====== Amber ======
---- dataentry gem----
latin_names:
folk_names:
energy_tags: Projective
gender_tags:
planet_tags: Sun
element_tags: Fire, Akasha
deity_tags: The Great Mother
effect_tags: Luck, healing, strength, protection, beauty, love
----
===== Magical Uses =====
Amber, in common with a few other stones, has been utilized for nearly every purpose in magic. It has figured in countless millions of spells and magical rituals.
Despite its high price, amber is a sound magical investment. Just buy it from a reliable dealer-much that is sold as amber is glass, plastic, or "reconstituted amber." Insist on genuine, unprocessed amber. And be prepared to pay quite a bit for it.
Amber necklaces are perhaps the commonest form utilized in magic. Such necklaces are protective when worn. It is a potent amulet against negative magic and is especially effective in safeguarding children. Have children wear amber beads to guard their health, as countless others have done in many parts of the world. Or place a bit in the child's bedroom.
In ancient times, when sex was viewed as a completely natural and yet sacred activity, representations of the generative organs were commonly used in magic. Amber carved in the shape of a phallus was carried as a supremely potent magical protectant. Though this seems to be the product of patriarchy, I'm sure that images of the female organs were just as effective, and used just as much, but this information has been suppressed.
If you feel you are being subjected to heavy negativity, light a white candle and place it on the ground or floor. Sit before it with a handful of small amber beads, and using them, create a circle around yourself. Sit within the circle while restoring your energy and closing yourself off to any and all outside influences. Repeat as necessary.
Another protective use of amber is to place nine small beads or pieces into a bath of very warm water. Soak in the tub until the water cools, then retrieve the amber, towel off, and carry or wear one of the beads until your next bath.
Witches, wise women, and shamans wear amber beads to strengthen their spells, whether cast in caves, deserted valleys, or at lonely seashores, or within magically created spheres of power in urban bedrooms. A large piece of amber placed on the altar increases the effectiveness of your magic.
Amber is worn to enhance beauty and general attractiveness. During the Renaissance, the donning of amber was said to increase bodily weight; however, this was probably because the buxom female figure was then in fashion. There's no evidence to support this claim. Amber does seem to magnify its wearer's natural beauty, attract friends and companions to the lonely, and stimulate happiness.
Amber has long been regarded as being highly sensual and magnetic. It is worn to attract love and to increase one's enjoyment of pleasurable activities, including sex. Small pieces of amber can be added to herbal love-attracting mixtures or worn near the heart to attract a mate.
Human fertility was a constant concern in past ages, and it still is for many. Women wore images of fish, frogs, and rabbits carved of amber to ensure conception. To combat impotency and to ensure their own fertility, men wore amber figures of lions, dogs, and dragons. This may seem quaint, but such images charged with magical energy and worn with ritual intent can work. There are no limitations in magic, save for those we impose upon ourselves.
In our quest to rid our bodies of disease, amber plays an important role. Beads of amber are worn around the neck as a general protector of health and to relieve or cure existing conditions. It has been worn for the prevention or relief of convulsions, deafness, insanity, sore throat, earache, headache, toothache, asthma, rheumatism, digestive troubles, and almost every internal ailment. A ball of amber held in the hand reduces a fever.
Because it is often translucent, or even transparent, amber is worn or carried to strengthen the eyes. Looking through a piece of amber is thought to do the same.
Amber powder was burned during childbirth to assist the woman's labor and, also, was smouldered so the piney smoke could be sniffed to halt a nosebleed.
Amber's magical uses extend beyond the above information. It is worn to increase strength, for business success, or to stimulate the flow of money toward the magician, and plays a part in attraction spells. These include rituals designed to draw love, money, power, and success. Finally, a bit of powdered amber added to any incense will increase its effectiveness.
===== Ritual Lore =====
Amber is perhaps the oldest substance used for human adornment. Beads and pendants of amber have been found in northern European gravesites dating back to 8000 b.c.e. (before the common era; the nonreligious equivalent of b.c.)
It is not a stone, but fossilized resin of coniferous (cone-bearing, like modern pine) trees of the Oligocene epoch. It often contains fragments or complete specimens of insects and plants that accidentally fell into the sticky resin millions of years ago.
Because amber, unlike gemstones, is warm to the touch and often contains insect fragments, it was thought to possess life. The early Chinese visualized the souls of tigers transmuting into amber upon their earthly deaths. It was sacred to worshippers of the Mother Goddess in classical times because it was believed to contain the very essence of life itself-the animating principle.
Because amber is a fossil, it has associations with time, cycles, and longevity. Similarly, since it was once a living substance, it is related to Akasha. This is the "fifth element," which governs and binds together earth, air, fire, and water, and, in a sense, is the ultimate source of them. Akasha is also symbolic of life and living things (plants, animals, humans).
In some contemporary Wiccan covens, women-usually high priestesses-wear necklaces consisting of alternating amber and jet beads. Though reasons for the use of these materials vary, it is said that these two stones represent the Goddess and God, the feminine and masculine principles, the projective and receptive forces of nature. They also heighten magical effects.
Amber rubbed against wool or silk becomes electrically charged. Its old Greek name was *elektron, *from which we derive our modern word *electricity.*
All these mysterious properties and associations make amber one of the most widely used and prized magical substances of all times and places on Earth.