In most every culture, shamans embarking on a vision quest and other spiritual healers honor the tradition of their ancestors and teachers by carrying and using something known as a medicine bag. Medicine bags are various-sized pouches containing sacred objects, especially crystals, bones, feathers, and stones, but they can carry any small object of significance to the shaman.

Amulet bags have been made in African nations, for the indigenous peoples throughout the Americas, and in Europe and Asia, too. It is rare to find a practitioner of any nature religion, such as Wicca, without his or her personal medicine bag.

When used with an attitude of honor and respect, the bag and its contents are able to bring the shaman in touch with powers of his or her innermost being. Very often, a shaman will carry one or more crystals or other objects that accompanied him or her on the vision quest and will use the stored energy to enhance healing and other ceremonies and sacred rites.

Medicine bags are usually hand stitched and constructed from leather, with beaded adornment. They are small bags, usually hung like necklaces from a cord around the neck, but they can be worn on a belt or carried in a pocket or purse. The exterior designs often act as protective influence, but the bag itself usually contains additional protection inside in the form of sacred objects, crystals, feathers, shells, or herbs that have meaning for the shaman, thereby helping him or her to focus intention.

Medicine bags are meant to give guidance, good luck, good health, abundance, and even love to their wearers. They act as a means of personal energetic protection and can be held to help invoke healing and protection. For instance, a shaman consulting with a person in need of balancing may have a medicine bag embroidered or painted with balancing symbols and containing some obsidian stones used for protection. A lay individual who might carry a medicine bag could include a person going to a stressful job interview or other important business meeting. He or she would wear or carry a small medicine bag containing malachite for success and prosperity.

The crystals placed in your bag should represent a part of yourself or your life that you wish to develop or empower. For example, if you want to be more loving, you could place a small piece of rose quartz in your medicine bag.

Various cultures felt that if one wore the medicine bag close to the body, the sacred power of the bag was stronger and one’s personal power was enhanced. In this book, medicine bags are designed for protection from seen and unseen things and are worn to enhance the wearer’s positive attitude and keep negative energy away from the wearer’s physical and spiritual self.

A person may have several medicine bags, each carried for different reasons.  One bag may be for dealing with stress, one for happiness, one for specific healing purposes. The bag itself should be as attractive as possible. It can be decorated with a symbol of your personal deities, signs of protection or health, or a design of your own creation.

The creation of your personal medicine bag is a pure example of “spiritual crafting,” as it is a process in which you can nurture your art and soul, find inner peace, and enhance your well-being. To benefit from the spiritual crafting lessons that are in Healing Crystals, all you need are a few simple supplies and a desire to connect to a mystical state of grace. (c) Amy Zerner & Monte Farber, from “Healing Crystals: A Shaman’s Guide to Making Medicine Bags & Using Energy Stones (Enchanted World)

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More About Monte Farber and Amy Zerner:

Internationally known self-help author Monte Farber’s inspiring guidance and empathic insights impact everyone he encounters. Amy Zerner’s exquisite, one-of-a-kind spiritual couture creations and collaged fabric paintings exude her profound intuition and deep connection with archetypal stories and healing energies. For more than thirty years they’ve combined their deep love for each other with the work of inner exploration and self-discovery to build The Enchanted World of Amy Zerner and Monte Farber: popular books, card decks, and oracles that have helped millions answer questions, find deeper meaning, and follow their own spiritual paths.

Together they’ve made their love for each other a work of art and their art the work of their lives, with over two million books in print in fourteen languages. Their other best-selling titles include The Chakra Meditation Kit, The Tarot Discovery Kit, Karma Cards, The Enchanted Spellboard, Secrets of the Fortune Bell, Little Reminders: Love & Relationships, Little Reminders: The Law of Attraction, Goddess, Guide Me!, The Animal Powers Meditation Kit, Astrology Gems, True Love Tarot, The Instant Tarot Reader, The Psychic Circle, Wish Upon A Star, The Pathfinder Psychic Talking Board, The Truth Fairy, Spirit of the Ancestors Altar Kit, Vibe-Away!, The Mystic Messenger, The Breathe Easy Deck, The Healing Deck, and The Ghostwriter Automatic Writing Kit.  More info at: www.TheEnchantedWorld.com

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