Nicholas Pearson Reveals the Art of Crystal Divination

Ever picked up a stone and felt like it had something to say, but you weren’t sure how to listen? We’re joined by Nicholas Pearson, one of today’s leading voices in crystal healing and gemstone magic, to make crystal divination feel clear, grounded, and doable. We talk about his work on Crystal Divination and why the best results come from a surprising mix of structure, patience, and play.
 
 We start with scrying, the classic crystal-gazing practice that looks simple on the surface and gets deeply nuanced the longer you stay with it. Nicholas walks us through what scrying actually is, what you might perceive when you soften your gaze, and how to set yourself up for a real experience without forcing fireworks. Along the way, we land on a principle that applies to every spiritual practice: curiosity is the best cure for attachment. When you stop demanding a specific outcome and start wondering, your intuition has room to speak.
 
 Then we shift into lithomancy, or divination by drawing and casting stones. If tarot feels intimidating or you want a more hands-on method, casting stones can be a powerful alternative. We explore how to build a small curated set, how to read placement and patterns, and why the most important “tool” isn’t the stone at all, it’s the question you ask. We also hear what Nicholas is working on next, including his upcoming Reiki-focused writing.
 
 Subscribe for more conversations like this, share the episode with a friend who loves crystals or divination, and leave a review so more curious listeners can find us.

Bio: Nicholas Pearson is one of today's leading voices in crystal healing and gemstone magic. He is the author of more than ten books, including Crystal Basics, Stones of the Goddess, and The Witching Stones. Nicholas offers a unique blend of science and spirituality alongside a grounded, practical approach to working with crystals.

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Transcript

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Welcome And Guest Introduction

GDC 0:01

Welcome to Belief Being and Beyond with your host Granddaughter Crow. Hi everybody, Granddaughter Crow here with yet another episode of Belief Being and Beyond. We've got one of our favorites back on the show. Tonight, we are going to be sitting down with Nicholas Pearson. He is known as one of today's leading voices in crystal healing and gemstone magic. And tonight he is our rock star, right? He is the author of more than 10 books, which makes this master number 11, including Crystal Basics, Stone of the Goddess, and The Witching Stones. Nicholas offers a unique blend of science and spirituality, which I love that combo, because it connects us with our logical left hemisphere, and then it brings in that spiritual right hemisphere alongside a grounded practical approach to working with crystals. Without further ado, let's bring on tonight's rock star, pun intended, Nicholas Pearson.

Nicholas 1:25

Well, thank you so much for having me back.

GDC 1:27

Oh my goodness. We had so much fun last time professionally nerding out with you. And now that we've got Jenny C. Bell on, and you both are like crystal connoisseurs. You know, I don't even know if that's a word, but you know, we get a talk crystal and crystal healing tonight with your wonderful newest release, Crystal Divination, the multifaceted art of reading stones. I love that it's multifaceted. You know, I mean, there's so many play on rock, stones, all of that kind of stuff. So forgive me if I get obnoxious with the dad jokes. But Nicholas, before, I mean, we've had you on the show before where that actually was one of my husband's favorite shows. So your professional nerdism, nerd out, is completely welcome. I most people know you, most people have seen you, most people have picked up your books or at Llewellyncon. Great presentation at LlewellynCon. Check it out, you guys, Llewellyncon 2026. Um, but let's go ahead and ground the conversation by what I want to kind of know.

A Day In Nicholas’s Life

GDC 2:43

What is a day in the life of Nicholas Pearson like?

Nicholas 2:52

Um I think I'm gonna tell you about my ideal day in the life, which means we're gonna omit the actual amount of doom scrolling that really takes place. I'm just gonna we're gonna leave that in the footnotes of of my my daily schedule. Um, you know, my days usually start with um offerings at my kamidana, like a home Shinto shrine where I get to speak to Okame Sama, the spirits, the gods, the guardians, however you want to think of them, um, make my daily offerings. I do some self-reiki in the morning. I recite the five precepts of Reiki in in the original Japanese as part of my daily practice. I at some point start looking at all of the notifications and all the places, which might be why I start doing scrolling, but you know, checking emails and doing all that kind of stuff. And then depending on which day of the week, it'll kind of change my focus a little bit. At some point in the morning, I'm probably doing a warm-up on a French horn or a German horn or a Swiss horn or you know, something we think of as a French horn, which might not actually be French. Uh, and then I might have a day where I'm doing data entry and cataloging and mineralogical analysis or creating new exhibits or writing exhibit text, interpretive text at the museum. Uh, we have a few kind of overlapping projects and deadlines at the moment. Um, as always, um, I could be uh writing a manuscript in theoretically in about five weeks, I'm gonna be turning another manuscript in. So um there's a lot of writing going on. Um, and then you know, I I might just do something for fun somewhere in there, like come up with a project and some new work to do, translating some 19th century Japanese poetry or um, you know, trying to big deal or anything.

GDC 4:48

I am so glad I asked this question because I'm like, oh yeah, the French horn, you know, the and Japanese poetry and Reiki, and there is so much to the life of Nicholas Pearson. I am just overjoyed to have you here on the show with us again. And I almost want to get into like, oh, tell us about the French horn. Ooh, tell us about Reiki. Ooh, tell us about the shrine and how do you do the offerings? But I guess maybe we can go there, but maybe we should go back to the book, which is what brought us together. But you are a favorite here on the show, so we will have to do another show talking about Reiki and healing and music and all of that. If if you would, please. You're gonna commit to it right here on air. So yes, you said yes, folks. You already hear first.

Nicholas 5:41

I did, yes. It's a really easy yes to say.

GDC 5:46

We

What Makes Crystal Divination Different

GDC 5:47

absolutely love it. So, Jenny, do you want to kind of take us through like an overview of the book and then we can kind of jump in a little bit more?

