Crystal Spirit Release In Ancient Times

People tend to regard spirit release as comparatively new but the earliest spirit releases I have researched occur in Egypt and Mesopotamia where troublesome spirits were believe to interfere in people’s lives, causing havoc. Crystals were part of the tool box for dealing with them. People commonly wrote letters to a deceased person asking them to desist and wore crystal amulets to support that call and to protect themselves. A Mesopotamian banishing ritual at least five thousand years old uses Selenite as once the spirit causing the misfortune has been expelled and returned to the other-world, something has to be put in its place. Selenite held ‘the divine light of the gods’ and filled the vacuum so that nothing else could attach.

In Mesopotamia, each crystal had its own god who could inhabit and become the crystal in a way that we don’t fully grasp today because we have lost our understanding of ‘correspondence’ (roughly translated ‘as above, so below’¹). So, for instance, Lapis Lazuli was Venus, Carnelian Ninlil (a goddess of destiny) and so on. In those days illness was believed to be caused by attacking entities and there is a fascinating contemporary account of a priest healing a sick man. The ritual, which uses both crystal and sound therapy, constructs a net in which to ‘catch’ the invading spirit with the assistance of gods who become embodied in the magical tools:

• The gypsum [Selenite] and bitumen which they smear on the door of the sick man. The gypsum is Ninurta [Saturn, one of the ‘good guys’ in Mesopotamian mythology]. The bitumen is Asakku [a demon god]. Ninurta pursues Asakku [i.e. good chases out the evil spirit].
• The circle of flour which surrounds the bed of the sick man [is] Lugulgirra and Meslamtaea [other gods]
• The three heaps of flour which they cast down [are] Anu, Enil and Ea
• The design which they draw in front of the bed. That is a net any traps Any Evil.
• The drum and cymbals which are resplendent at the head of the sick man. The drum is Anu. The cymbals are Enlil.
• The standards which are set up at the head of the sick man. They are Sibitti, the great gods, sons of Ishara.
• The scapegoat which is placed at the head of the sick man: Ninamaskuga, Enlil’s shepherd.
• The censor and torch placed in the house of the sick man: The censor is Kusu. The torch is Nusku.²

Unfortunately the tablet breaks off there so we don’t have a complete description of the ritual but we do know that it describes a battle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ gods for the soul of the sick man. It is presumed that the invading spirit is then sent into the ‘scapegoat’ waiting at the head of the sick man but in other descriptions it is captured in ‘a stone’.

Part of Mesopotamian and Egyptian ‘closing rituals’ after detaching entities was to make a necklace out of Carnelian, Lazulite or Lapis Lazuli, Serpentine, ‘spotted stone’, ‘very spotted stone’, shiny silex, breccia and ‘little breccia’ (Jasper) beads. This was worn around the neck for seven days. Only some of these crystals can be identified, but those that do still work today.

¹This notion is covered in detail in one of my academic essays which is to be found on the Astrozero website and in my MA dissertation which is on www.judyhall.co.uk
²Livingstone, Alasdair Mystical and Mythological Explanatory works of Assyrian and Babylonia Scholars Clarendon press, Oxford 1986 p.173ff