Spirit is a strength that gives you emotional balance – keeps you from totally losing it or being neurotic, provides for meaningful relationships, fulfilling life, feels empowering. To know that “the only source of my supply is the Spirit of God within,” is the strongest place to operate from. If you’re buff but lack connection with Spirit, how balanced can you be? Conversely, if you’re very spiritual, but neglect the body, how can you be truly balanced? If you can work on both physical and emotional strength, I’d say you’ve got it made.
For a quick Spirit connect: imagine a white light shooting down from the heavens and straight through your body. It enters the crown chakra traveling down through the rest of the chakras, into the earth, down through all the layers, ricocheting off the core and all the way back up in a continuous circuit. You are connected to Spirit and Earth. You are charged like a battery with the most powerful energy in the Universe: “The only source of my supply is the Spirit of God within.” What exercises or affirmations do you do to keep yourself in emotional balance?
When I work on my physical body, it reminds me of the vessel I’ve been given to carry my Spirit. I am grateful I can take care of it and keep it in good shape. The physicality of the workout grounds the “higher energetic systems….” To me, people who don’t work on both their physical core strength and their spiritual strength are missing essential core elements in the complete gift of life. Things seem to flow better when we’re in balance. Tiger eye is here to help facilitate this.
We have tiger eye available in tumbled stones, eggs, spheres, carvings, gem trees and jewelry.

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Several years ago I bought a fossil cave bear claw (1.8 million years old) at The Fossil Cartel. When I packed to return to New York I decided that it would be safer wrapped in bubble wrap in my backpack than in my suitcase. Accordingly, I wrapped it up, put it in the backpack and then promptly forgot about it. Going through security I took my backpack off, placed it on the conveyer belt and then walked through the metal detector gate. All of a sudden I noticed the man looking at the security X-ray screen waving frantically to his superior. When the superior arrived, the man at the screen started pointing at it with a look that was both concerned and puzzled. The superior stared and then he waved at other security guards in the area to come over and look. As the crowd of security personnel staring at the screen became larger and larger, the superior looked up at me and smiled. While I had seen the commotion, I had not realized until that point that it had anything to do with me. The smile told me everything. When I walked over, he asked what it was. I explained what it was and where I bought it. He seemed genuinely curious about the claw and thought that the whole situation was hilarious. The security guard at the screen was amply relieved.

Thank you J.B. from New York!
Do you have any good stories about going through airport security with rocks, fossils or meteorites? Please share! Send them to info@fossilcartel.com.

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amethyst crystals

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I did a little research and this is where it all started:  http://greenleaf.org/whatissl/index.html

The phrase “Servant Leadership” was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in The Servant as Leader, an essay that he first published in 1970. In that essay, he said:

“The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.“

“The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is:  Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?“

How may we serve?  Businesses are successful because they fill a need.  Our mission at The Fossil Cartel has always been “To share our love and passion for rocks and fossils in a gracious and fun environment.” We do that, but now I see we do more in terms of acting as servants filling needs.

Some people often come in asking which stones have certain healing properties to deal with specific issues.  We help guide them to find just the right stone.  Some people are looking for that special gift.  We help them find a treasure that will make someone’s day and at times become a family heirloom.  Others want to give presents to their kids that have educational value. Every one of our fossils and minerals comes with an information card. People want to invest their money in things whose value increases over time.  Most stones and fossils have gone up in price over the years. Some people want a rare stone that’s hard to find.  If we can get it for them, we will.  People who live further away and can’t get to the store still want to be able to purchase our jewels.  They can do that through our website — we ship all over the world! People need an interesting place to go and connect with the marvels of Mother Earth without it costing anything.  We welcome “lookers” and don’t charge admission . People want a warm friendly smile that adds a positive feeling to their day.  We aspire to do this and more.

Please let us know how we may serve you best.

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One of the best parts of owning a rock store is traveling to find treasures.  There’s usually some kind of crystal, mineral and/or fossil to be found in most every corner of the earth.  A bonus to this travel is that it takes you places you wouldn’t ordinarily go.  Seldom is treasure found in tourist towns.  Instead, we get to go to the heart of a country and really get to know the people and their culture.  This area in Brazil where the emeralds are found is such a place.  We had to take a very long bus ride to get there, but it was so worth it.