Jenny 5:58

Yeah, so for people that aren't on YouTube, you might want to pop over so you can kind of like see. Um, but this book is co-written with uh Devin Hunter, and so it's uh like a co kind of authorship. Um, but there are parts to me as a Nicholas Pearson fan that felt very Nicholas, right? And so if you're a fan of his work, I'm sure you'll find that too. I want to say that what it like jumps out right away, if you're just gonna pick this up, is that it's got photos. And I haven't seen a book, even the way it smells, it smells like a book from the 90s. I have a few books from the 90s about witchcraft and charms that have this, you know, photo look to it, um, which I haven't seen in so long. And so that to me is really stands out um as something that just makes it kind of unique. Uh something that is worth buying the book for alone, and this is like a small little part in the back, is there is the divinit divinatory meanings of 200 crystals, which I've never seen anywhere else. So that's awesome. There are chapters on scrolling, which happen to be my favorite chapter. There are chapters on like basically any way you could use a crystal or gemstone for divination. So this book I think is great for people new to crystals or interested in crystals, people new to divination or interested in divination, or people liking both and putting them together. And I always think like both divination and crystals are like the gateway drug into the occult. And so this is like a marriage of the two things that we often get people with. People will be like, oh, I just had to buy this rose quartz and I don't know why. And then 10 years later, they're with us on this journey, right? So I think it's beautifully done. Um, but yeah, I would love to talk about scrying. So I have my scrying mirror here, um, if Nicholas wouldn't mind telling us a little bit about that.

Nicholas 8:04

Yeah,

Scrying Story And Clear Definition

Nicholas 8:05

so um of all of the techniques in this book, this is the one that I have like the longest personal history with. So here's here's some like old school Nicholas lore. Um I have been a you know crystal collector my whole life. Um when I was in I think the eighth grade, I got myself, I I tied for first place in the book B, you know, thinking of like spelling B, geography B, but it was read a bunch of books and then remember all the things about them. Uh we broke the book B, my best friend and I, they ran out of questions. They literally ran, so like it's a tie, you two win, everyone else has been eliminated. So we split, we we split the top two prizes. You know, we did the average of the two. So we we got you know, get certificates in the mall back in the days when that was like a really big thing, and there was the the nature company stores. So I got myself uh like a two-inch crystal ball, natural quartz. It is packed away somewhere. It was actually on loan to the museum I work at now. That's a different story for a different day, it was before I worked there. Um it was part of a long-term exhibit. Um, but uh I over the ensuing years would use that as kind of my touchstone as a kind of meditation practice. I knew, you know, the uh kind of iconography of the crystal ball was really rampant. I hadn't really spent time doing the how-to part of it yet. And as I began to cultivate a more regular meditation routine, I would just start to kind of spontaneously get impressions, images, um, instincts that would come from those from working with that. So uh eventually I learned how to scry properly. And almost every single full moon without fail, for probably the next four or five years of my life, I would wait until the moon reached the right point in the sky to come through my childhood bedroom window and sit there, kind of scrunched up, right underneath the window, so I could capture that moonlight and that crystal ball. And I I would scry and I would take diligent notes and um I would treat it, you know, like the scientific method and say, okay, here's what I got last month, here's what's happened in the last 28 days. Hmm, I think maybe I misinterpreted this, or maybe that could apply to this. And and so it became a really regular practice until it got superseded by other stuff. So scrying is really near and dear to my heart. And for me, it started pretty organically. Uh, I have read a lot of the ways people scry over the ages. I've looked at a a lot of different ideas and tried to kind of parse out the mechanisms. And of course, different people in different time periods have very different ideas of what scrying is. But I think at this point we should probably like tell people what it is in case they're not already scriers. Yes. Yeah, that that would have maybe been helpful to start with. So the word scry comes to us via um uh Middle English, I'm gonna say discry, which means to gaze at something far away, to look upon something distant. Um and scrying is a type of divination that is practiced by gazing into a usually reflective surface. Depending on what you're staring into or through, uh, you might call it something different. So if you're gazing into a pool of water, it could be hydromancy. If you are um, you know, gazing into a crystal ball, we could call it cristallomancy. So there's you know different words for mirrors, for silver spoons, for gazing into a polished fingernail. I mean, people used every reflective surface you can imagine describe over the ages. Um, and this word uh crystallomancy that we use today comes from uh Greek crystallos, crystal, and mantine is a verb that could mean something like um to portend, to divine, uh practicing augury. It's it's this idea of receiving a kind of message. So we find things like you know, tassiomancy is divination by tea leaf, and crystallomancy divination by so on and so forth. So if we see that ending, it's usually some kind of divinatory practice. But um, scrying is where I wanted to start with in the book because on the one hand, it is the least complicated. You need one object to stare into or at, so easy. But on the other flip side of it, it's also the most nuanced, the one that requires the most dedication, the one that can feel the silliest when you're just waiting for something to happen. So it requires a lot of discipline. And I think this kind of magic of simplicity and discipline is a good way to set the tone for all the other practices in the book. If you can manage to scry, you can definitely do everything else in there. So um, in the chapter, we've got some exercises. Devin and I wrote a lot of the exercises throughout the book together where we trade off to make sure there's a little bit of each of us in every chapter. Um so we've got techniques for gazing into an opaque stone, like the beautiful obsidian mirror that Jenny was holding up, um, techniques for gazing into something that is transparent or translucent. Um we've got um gazing with the help of fire or inside um inside, like using a crystal elixir for scrying. Um but before we can like get to the actual practice of it, we've got to know how it works, what our tools are, which tool might be the best choice for us. And so I kind of tried to lay all of that out in true Nicholas fashion and really just be as methodical as possible, um, because that's what I'm known for.

