How to Cleanse Your Crystals - and Why We Don't Use Moonlight!

Jasmine
Aug 8, 2025
3 min read

Updated: Oct 5, 2025

Cleansing crystals is energetic hygiene.

But not all methods are equal. And in some cases… they might even do more harm than good.

In this blog, we’ll explore how to genuinely clear the energetic field of a crystal — and explain why at SOULSMITHERY, we don’t recommend using moonlight (despite what every beginner crystal book tells you).

🌫 Why Crystals Need Cleansing

Crystals are more just pretty rocks. Like water, they easily hold memory — they're literal storage devices made of mineral lattices. They’re like quartz hard drives: holding patterns of intention, energy signatures, and emotional residue.

Whether you’re wearing them as jewellery, using them in healing work, or just keeping them around the house for vibe support: Crystals can accumulate stagnant, chaotic, or unwanted energy. Left un-cleansed, this will subvert their natural function.

🚫 Why We Don’t Use Moonlight

We know this goes against popular advice in the 'spiritual community' — but here’s our take, grounded in both logic and experience.

🌕 1. The Moon is Reflective — Not Cleansing

The moon doesn’t emit light. It reflects the light of the sun. That means it's not an active purifying force — it’s a mirror. Mirrors amplify, echo and sometimes further distort what’s already there.

This can create energetic confusion in crystals that are holding trauma or density. Instead of clearing, moonlight can sometimes magnify the dissonance.

🌘 2. Lunar Energy is Yin, Watery & Putrefactive

In metaphysical systems (including TCM and ancient esoteric traditions), the moon represents yin energy — cool, moist, inward, emotional, and mutable.

But too much yin becomes stagnant, putrefying, and chaotic.

You wouldn’t dry your wet towel outside under moonlight. You'd dry it in the sun — because the sun cleanses, dries, and sterilises.

The same logic applies to crystals. Moonlight doesn’t dry or purify — it can trap moisture, physically and energetically.

🌑 3. Crystals Need Discharge — Not Reflection

When you want to reset a field, you don’t need amplification. You need sterilisation. The moon can pull things up emotionally, yes — but that’s not the same as cleansing. In fact, for overcharged or trauma-imprinted crystals, the moon can make things worse.

🌞 Better Crystal Cleansing Methods

Here are 3 reliable ways to truly reset your crystals — safely and effectively:

🔥 1. Sunlight

The sun is a natural antiseptic and frequency stabiliser. It dries, purifies, disinfects, and imbues life force (solar Qi).

✅ Place your crystals in direct morning sunlight for a few hours

✅ Especially good for quartz, agate, and tiger’s eye

❌ Be careful with UV-sensitive stones (like amethyst, rose quartz) — limit to short bursts to avoid fading

🧂 2. Salt Water Soak

Salt is one of nature’s most powerful memory-clearing agents. It doesn’t just absorb energy — it neutralises it.

✅ Mix sea salt or pink salt into a bowl of filtered water

✅ Submerge hardy stones (like quartz, jasper, or tourmaline) for a few hours

✅ Rinse and dry in sunlight

⚠️ Note: Don’t use salt water on porous or soft stones (like selenite, malachite, or lapis lazuli)

🧹 3. Smudging or Sound

For delicate or water-sensitive stones:

✅ Pass through sacred smoke (e.g. palo santo, frankincense, native herbs)

✅ Use a tuning fork, singing bowl, or crystal chime to recalibrate the field

✅ Intention matters: command the clearing out loud or silently while cleansing

🧬 Crystals Hold Memory — So Clear It With Intention

Every time you cleanse a crystal, you’re resetting its story: dissolving old programming, trauma imprints, or outside interference. You’re making space for it to attune to your current vibration, not your past pain.

And you’re inviting it to work with you, not just sit on a shelf.