There is a step in this procedure that nothing else in the practice contains. After the water and the salt and the prayer, and before any formula is spoken, the practitioner is told to tell the gemstone for what it will be used, and that it will not be abused.1 A statement of purpose, and an undertaking. Made to a rock, out loud or otherwise, by somebody about to work with it.
That step is the reason this page exists, and it only makes sense against what the section says it is departing from.
The common method is described first and fairly. In the past gemstones were cleansed with water, incense, or even essential oils to make them cleaner and purer in a non-physical sense — and those methods would also rid the gemstone from unwanted energies lodged in the stones and quartz. Then the charging step everybody knows: the stones are placed under the Sun or the Full Moon for a couple of hours, and after that they are ready to be used. Then the pivot, and it is stated as a plain difference rather than as a correction. Cleaning a gemstone shouldn't be complicated at all — however our method varies significantly from the previous example.
Put the two side by side and the most striking thing is what has been dropped. There is no sun and no moon. The method given here never puts a stone outdoors, never waits for a full moon, never uses celestial light at any stage. In a system where a weapon is finished by seven days of midday sunlight and a crystal ball by an exact noon on a high place, the gemstone procedure ignores the sky completely.
What replaces it is salt and speech.
The physical half has two stages and both have durations. Clean the gemstone with running water for at least five minutes. Not a rinse — five minutes of running water, which is a long time to stand at a tap. Then place the gemstone over a small bed of salt, and the reason is given in material terms — this compound will purify the minerals in the gemstone. The stone stays on the salt for at least another hour. Note the word minerals. The salt is described as acting on the stone's substance rather than on any energy attached to it, which is the only place in this section where a cleansing is explained chemically rather than energetically.
⚠ And there is a practical exception, given in a footnote and worth carrying: there are gemstones that cannot be cleansed in this way, for water might ruin them — the examples named are Kunzite and Selenite. In those cases, replace the running water with salt: take the stone and gently rub it with salt, then clean the salt off and continue. The closing advice is sensible: always refer to a gemstone manual for further reference regarding water.
That is accurate. Selenite is a form of gypsum and genuinely dissolves in water, and kunzite is fragile and can fade. It is the one place in this material where a reader is sent to an ordinary reference book, and the advice is worth taking.
The second half of the procedure is entirely verbal, and it has two distinct speech acts before any formula is used. First, a prayer asking for guidance and connection with the gemstone's elemental. Guidance and connection — not permission, and not power. The practitioner is asking to be put in touch and to be shown what to do.
Second, the disclosure and the promise. Tell the stone for what it will be used, and that it will not be abused. Read what each half does. The disclosure means the being inside is informed before the work rather than after — it is told the purpose, in advance, in the practitioner's own words. The promise means the practitioner has taken on an obligation that outlasts the ritual, because not being abused is a condition on all future use, not on the next hour.
And then the formulas follow: the exorcism, then In Nomine Deux Benedicto, Magicartifex Ubertas and the Exornita Potens Lapidus. So the order is: wash it, purify its minerals, ask to be connected, tell it what is coming and undertake not to mistreat it, and only then start doing magic. Four of the five steps are complete before a single incantation is spoken.
⚠ The being inside a stone is called three different things across this material, and the three are never reconciled. Here it is the gemstone's elemental. In the consent protocol it is a living, thinking, magical being and the gemstone's spirit. In the Platonic solids section, the spirits of gemstones are polones and the spirits of semiprecious stones are klomes.
Elementals elsewhere in this system are a specific population — the beings a tetrahedron confines, the ones the Archprimes govern, the ones conjured from the Elemental Planes with a Binding Incantation. Calling a gemstone's occupant an elemental places it in that population, which is a stronger claim than a living being inside, and nothing here says whether it is the same kind of thing. Reported as printed rather than resolved.
