Nat Bondar was born in Ukraine while it was part of the Soviet empire, she developed acute, natural clairvoyance at the age of nine years old and "fine tuned" it throughout her adolescence. After the Chernobyl disaster, she used her vision to see whether food was safe to eat or not as many fruit and vegetables would have a "black cloud" of radiation around them. She would also see the energetic residues of herbicides and pesticide chemicals on food and learnt to discriminate what she and her family should eat or drink. She moved to the UK in 2001.

In July 2002, Nat & I began a pioneering research project into the energetic healing qualities of crystals and stones. We wanted answers to some as yet unanswered questions; 'why do crystals have therapeutic qualities', 'what gives them these qualities' and 'exactly how do they work'?

The first realization about the therapeutic qualities of crystals and stones is that their qualities are not because of their physical form in any way; it is about their subtle mineral energies – that is where their healing and spiritual influences lie. Where they have an energetic quality – it comes from an energetic level not a physical one. So if the subject is to be researched at all, it has to be studied from an energetic viewpoint. That's where Nat had an advantage. She could easily switch her vision to see their energies and that was where the research began.

Initially, looking at various crystals and stones, she had tremendous confusion about what she was seeing. Some crystals had all different colours and rays, channels, waves and spirals of energy coming from them – while others seemed almost still, inert and had barely any movement of energy at all. Selenite crystals would have long "beams" of white energy flowing from either end, Topaz crystals appeared to have a "fountain" of energy coming from their points. Turquoise had an energy structure that resembled a sphere or ball shape surrounding the stone, with one hemisphere as light blue and the other half as light green. Ametrine pieces were even more bizarre, with several different energy spheres surrounding them of different colours. It really was extraordinary and at first it didn't appear to make any sense at all. She drew and later painted the energies of over 50 different crystals and stones; these images were eventually published in her 'Crystal Energy Cards' set. Although the images appeared to show various channels and feathery waves of energy coming from the minerals; this didn't actually reflect what was going on all the time. Some stones would have one colour of energy then change to another – and some would have different channels on different levels of reality – so there would be blue and green energies – but each was independent of the other in terms of what particular subtle level she was viewing. To make them as accurate as possible; she took three years to finally complete the most general images of what the actual energies of crystals actually look like over time.

Nat realised that the way man treats minerals seemed to play a major part in answering some of the mysteries. When some minerals and crystals were polished into "tumble stones," many in this new, aesthetically attractive condition seemed to have dramatically less energy than those same minerals that were unpolished. As there seemed to be problems and contradictions with some of the polished stones, we deliberately only used the natural, rough stones and crystals from this point onwards.

An interesting observation was found with crystal and mineral candle-holders; these are quite common in holistic centres and crystal shops, particularly those cut from rose quartz or amethyst. When they have their candles lit, after some twenty seconds Nat would see a sudden "mini-energetic explosion" and the subtle mineral energy of the stone would increase its field by about 300%. This larger quantity of energy existed as long as the candle would burn, and as soon as it went out, the energy field would diminish back to its normal size. A similar situation happened with a crystal being put into a pot of earth; its energy field would grow dramatically. When we placed a crystal into a glass of water, we found the same thing happened and when the crystal was taken out of the water and dried on a cloth, its energy would shrink back down to its "normal" level. Now here we had Fire, Earth and Water; but what of Air? Surely the crystals are always in, 'Air,' so why do they change when put into another condition?

The more she examined their energy, the more she began to appreciate how extremely intricate the subtle energy channels were, both inside and outside the minerals. By changing the level of her vision, she could begin to study the different energetic structures that all minerals possess. She defined that they actually have four different ones, on four different, corresponding levels of reality. Just as we possess several subtle vehicles in our multidimensional reality; so do all minerals of the Earth. To be able to continue her research, because there were no "names" for these structures, she had to give them names.

The most primitive and primeval of all was one she called the "Quad" structure because it has four "petals" and looks like a propeller shape, it exists on a level of reality where there are only the four elemental energies of Air, Fire, Water and Earth. Each "petal" of the Quad structure allows one type of these elemental energies inside it and as the four energies enter, they are transformed to another level at the centre of the structure.

Now the subject really becomes profound because we defined that all minerals are actually "alive." Let me explain; if you look at other people and at animals, you can see they are "alive." If you then look at plants and trees, you can understand that they are "alive" too, but there is so little movement that it is simply more of an acknowledgement of life rather than a perception of it. Now when you look at a stone… you generally cannot perceive there being any "life" there at all and this is because they are so primeval and primitive in evolution. However, when someone with highly developed clairvoyance looks at a stone, there is instantly a different story to tell. All minerals are "alive" – but their form of life is very limited. They have what we call a Monad, or a 'tiny, spark of life which solely exists for one function; to react to different types of subtle environmental energies in a certain way. Every time the Monad reacts to these energies "outside itself" it grows very, very slightly. It does not think, does not feel, is not self aware or intelligent in any way – it simply exists and reacts to specific types of energies around it and that is all. It absorbs these energies in very small quantities and then emits them outside itself. Its structure is that of a sphere, like a ball of energetic life in the centre of every crystal and stone.

The elemental energies are passed from the Quad structure to the "Monadic Sphere." where they become in contact with these other surrounding subtle energies of that level. The Monad makes changes to these and then emits them as one form of a new energy. Nat called this mineral energy. This mineral energy is different with every different type of mineral. Therefore you get rose quartz energy," "Amethyst energy," "Calcite energy" and these are all different types of the same "mineral energy."

