crystal exploration: carnelian

In her book, The Holy Wild, Danielle Dulsky writes, "...water is our embodied, sensual, moving prayer." Later, she asks, "Tell me, Priestess, where do you feel joy in your body?" 

Bodies are complex things. There's so much pressure for them to look, act, or be a certain way. Some bodies have had to navigate violation, some have ongoing pain. Our bodies are whole worlds, really, and they contain both struggle and ease. 

Yet, for me, it's one of the thrilling, ecstatic reasons to be in human form, that feeling of aliveness that comes from sensation, from allowing myself to be fully present in my body. 

I feel it when I dance. I feel it when I splash around in water, the chill contrasting with the sunshine. I feel it when I embrace or make love. I feel it when I belly laugh, or when the sky makes me tingle with awe, or when I wander through fields and woods, or when I snuggle beneath the softest of blankets, or when I jump from a zip line landing. I feel it when I hold a warm drink in the winter, have an iced one in the summer. I feel it when I brush my fingertips against the texture of leaves, trees, fabric, skin.  

Mary Oliver wrote, "You do not have to be good. / You do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. / You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves."

We might be moving prayers, but I think we're also the answer, always. 

  

Carnelian is an orange(ish) form of agate that ranges in color from lighter to darker and is sometimes heat treated to pull out even more color.

Online sources say it is linked to the fire element. I can understand that premise. I mean, it can even look like a flame. Here's the thing, though. Carnelian is most commonly linked to the sacral chakra, and the sacral chakra is associated with the water element even though the color assigned to the chakra is orange.   

Carnelian has many uses, but it is all about physical vibrancy, creativity, sensuality. Flow, inspiration, action, courage to be alive right here in the body and world we have.