GDC 13:53

Yeah. Science and the spirituality. And you know, just side note, I love that you said practicing, starting out when you practiced, when you started scrying, you use the scientific method because a lot of times Genny C. Bell and I will be like, okay, well, what is the scientific method? Let's test this. I mean, we talk about that, like, okay, let's do that. And I think that that's a really good discipline because a lot of times people are just, woo, it must mean this, and then they forget and it's all gone. And, you know, when you look at it in that, like you said, that that um devotion and um dedication and discipline, oh, those are three, yeah, devotion, dedication, and discipline, you know, then you're able to actually slow yourself down out of your like little, you know, what I would call coyote mind, you know, and actually settle into a place a little bit deeper to be able to do that. Plus, I absolutely can just picture little Nicholas in the eighth grade with his little bow tie after he won his, you know, book spell or whatever it was, you know, moving through that with the moon. And I think that that's wonderful. So

A Simple Scrying Practice Anyone Can Try

GDC 15:15

is there like I know that we have to get into like in the book you can lay out all of that, but is there a way that like a curious listener today could do some kind of scrying or some kind of uh a little practice to get them started a little bit?

Nicholas 15:34

Absolutely. So uh the simplest thing you can do is pick up a rock that feels good to you, that is a good enough size to maybe hold in your hand or rest on a pedestal in front of you. You can do something opaque or something transparent or something somewhere in between. Um, I have a preference for quartz that is not terribly clear for this because I like the stuff happening inside it, all the little wisps and crackles and stuff. It's it's a place where my eye can rest. Um, that's gonna come in handy a little bit later. It doesn't have to be any particular shape. Historically, people scried in a lot of things that were not little spheres or big spheres, as the case might be. So, you know, pick the shape that works well for you. I talk about some maybe really helpful shapes in in this chapter of the book, but you're gonna find crystal points and eggs and spheres and skulls and mirrors and palm stones. And so pick one that you like, pick one that resonates, pick one that's good to look at or look into, uh, depending on whether it's opaque or not, and get relaxed. Whatever your regular routine is for getting grounded and centered, start there. We don't have to reinvent the wheel, you don't necessarily have to do something extra special. And as you relax, the physical tension in your body, start to unrunwind that kind of mental and spiritual tension that's often within us. And as you do that, just let your gaze soften as you stare into it. It's almost like doing those um like magic eye puzzles, the 3D stereograms, or if you like look past it or cross your eyes a little bit, something begins to emerge. We can do something pretty similar. There's there's a lot of we'll say mechanical tricks people have used over the years, but ultimately get relaxed, look into or beyond the crystal, and wait. Now there's preparatory stuff you can do. You can certainly please cleanse your crystal. Um you can program it specifically as a scrying tool. Um you can do this technique that's often referred to as magnetizing your speculum, which kind of like turns on the antenna full power, so it's a better receiver of those kind of cosmic or etheric images. Um but at the end of the day, you being relaxed, your crystal being clear, your space being not very distracting, those are the most important things. Everything else is icing on the cake. And what will happen as you sit there, especially if you're good at just letting go, is oftentimes people will start to see some kind of visual phenomena. Sometimes it's with our actual 3D organic eyes at the crystal. Sometimes it's in our inner mind. One is not inherently better than the other. We're all wired a little bit differently, so just let it happen. Um, for some people, it feels very much like looking at static or wisps or mist or smoke, particularly if you're looking at a very clear crystal, like the stereotype, they're usually made out of glass. Um, staring into that, you might it might appear as if there's a mist moving within it. And theoretically, if we keep up the practice, things might begin to emerge from there. Um depending on the theory of scrying that we subscribe to, there are like three basic ways that it works. And and I think it's probably a little bit of all three, rather than only either or, um, but that might influence the relationship we've got with the practice, might influence how we receive that information, but ultimately just throw the mechanics out and sit down and try it. And if you stick with it for long enough without expectation, with being totally surrendered, being as relaxed as possible, it it's that attachment bit that's the hard one. Just see what happens. And I've I found, by the way, my the thing that I learned early on that has helped me so much later in life, the best thing for replacing attachment is curiosity. Instead of, oh, I want this thing to happen, it's so I wonder what's gonna happen. And just keep wondering. And if you wonder enough, eventually something happens.

GDC 19:57

That's a bumper sticker. Yeah, I mean, that's literally yeah, because there are so many attachments. And I mean, I'm born under the cancer sun, so either I know how to hold on or fully let go. So it's kind of like how do you know, how do I just walk with and I am all about curiosity. We're all about curiosity in the show. And I love that. Can you say that again? You said the best the best way to handle attachment is for curiosity, or say it Nicholas Pearson style. Yeah.

Nicholas 20:36

Yeah. So I think I think one way we can say it is the best the best cure for attachment is curiosity. There it is. If we if we feel ourselves struggling, and it doesn't have to be with scrying, I mean anything in life.

GDC 20:49

Yes.

Nicholas 20:49

You're you're really attached to an outcome for your magical practice, your spiritual practice, for what's gonna happen next term in school, whatever it is, instead of stressing because of this attachment, try to seek a state of wonder. I I think one of the things that is common to all genuine spiritual practice is cultivation of awe. And if if we aren't experiencing wonder, we're doing something wrong. And for me, the catalyst for that is curiosity. If if I am dead set attached on what must happen to have an authentic spiritual experience, I have no curiosity. And I have no no crack for that wonder, that awe, that ecstatic experience to creep through. So I I think curiosity is such a powerful tool. And I mean, most things that I do in my life begin with hmm, that that moment of curiosity.

GDC 21:51

I love that. That's how the show started. You know, I absolutely love it. So, Jenny, what else?