So, the reason the candle-holders would have a dramatic increase in their mineral energy field was because the Monad of the mineral had to maintain harmony and balance. Where suddenly there was an unequal proportion of "Fire energy" entering its system, it reacted the only way it could. It increased the quantity of the other three elemental energies to balance the situation. With this increase of the balanced elemental energies it also increased the absorption of the other surrounding subtle energies and the end result is more mineral energy produced. This is why these crystal or mineral candle-holders are very useful healing tools. We can even add several candles around them to increase the field of energy to a maximum saturation level.

By placing a crystal into earth, or into a glass of water, its mineral energy field is by result much larger due to the same reason. We are however, still left with the mystery of "Air" aren't we? Well the secret there is not air but wind… If you blow on a crystal, its energy grows; so the fact that it is always present in our environment in "still air" means it doesn't react, but put it into an area of moving air and its field will grow accordingly. Therefore it might be more accurate to call the elemental energy of air, "wind."

We can now return to the issue of why some crystals have less mineral energy when they are changed to a polished condition. All minerals have 'intake channels' for bringing the surrounding energies inside their structures and exit channels that allow them to give these out afterwards as mineral energy. Yet we found that some minerals such as agate and Aventurine, have either their intake or exit channels so damaged or destroyed from the accelerated attrition process that the Monad cannot deal with the quantity of energies inside its sphere. It either has too much or too little and as a result it suffers a chaotic condition and can no longer function correctly.

The therapeutic qualities of crystals and minerals are a very large subject. There are perhaps some 10,000 different identified minerals on and in our Earth, probably many more as yet undiscovered. Each and every one will have fixed certain qualities. However, where two or more mineral types are combined as one (such as Azurite and Malachite, commonly found together) then their qualities change to become yet different again. That is why it is perhaps an impossible task to list the qualities of all minerals because you could never cover every single different example. Nat took an easier number – she just chose fifty and studied these in depth. Only observing the energies of the natural stones, over five years, she has spent a long time with each of them, learning everything she can. She spent ages carefully drawing, then painting their energies to produce their images.

The original task that she set out to do was to define why they have healing qualities and how these actually affect the mind or body. This is a mammoth task, not because it is essentially complex, but because it needs so much groundwork covered before people can possibly grasp the concept of the answer. So let's start laying down a foundation…

If a crystal has an energetic quality that can help the health or well being of a person then it must have an explanation of the process. If there's no explanation – we have to consider the 'supposed quality' as suspect. So the answer must lie on the subtle reality of the human system. Generally speaking, most people reading this will already be familiar with the fact that illness and disease does not start with the physical body. The exception might be where we might have an accident, 'cut ourselves' and thus have a wound… However, even there; there is a reason for the event and there is a cause for why we happened to be in the right place at the right time for the event to take place. We might have all manner of emotions and thoughts as a result of the event… By illness and disease I am really referring to matters internal of the body; things like pain, organ dysfunction, blood pressure, arthritis, rheumatism, nausea, infertility, lack of vitality, lack of concentration etc. All of these matters begin on the subtle side of our being and manifest out into the physical body. When we have problems like these; it is like we are trying to tell ourselves 'something isn't right within' and the body acts like a big signpost for our consciousness to pay attention to it. Unfortunately, the greater majority of us can't read the signs and we just keep on driving. So more often than not, the signs get bigger until we do notice them. Well, that's all very well as a philosophy, but where is the explanation of the issue?

Imagine, you can look at the energetic system of a person. The first thing you might see is the major chakra system. These funnel-shaped, colourful energy vortices have energy channels that travel from them to all the organs and systems of the body. From the skeletal system to the blood circulation system to the lungs to the pancreas, the bladder, the muscles, the tendons of the limbs; everything is connected by these channels of energy. Now imagine you can look inside these channels and that you find they are actually composed of sub-channels and that these actually fine tune things as they deal with the various functions of the organs and other systems. So in the stomach for example, there are sub-channels that travel to organise things to do with the production of stomach acids and others that deal with the creation and maintenance of the stomach walls.

Inside these sub-channels are micro-channels, and further still, inside them there are energy threads and even deeper, there are micro-threads of single types of human subtle energies. The latter sustain and maintain the vitality of every single cell at any moment, in the body.

However, these particular single, human subtle energies also carry a program or command – to tell the cell what to do. When we are in good health, this program is correct and functions perfect normally . However, it can become distorted or misaligned and therefore it can begin to tell the cell different things to do instead of its normal instructions. When this happens, it is not long afterwards before "we" begin to feel the effects and illness soon can follow.

All crystals and minerals have their own unique variety of subtle mineral energy. Each type of mineral energy is distinct from another type because it has a different strength and frequency of vibration and it is this difference that separates them all. However they all have one thing in common; they all carry a special "coding" or agent that acts to constantly maintain harmony. It is called the Element of Harmony (all of our data that we had documented throughout the research was published in the thesis book 'The Element of Harmony'). Every single crystal or gemstone therefore has a unique type of mineral energy but they all contain this special harmonizing agent.

Where a crystal has a therapeutic quality for a part or system of the body; it is because its mineral energy has a very close relationship with one or other of the human subtle energies of that organ or system. This is because the two energies have very similar strengths of vibration in their design. When the two are brought into contact with each other, the Element of Harmony slowly begins to react to the miscoded human energy and begins to balance it again. That is the simple secret of why crystals have healing qualities."

by Tony Bondar

For more details please go to www.crystalharmony.co.uk