One structural point is worth drawing out, because it separates this procedure from the one it replaces. The common method is a sequence of treatments applied to an object: water, incense or oil, then light. Nothing in it involves an addressee, and the stone's readiness is a state it reaches after enough exposure.
This method is a sequence of treatments and then a conversation. The stone becomes usable not when it has absorbed enough of something, but when it has been washed, purified, contacted, informed and promised. Readiness here is a relationship having been opened rather than a charge having been reached. Which is consistent with the whole gemstone section — the silent prayer of recognition before use, the thanks afterwards, the prohibition on the handbag — and inconsistent with the metals section a few pages earlier, where a metal simply combines with whoever carries it.
The whole procedure, with every number and every exception. Run it under water for at least five minutes. If the stone is one that water damages — kunzite, selenite, and anything a gemstone manual warns you about — skip the water entirely and gently rub it with salt instead, then brush the salt off.
Lay it on a small bed of salt for at least an hour. The stated job is purifying the minerals in the stone. Pray for guidance and connection with the gemstone's elemental. You are asking to be put in touch and to be shown, not asking for power.
Tell it two things: what you are going to use it for, and that it will not be abused. Then the formulas. The exorcism first, then In Nomine Deux Benedicto, Magicartifex Ubertas and Exornita Potens Lapidus.
And do this again after use, because the closing half of the consent protocol is this same cleansing followed by thanks.
The five-minute wash, the hour on salt and the two spoken steps are asserted with no tradition named and nothing quoted. This is the Eldest Tradition warrant on the source stub. 🚩 SINGLE SOURCE.
The description of the common method is accurate to widespread contemporary crystal practice — water, incense, essential oils, then sun or full moon — and it is reported neutrally rather than dismissed. The water caution is materially correct. Selenite is a hydrous calcium sulphate and dissolves; kunzite is cleavable and its colour fades. Sending the reader to a gemstone manual is the one piece of ordinary reference advice in this material.
🚩 The claim that salt will purify the minerals in the gemstone is a chemical-sounding statement with no chemistry behind it. Salt does not purify minerals, and prolonged salt contact damages several porous and soft stones. Reported as stated.
⚠ The being inside a stone is called an elemental here, a spirit elsewhere, and a polone in the solids section. Three names, no reconciliation. Unresolved: nothing states what counts as abusing a gemstone, despite a promise not to do it being a required step.
Follow the physical half and cleansing is decontamination. Five minutes of running water, an hour on salt, minerals purified — a procedure that would work identically whether or not anybody was home inside the stone. Follow the verbal half and cleansing is an introduction. You ask to be connected to the elemental, tell it what the work will be, and undertake not to abuse it — none of which does anything to a mineral, and all of which assumes a party who can be informed and who has an interest in the answer.
Both halves are one continuous procedure. And they disagree about what a badly cleansed stone is: on the first reading it is dirty, and on the second it has been used without being asked.
Akra Guare — Soul-Washing Water-Electrified Ritual Protocol — Both traditions use running water as the medium that carries accumulated residue away, and both treat washing as a preparation for something rather than as an end in itself. In each, what comes off is spiritual rather than visible.
The Akan protocol charges the water first. The abosom are invoked into it, the water is electrified, and the charged water then pulls the debris off the way a magnet lifts paperclips. The water is the active party, and the invocation is what makes it so.
Here the water is left inert and the words are spent on the stone instead, which neither corpus notices. Five minutes under an ordinary tap, an hour on ordinary salt — and every spoken element of the procedure is addressed to the gemstone's elemental rather than to the medium. Which relocates the whole transaction. In one tradition a practitioner petitions a deity and receives a cleaning agent; in the other they clean with plain water and then negotiate with the thing being cleaned. The first can fail because the invocation was not answered. The second can only fail because the practitioner did not mean the promise.
Sharpest implication. The procedure requires a practitioner to tell the gemstone for what it will be used, and that it will not be abused — an undertaking given before any magic begins, binding on all future use, to a party that has no stated way of holding you to it.
Generative questions.