Jenny 21:59

Well, I just thought To say uh I agree with that, and I love that um Granddaughter Crow and I often talk about as we age, we become more childlike and how that's actually the goal because we want to return to childlike wonder and curiosity. So I think that's beautiful, beautiful. Um

Lithomancy Basics And Building A Set

Jenny 22:20

I love um this whole part on lithomancy. Uh I have a coven and we have been practicing for a while divination, but like outside the box, right? So we're trying to like create our own um set of lots or you know charms. And so, and this is something that we actually for the month of July different coven members would be like the witch on call for two days, and they would try a new form of divination. And some of them did use like uh crystals or found stones as part of like their lots, and those readings became so powerful. I'm a card reader through and through. I love it. But I have to tell people if you've never done anything like this, there's something so powerful about your own interpretation, and you do give a lot of help and guidance, but you really guide too on how to like put this together so that you as the person, this becomes your set, your tool of definition. So if you could just talk a little bit about lithomancy and like what that is and kind of how that works, I think people would be interested.

Nicholas 23:33

Yes. Yeah. Thank you. So um, you know, lithomancy belongs to an umbrella of practices that we can refer to by a few different names. Um sortilage is one of them, lots is another. Um uh these these are some of the oldest forms of divination that exist anywhere in the world. So when we talk about lithomancy, that word can mean a few different things, but specifically I'm talking about divination by drawing or casting stones seemingly at random. You know, it's it's hard to view this as a divinely guided practice and also allow anything to really be random. But my my healthy skepticism from the science brain is also like, well, we need some amount of of random variability here, or it's not happening. So um this can be a really simple practice. You can have a pouch with a white stone and a black stone, you can assign one the meaning of yes and one the meaning of no, and you can draw a stone, and you are practicing lithomancy for folks like me who understand how pendulums work so well that you can no longer use a pendulum because you're no longer a neutral sounding board. If you want the answer to be yes, you know it's gonna be yes, um, then maybe uh drawing lots is a better choice for you. We find tools probably representative of this act of drawing lots described in the Bible. Um so the arm and thumbim, which are described in the book of Exodus, are a white stone and a black stone, respectively, probably meaning no and yes. We have flipped that. Most of us think of white as yes, black as no. That's a more modern take on it. That that wasn't always the case. So that's one option for you. And you can really be as simple or complicated as you like, even with just the yes or no system of drawing lots. Uh, you can have a single pair of stones, you can have equal numbers of black and white stones in multiples. You can choose the stone combinations that you want. So in the book, I think I give five different combinations that are complementary for a variety of reasons, largely hardness and composition. I wanted them to be similar enough so they got along well in a physical sense. A really hard stone and a really soft stone would damage one another. Um, but uh that that was kind of a fun combo. And each one is a little bit of a different energetic pair. Uh, and then you can do a one-stone draw, like I mentioned. You can do a three-stone draw, and then you can look at factors of probability if you get, if you if you choose for white to mean yes and black to mean no, then three white stones pulled out of that pouch is a really strong yes. Two white stones and one black stone is a less strong yes, and so on and so forth. Um and um you can also do yes or no casting, which requires three stones. One for yes, one for no, and one that's probably just a little pebble. It could be anything really, but I think a pebble works well. Um, and that's gonna be the the representation of you or of the question. So we call that the queerant stone. We're gonna talk about the queerant stone in a moment here again. Um, and you drop button, and whichever one lands closer to the queerant stone is is your answer. And I love this because it can also give you an idea of timing. The maybe yes is the answer, but it's really far away, and black totally fell so far away. So we're not talking about an immediate yes. Um, so we start to get more subjective, we start to move away from reproducible science and into the realm of art. And if we get comfortable doing this with our one or three or yes or no casting draws with uh lots, then we can also start to open the door to lithomancy, as I describe in the book, which is something that you'll do by creating a curated kit. So you want something that represents essentially a kind of closed symbol set. We don't need it to be an infinite symbol set at the beginning. You can add, there are 200 crystals in the book on purpose. You could have a 200 crystal set, but it's probably not a good place to get started. Hard to carry 12 that part too, right? Um hard to cleanse them all, hard to keep track of them, too heavy to lift. But I I have a recommended list of 12 in this chapter, but you know, if you're really into planetary correspondences, maybe you pick one for each planet. If you really love the colors of the rainbow, you start with one of each color of the rainbow. If you dig astrological, then you know go for the the the signs of the houses. So you you can choose your closed symbol set. I provide 12 stones that I think cover most things you experience in life, and then you need something to put them in, preferably something you can't see into, so that way you're not going to uh bias what you choose, and then something to cast them on. So this could be uh a circle with the center of it marked. I've seen people who use like leather cords or a bit of rope that they will, you know, kind of loop to make their circle. Um I've certainly seen it done where people cast them on sand, on soil, and just draw it freestyle each time. But I mean, these days where there are a billion Etsy shops, you can find Litomancy casting clods and boards that are laser cut out and engraved. So you you got options. You can join the 21st century. You can also pick up a piece of poster board and freehand it and draw it yourself. So um you'll have your set of associated stones and their meanings start small and then work your way up. And that that doesn't just mean the number of stones, it also means the level of meaning you attribute to it. I think last time I was on the show, we were talking about the witching stones, if I remember correctly.

GDC 29:43

Oh yeah.