Brazil is a huge country.  It is similar to the US in that regions really vary. For this trip, we decided to focus on the Northeast.  I had been to other areas in Brazil before and wanted to go somewhere new.   The state of Bahia is in the middle of the east coast of the country.  Much of this area was developed with African slave labor; like the southern US, there remains a strong African cultural influence.

The name of the town we landed in is Campo Formoso.  The miners and buyers meet in the town plaza twice a week to buy and sell rough emeralds mined in the surrounding mountains.  In a shady green park in the center of town were several sets of concrete picnic tables where these two groups of people would meet.  On one side of the tables were the miners and on the other were the buyers.  The miners would pour out their baggies of rough emeralds in mounds and the buyers would look them over with magnifying glasses and make an offer or not.  This went on for hours upon hours.  It was fascinating and fun to watch.

Here is some video from one such day.

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I used to hang out with a psychic man. When the King of Swords card would come up in a tarot reading, he liked to say, “The finest metals are always tempered with tremendous heat”. Meaning, the strongest, finest people have to experience a lot of “heat” in their lives to produce the character that allows them to excel.

I like to use crystals as metaphors for people, too.  They also are often formed under tremendous heat and pressure.  While forming, the “law of attraction” is also at play.  The crystal is formed from solute molecules that attract each other and join together. Most of the time, when there are just a few of the solute molecules, they break apart and cannot form into a crystal.  But when there are enough, and they have achieved their own critical mass, they manifest into treasures we know and love as crystals. With molecules attracting each other, coming together to form beautiful natural objects through some kind of adversity- either heat and pressure or evaporation, some change was involved.  As difficult as it sometimes seems to experience adverse change in our personal lives, it helps if you can remember that even adverse change can be very good.

Another interesting thing about crystals is that they vibrate at certain rates when an electrical current is passed through them. Using the metaphor of being a sword, you can cut through red tape and be decisive.  With crystals, you can be pretty, and vibrate at such a rate you can be used to facilitate timing (such as the movement in quartz watches) and process information (such as silicon wafers in computer chips).  And when a beautiful, vibrating entity has attracted enough “like minds” or solute molecules achieving critical mass, a real gem has been added to our lives.

Crystals display facets reflecting the underlying symmetry of the crystal structure.  Beside the metaphor of crystals and people, the many “facets” of life are like fine gems to me.  This can be applied to all sorts of things: groups of people (social, religious, political, economic, sociological, psychological, etc.), each significant personal experience, nature, progress, mediums of art and expression, the life cycle, etc..  They all reflect a different, beautiful light as in the facets of a crystal or the cuts in a faceted gemstone.

Beads are great symbols, too.  I like to think of my most significant personal experiences as the beads that make up my “life necklace”.  I’m sure you’ve all heard, “Life is a tapestry”.  Weavers and other fiber artists can probably identify with that one. What symbols resonate with you in your life?

Question:  How do crystals form? —Dave

Answer:

Crystals usually form from molten rock as the molten

rock gradually cools.  If the molten rock

cools very rapidly, then either small crystals

form or no crystals form.  An example of this

is when lava is ejected from a volcano.  If

molten rock cools slowly, then large crystals

can form.  This happens usually when the molten

material is very deep in the Earth.  Examples

of these types of crystals are diamonds, emeralds,

rubies, etc.

Crystals can also form when water evaporates.

For example, salt crystals (sodium chloride) form

when salt water evaporates.

The smooth faces of crystals are caused by

a regular internal arrangement of atoms.

-Grant

Each different crystal vibrates at a specific frequency when an electric current is passed through it. The original radios were created using vibrating crystals to create the frequency to transmit signals. As radio technology improved, radio transmitters had several different crystals to allow transmission on different frequencies. Modern radios have large number of different frequencies used by radio stations.

Vibrating crystals can be used for time keeping. A quartz clock uses the vibration of a quartz crystal to measure time. When the crystal has an electric current passed through it, the crystal will vibrate at 60 hertz (60 times per second).

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