Nicholas 29:44

So, like, you know, moonstone is one of the 12 I recommend here. I think I might be wrong. Um, if not, it's in the following chapter. Uh and then I have a whole chapter. I have like, you know, 15 pages about moonstone and the witching stones. That's too much. That's too much to get started with. Pick a few bullet points that you're gonna associate with every single stone. Oh, did I get it right? It's almost like I wrote the book, um, or at least this chapter. Um so then your casting area can be a simple circle. It could be divided into the four quarters, similar to the four directions of the medicine wheel, um, the four compass points. You could use the 12 houses of the zodiac. You can pick yes or no. You can divide your circle in half. I mean, be as simple or complicated as you like. I provide three options the circle, the quarters, and the twelve houses, because I think they are, again, closed symbol sets that people relate to. There's not an infinite number of possibilities there, um, at least not for starting. And then you ask a question and you cast the stones. And it really is that simple. Um, you can pick a set number, you could pick one and drop it, you could pick five and drop it. If you have a small set of small stones, maybe you take the pouch, you shake it up, you hold it over and dump them all out, and whichever ones land on it are gonna give you some level of meaning. I provide a couple of those in the book, um, some that are uh one one over the kind of blank circle and one with the 12 houses. You can have the querant stone in there to symbolize either the question or the person asking the question, or maybe the topic the question is about, depending on the case. Um, but then as the stones fall, you're gonna start interpreting them. You want to look at where things fall by themselves as well as in relationship to one another. You want to look at the shapes they might form together. Do you find some that make a perfect box or a rectangle, or some that look like they're creating a spiral or a straight line? Um, we want to think about, you know, maybe the color combinations mean something to you. Maybe you go, oh my gosh, the only ones that landed on here are reds and oranges and yellows and all these warm colors, and maybe that means something to you. Maybe you notice, oh my gosh, only one stone landed dead center. And you might attribute that to kind of the whole picture. It's the most central point of it. So the book gives you some examples for all of that. Uh,

The Art Of Asking Better Questions

Nicholas 32:15

but I think I would be remiss to get this far into talking about divination and not talk about what I think is probably one of the most important ingredients, whether we're scrying, whether we're dousing, whether we are practicing lithomancy, whether we're doing any other kind of stone reading, whether you do tarot or oracle cards. And it's really the art of asking a good question. And this is honestly harder than it sounds. Because, you know, maybe we're concerned about our career, maybe we're curious about our career, and we go, okay, am I getting promoted? And you cast a bunch of stones and you're like, well, it doesn't really give me much of an answer. This is a very open-ended, non-specific question. Am I getting promoted? Am I ever getting promoted at this job? Did you mean this year? Did you mean from this position with the supervisor? So we we want to start asking specific questions that narrow our concentration. We want to make sure that we are framing things with the right active or passive voice as needed, like is such and such going to happen, or will I experience blank? Those are two different questions. You know, you know, is anyone ever going to propose to me? Am I going to get married? They sound the same, but they're not. And and this is where asking good questions matters. So I find that, you know, with the art of scrying, because it is so subjective, you can kind of do this with a theme in mind, a general topic you want to explore. And it you don't necessarily need a firm question to get really good results. With pendulums, because we're mostly doing yes or no, and we're maybe we're using a chart or something, it's kind of hard to muck up that question. And if you don't get it right, you don't get a yes or no answer. Devin's a really big proponent of not using maybe, which was like an aha moment for me, and he talks about his justification for that in the book, and it makes total sense. So definitely check that out. But when you start looking at things like lithomancy spreads, when you want to do other kinds of crystal reading spreads, uh, lithomancy castings or crystal spreads in the following chapters, if you don't have great questions, you don't get really good answers. And I I think this is another case where curiosity comes in. If if we're not being very clear, it's okay to start over and be curious about what's a better way to phrase that. How do we how do we relate to the topic in a way that is specific, that gives you something actionable to take away from it, because it's it's one thing to get some insight on a situation, it's another thing to be able to use it in real life. And one that doesn't have too much bias in it, and this is the big one. Um we have to try to eliminate the bias from our questioning, because if we can't get it out of the question, we're definitely not going to get it out of the answer either.

How To Support The Show

GDC 35:23

If you are enjoying this show, you can support it by liking, subscribing, and sharing. Also, connect with us, leave a comment, text the show option wherever you listen to podcasts, leave a review, or email us at beliefbeingbeyond at gmail.com. Also, I'm on Patreon where a small donation goes a long way. Find this and more episodes at Granddaughter Crow.com. Thank you. Now back to the show. You know,

Reading For Yourself Without Bias

GDC 35:59

I absolutely love that you said that, and I'd love to hear what Jenny has to say about this too, because I know that she too is a professional reader or fortune teller, as she says, um, which I adore. Um, that is one thing that as a professional reader, I actually part of my job is to help the person create a good question. So, like sometimes they'll go, how's my health? And one of the things that I preference it is the more specific the question, the more specific the answer. If you want a general answer, yeah, your health is overall good, you know, but an according to what? To yesterday or according to like when you're 90? Yeah, and and and I do a lot of times. Um, one thing that I find, and I'll just kind of give a clue. One thing that I find beyond the bias in the question, because a lot of times people ask a question and they already answered it because they're like, when should I break up with them? It's like, okay, so you are gonna break up with them. You told me that through your question, but what right? That's how it happens. But one of the things that I try to do in formulating this, and people you can do this too when you're listening to the question, is there one question or more? Because if you say, Am I like you just said, you know, am I gonna get a promotion? Okay, when? What is that, you know, is it promotion within this job? You know, maybe I see a promotion as getting laid off and starting my own company, you know. So, you know, defining the question and fortune teller Jenny, what do you have to say? Because I think that's such an important, juicy topic about the questions and of course wonder and curiosity.

Jenny 37:51

Yeah, well, I I love everything we're talking about for divination because I think when people say to me, like, I can't really read for myself, I think it's comes down to having a lot of bias and having like not being able to parse out feelings, emotions, and complicated thoughts into a good question. Like, I just can't, I don't, I don't know what to, I don't know what to do. And it's because they're just like there's too much going on. And then when we read for ourselves, that becomes harder and more complicated. So I love this idea of like, let's get down to curiosity and really good questions first, and that could take you a while. And that's okay. That's okay. And I think that's like everything Nicholas is sharing is a slowing down. It's not a fast answer. Stones are slow, right? They evolve slowly, their energy's slow. And I love this in a world of doom scrolling, and like all of us kind of I've heard the term popcorn brain, where people are having a hard time concentrating because they're just like going from the TV to their phone and then back and forth. You're inviting people to go, here's my 12 crystals, my stones, that I'm gonna really get to know. And I'm gonna parse out information. I'm gonna look at color and shape, and if it's like a sense of play. I don't know. Everything about it is so it sounds so healing at this time in the world, I feel.

Nicholas 39:24

You are spot on about the sense of play as well, which is it's a thing you forget about when you have to do this very serious thing called writing a book and editing a book and formatting a book and promoting a book. But once the book came out and I got to sit down with a group of people in a real class, yeah, and we all did this together. We had the store made little kits of those twelve stones, and I printed out um the the three different style of casting for them, and I gave them a little cheat sheet on stone meetings, and and we just did it together. Oh my gosh, so much fun. It really is playful to get your hands dirty and do this kind of thing. And if you are like me and you look at the tarot and go, oh, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, I I appreciate it, I understand it, I have maybe a dozen decks, and then you never pull a card ever because you're like, well, I'm not the expert in all 78 cards, and the process of getting there my way is gonna be so slow and so methodical that I'm just never gonna do it. And I'm 40 now and I've still never done it. Um when when you look at that and you go, that could never be me. Try the playful approach with lithomancy. Try sitting down and scrying, try pulling out a pendulum, try doing these other things. Um I may not, I may have a deep appreciation for the tarot, but not be a tarot reader, but I'm still a diviner. I um have a handful of like some trusty oracle decks that I maybe don't turn to as often as I used to, but were very important toolables for such a big chapter of my life. Most of them were crystal themed, no surprise there. Um and then just being able to go to my stones and read directly from the stones, so powerful.

GDC 41:15

I love that. And I love the slowing down too, because you know, the stone nation is the eldest, right? It came before all others in in the way that I see things. And I'm sure that Nicholas could have some sort of a professional nerd out saying, well, actually 1,050, you know, whatever, but you know, the stone nation is the elder and they move slow. And even the art of slowing down and doing your question and approaching it with curiosity and then playing and opens your mind. But slowing down for me, it's like maybe you already know the answer. You just wanted a quick yes, go for it, you know, or no, you're not allowed to quit your job. You know, the the process of slowing down is essential to it because the answers kind of come up here within. What do you think about that, Nicholas?

Nicholas 42:13

Yeah. I think um we do not give ourselves enough credit in two areas that really influence divination.

GDC 42:24

Okay.

Nicholas 42:25

Um one of them is being tuned in, creative, and mystical enough to do the weird woo-woo thing. You absolutely have every one of these skills baked into you since before you came into body. Um, so like permission, giving yourself permission to do it, slowing down, letting it happen is a big part of it. The the other thing that I think we also don't necessarily give ourselves enough credit for, uh, especially when it comes to something like lithomancy or scrying, which is a very subjective art, it's not quite the kind of rigid set of associations we find with one particular Oracle deck or the traditional tarot or you know anything else. When we're using these more kind of open-ended divination practices, even though we try to check our biases at the door, they squeeze through, and you gotta listen to them because they are absolutely telling you something. If you're asking a question about your own life, some part of you has an opinion on what the answer should be, and another part of you might already know the answer. The trick is getting the two to talk to each other and agree or or not agree, because in that disagreement you can also maybe unpack some baggage.

GDC 43:48

I love that. I absolutely love, love, love that. So here's another question, and forgive me, I am a student right here, full of cure curiosity as. Wander. So the word, and this is like the first time I've heard

Crystallomancy And Other Scrying Terms

GDC 44:04

this word. It may have been around, and I just whoop wasn't, I was blind, you know, blind spot to it. But the crystallomancy, or what is crystallomancy? Is that different than yeah, than what we've been talking about?

Nicholas 44:20

Or so crystallomancy or crystallomancy is this word that comes from Greek, uh, and it means divination by crystal. Historically, this is the kind of scrying that involves either a transparent gemstone or transparent glass. And who who decided on which one counts and which one doesn't has changed over the eons. Um, and this is basically just one of the many ways that we can practice scrying. If you use a different vehicle than a piece of crystal or a piece of glass, you're gonna call your scrying something different. Um, so it's hydromancy if it's water. Um it's I used to know all of these by heart, but there's um silicomancy if you're using a cup. Um, if you're using a mirror, it's captromancy. Um, there's onichomancy from the Greek word onikos, which means your fingernail. So you can scry in your fingernail. All of these have a separate term in the historical record. Um, you know, once upon a time, the the best way to scry was you had to find someone uh who was untouched and and pure, a virgin, so usually a child, and you would make them stand under the full moon with their hand extended so you could scry in their shiny fingernail. You'd capture the moon's reflection in it, so you'd have a child who wouldn't fidget. So I would have been a really bad choice for this. Um uh but you know, we can honestly scry in pretty much anything. You you got a favorite silver spoon and you're polishing it and you do the thousand-yard stare at it while you're polishing, you might accidentally start scrying.

GDC 45:59

I love that. So what else, Jenny? Because it looks like we're starting to come to the top of the hour, which happens so quickly, but what what else do we want to add?

What Nicholas Is Writing Next

Jenny 46:11

Well, I was curious um what's next for Nicholas? Because I know Nicholas often has many projects, many writing projects. Um this Nicholas is a creator, big time, and so we're always kind of chatting like, what are we working on? What's next? So I would love to know if you can share what are some things that are coming up.

Nicholas 46:32

Wow, oh gosh, thank you so much. I would love to. Um so the the big thing is the manuscript I'm about to finish. If I if I it's nearly finished, I will have it finished by the time this airs. Fingers crossed. We're gonna speak into existence. It's this last few weeks that's always the bumpy ride, I think. Um, and this is called the working title is Reiki Rituals: Healing and Transformation Through Embodied Practice. And it looks at the actual techniques in Reiki not just as a sequence of gestures or a set of practices you do to affect healing, but as rituals unto themselves, as things that shift our consciousness, as practices deserving of our time and attention. And they are things as simple as what we call um gasho-in, the gesture of putting your two poems together and uh hands-on healing, treatment in Japanese, we say, uh, as well as the ritual of initiation, the ritual of healing across distance, the ritual of healing the psyche, the ritual of empowerment. So it's got a bunch of these. And some of them are practices that have been part of Reiki from the beginning. Some of them are a little bit more recent, and I kind of give equal weight. I look at how they've changed over time. So that's that's the thing I'm super excited about. I don't know when it'll actually be out because I have to like finish writing it and turn it in and maybe get the art done too, hopefully soon. And then and then we'll move to that next step. Um, I do have the next few books planned. Whether whether they will happen in the order I think is anyone's guess. This Rakey Rituals book I actually started writing, I think probably nine years ago. And after like 48, 72 hours worth of really intense, focused work, it it went into storage and waited until last spring to come out. Not not spring 2026, but spring 2025, and it was like, hey, it's my turn now. I'm like, no, I don't think so. No, no, it's my turn. Okay. Um, so um that's that's the nearest thing on the horizon. I have I have a couple of projects planned that are, I think, predictable. People who know Nicholas will expect them. I've I've got Lucky 13 is the next book I'm gonna write, and so Lucky 13 is gonna be different to all my other books so far. Um it will still be magical and mystical, but it will not be a topic that I think people associate with me right away. Um, and that's gonna be super fun. And I'm not gonna give any secrets away just yet because I haven't started writing it, but um, you know, in about six weeks, I probably will. That's just just enough time to finish one and turn it in. Have one week of breather, maybe two, maybe it'll be seven weeks, but yeah, I'm I'm gonna jump right in because I'm I'm excited for it and we'll see what else happens. I I have some uh like academic nonfiction that will probably come out in the next several years as I start to do some more research with the museum that I work for. We have we have some irons in the fire. Uh, I've got some some other pet projects that I'd like to see get some time and attention, but but for now it's Reiki rituals.

GDC 49:42

Wow. I we're gonna have to definitely we're gonna have to schedule you on the show, even though we don't know when it's gonna come out, because you know it's so beautiful because I know I am not uh a Reiki certified anything. I do understand healing techniques and things like that, but it's more from my shamanistic background and working with rattles and the all of that kind of stuff. But when I do encounter a a Reiki person, some of them do work with stones. So to me, it's kind of almost like a natural progression. And the fact that it decided to be nine years old before it decides to hit the world, I just think is a life force in and of itself.

Reiki And Crystals Crossing Paths

GDC 50:30

So do do those two tie in, or you know, the the the stones and the Reiki?

Nicholas 50:37

You know, it's funny. Um early on in my Reiki practice, my my Reiki looked very, we'll say, Western and modern and new agey, and welcomed a lot of non-traditional topics and techniques. And so I learned Reiki crystal grids and you know, all kinds of things in my early Reiki practice. And while, you know, I have a Reiki grid, a healing grid on my altar right now, it stays up all year long. It's probably other than my household grid, the one that protects the home, it's the only one that stays up and never really changes. Um but I don't I haven't historically done very much with Reiki and crystals for quite a number of years now, because as I've gotten closer to the roots of the practices, as I've started to examine where it came from, the kind of confluence of ideas and cultures and philosophies that were at work in um Taisho era Japan, so like the 1920s, um, 1916 or so, I think is when the Taisha era begins. Um, but from that era onward, uh crystals weren't like a big part of it. However, there are a couple little historical anecdotes where they they do overlap, and it's not really rich and robust information. They're literally just two anecdotes from the early days um up through about the period of the 1930s. And I'm like, okay, these were earlier practices than we thought. They were very small and very specific uses of crystals. Um, they were not very widespread, but it has kind of given me permission to start exploring again. And in Reiki rituals, I do have a chapter on uh the ritual for planetary healing is about Reiki crystal grids. Um, and it looks at these original techniques, it looks at the work of the International Center for Reiki Training and their world peace grids that they've got set up at the North Pole and the South Pole and several other places around the world, um, including Mount Karama, which is the birthplace of Reiki, and they do this uh monthly kind of meditation, this monthly ritual of people sending Reiki to those grids for world peace. You can make your own grid for anything you want, it doesn't have to be for world peace, but I love that that's kind of the thing that ties these other things in. So um, I've been looking at the kind of intersection between traditional, we'll say, shall we say, native ideas about stones in Japan and how their own kind of flavor of crystal healing is different than the modern New Age movement, even though it has adopted things from and kind of conformed to the modern New Age movement. So maybe one day, in a knock on wood, maybe this will happen. Maybe one day I've got a book on crystals and Reiki that synthesizes those different streams. Um if you'd asked me even two years ago if I would ever write a book about crystals and Reiki, be like, oh, that's not my thing. My Reiki practice is so traditional, I don't really want to dilute it. My crystal practice is so intense and nerdy, I don't want to distract from what it's doing either. So I just kind of let them do their own thing. And now they've gotten pretty darn friendly, I'll say.

GDC 53:37

Oh I love that. So, Jenny, what else? Um like what am I forgetting? Because I know that you you practice Reiki too, don't you?

Jenny 53:48

I do, yeah. Not to the level of Nicholas, um, because he's a research king, let me just say. Um so but definitely I yeah, I definitely feel like there's a connection. I also don't use crystals in my Reiki because that's my my Reiki master was like, she had this beautiful um amethyst uh like lava tube, right? Like cut in half, and like they're worth like thousands now, but someone gifted to her. She had all these like crystals around the house, and she's like, yeah, but like they didn't really do anything. Like she didn't see them at this line, and it was kind of funny. So we did not at all work with crystals. We worked with Reiki and she was also an astrologer, um, and we didn't combine those either. We did get like into a little astrology on the sides. But yeah, she was just kind of like, they're nice, but like literally her house is gridded. But she didn't know that she did that. Do you know what I mean? It was like there's crystals all over and she takes care of them, they're so clean, but she's like, but they don't really do anything. And I was like, Well, but okay, you know, you're the master here. Uh so yeah, I also don't really use them. I have them around because they're all over the house when I give Reiki, but I don't do I know some people use like charts and things like that. They'll have like a body chart, and I don't it's not how I was taught either. So but yeah, I would love Nicholas to combine them and give us uh a book someday. Maybe then I won't do that.

GDC 55:16

Right. You heard it here first, folks. Get into his get into his uh um actually you guys should totally www.theluminouspearl.com, follow Nicholas on IG because Instagram, because every now and again, if we forgot a question that you would like to ask, he does QA's. Cross your fingers, maybe you can catch one of them, but follow along and always thheluminouspearl.com. Um, and then oh yeah, my point was every time you could just be like, oh, should we use crystals in Reiki? I'm sorry, I'm sorry, that wasn't really good. But anyway, you guys definitely Nicholas is just like so grounding for me, and I feel like educated after I speak with you. I feel like you have done the research. I mean, just look at your background, and I'm sure that there's more books and things like that that oh, show us the Hall of Nicholas Pearson. This is the library.

Nicholas 56:33

This is this is the library on one wall. Oops. Um there's there's one more shelf full top to bottom in here, and then there are lots of books that don't fit on these shelves. Um I have I have exactly one shelf that is appointed for musical supplies, and and one that was originally a pretty backdrop on Instagram, but I'm no longer over there on Instagram, so I think we're gonna fill it with books, and then I will still have more than fit, unfortunately. I'm I'm I'm working my way up to like every 90s kids' dream of having Belle's library from Beauty and the Beast, but mine is gonna be full about things like crystals and witchcraft and um Japanese folk religion and um the Saison Ryoho, the um, you know, psycho-spiritual or mind cure therapies of Taisho Era Japan, and like all the other weird things that I study. That's that's what my library is gonna be full of.

GDC 57:33

Oh, and um books on the 13th, the number the 13th, which we know nothing about, winky face, winky face. And so it looks like we're coming to

What Lies Beyond And Final Wrap

GDC 57:44

the end. Jenny, do you want to ask the final question that we ask all of our guests here on the show?

Jenny 57:50

Yeah, so we have a final very open-ended question, which is what do you think lies beyond?

Nicholas 58:01

If I can summarize it in one word, mystery. Mysteries are things that can only be perceived directly. I can't put it into words. I even if I wanted to, even if I had all the answers, there are no words for the level of mystery to be experienced there. So divine mystery. That's what lies beyond.

GDC 58:32

See, I told you he was grounded. I'm like, oh, so so you guys be curious, wander, and someday we will go to the unspeakable but very much personally experienced mystery of it all. Nicholas, this has been so wonderful. You guys, all information about Nicholas can be found at his website. We'll have his bio below, links. He's also on Patreon. He's also on Patreon if you guys want to catch him there. Which, oh, can you please tell us just a little bit about what you offer on Patreon? Because that that's cool.

Nicholas 59:08

Absolutely. Yeah. So um a ton of workshop recordings. Uh for a few years I did this master class series. We'd pick one rock, and for two and a half hours, we would we would learn everything about that rock. So whether it was rose quartz or amethyst or tiger's eye, we'd we'd discover its geology, its history, its folklore, its energy, its therapeutic applications, what things it works best with, the different flavors and varieties there are in the world, and then do some like meditations or exercises with it. So the whole masterclass series is up there. Um, if I ever get access to like replays and stuff from conferences and other stuff, I I tend to put that up there. I've got a handful of Patreon exclusive classes. Um, some of them are kind of seasonal themed. Every fall I do one called Spooky Stones. So I think we're gonna be in year four, year five of Spooky Stones this year, which is crazy to me. Um, I haven't done a whole lot of Patreon exclusive content in the last year, um, but I I never miss spooky stones, so that's coming real soon. Um, and I have some really weird and spooky stones to talk about this year. So um, yeah, it's it's just kind of the catch-all. I throw lots of stuff there, um free downloads and uh grids and articles and sometimes behind the scenes blogs. I've I've tried a lot of stuff to see what sticks.

GDC 1:00:32

Oh my goodness. You guys, you gotta check it out because that now, because I'm like, well, where do we learn from you? And you just answered the question because I'm like, you are a wealth of knowledge. We can pick up your books, but I love the interaction and being able to sit down with you. Nicholas, this has been You're a rock star. You are our rock star tonight. Absolutely. I love it. So, you guys like, subscribe, hit the notification button, pick up all of his books to include Crystal Divination. And if you didn't watch the one that we did before, it's in the um archive that we have here on the show. I am just over the moonstone to have you. And uh we love you guys, and we'll see you on the flippity flip. Thank you for listening to another episode of Belief Being and Beyond. Please subscribe and share with whomever would enjoy this podcast, and please leave us a review. We really, really appreciate that. For more about Granddaughter Crow, Granddaughter Crow.com. There you can learn about her classes, sessions, and all of her books. And for more about Jenny C. Bell, please visit Jenny C Bell.com where you can learn about her books, her classes, and her our coven community. Thank you so much for listening.