A Personal Meditation on Andara

Note: I prefer the spelling, "magick" to refer to the occult and spiritual practice, and the word, "magic" to refer to the parlor trick.

Here’s a test. You’re free to decide if it’s a test of mineralogy, metaphysics, or ethics. Maybe that’s part of the test — deciding what it really tests.

The top photograph is a specimen I collected in 1993 near Hot Springs, Arkansas in the Ouachita Mountains. Sky blue, good clarity, 3.62 pounds. What’s the name and current market value of the specimen?

Pause. I’ll wait while you look it up online. That’s 1,602 grams. We won’t bother to convert to carats.

Now I’d like you to look at a second photograph. This site was in Northern Arkansas, but it’s similar to the one where I nabbed my specimen.

In the early nineties, a drive through rural Arkansas was likely to take you past any number of roadside shops where you could buy local crystals and other local mineral specimens like wavellite. If the owner’s property had any size to it, he or she quite often had a few tables at the back dedicated to so-called cullet — recycled glass or glass end-pieces — that they were happy to let you take away for the princely sum of one dollar a pound.

Everyone knew it was glass-- specifically, end pieces left over from a glass factory. You could pay a trucker to haul the leftovers to the dump. Or you could let a local with a pickup haul it away for free to sell to tourists from their backyard rock tables. Not hard to figure out which option the frugal factory manager would choose.

Back in the day, this stuff was everywhere in rural Arkansas. People bought it for a cheap fish tank décor. The official name was glass cullet, but we called it slag.

The power of a name

Here’s question #2. Same item. Same question. What’s the name and current market value of the specimen now?

“Wait,” says the little voice in the back of the room. “Is this a gotcha? Because I already looked it up online and…”

No gotcha. You did what anybody does when they go to sell a find. They take the photo, maybe use a shopping app, maybe take a walk to Etsy or eBay, and pretty soon they find out what you found out.

Some people are selling large, sky-blue specimens like mine for hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars. Only they did a little change of name. Ain’t nobody paying three thousand for slag. Not even blue slag.

So, the stuff had to be renamed and rebranded as a natural product found in the earth. Suddenly, it isn’t dollar-a-pound slag from the old glassworks anymore. It’s magical, mystical, volcanic glass with a magical mystical new name.

Andara.

Names and stories are worth money. Sometimes, as in this case, big money.

Slag glass is so cheap that it sells to recyclers for pennies a pound. More often, as in my area, they refuse to take it at all. Cullet glass, sold to hobbyists, goes for a few dollars.

Rename it Andara, maybe do some purification work to change the energy in it, and suddenly you’ve got buyers willing to crack out the credit card.

So there’s your test. Do you sell your material for what it is? Or do you sell it for what it isn’t? Are your ethics good to go out the door when you realize you’re sitting on thousands instead of ones?

If you’ve been around the crystal community for a couple, three decades — especially if you’ve ever been a bit of a packrat collector — you’ve almost certainly got a piece of cullet glass in your collection right now.

Go find it.

Hold it in your hand.

Question #3. What is the name and market value of the specimen in your hand?

Glass does have a place in magick

Glass isn’t automatically unmagickal. For instance, Moldavite is a natural green glass created by a meteor impact in Europe around 15 million years ago. Its reputation for clearing psychic blocks only continues to grow.

Beyond that, human-created glass isn’t automatically unmagickal. Blue glass, in particular, also has a history going back for thousands of years.

Any visitor to Turkey — for that matter, almost any collector of popular folklore — is aware of the beautiful blue glass beads resembling eyes that are sold to challenge and ward off the Evil Eye. These amulets are collected and respected as a tool to frighten off evil spirits, especially the evil spirits generated by other people’s envy or dislike.

I am watching out for you, is the vibe of this amulet.

And evil-doers, even the invisible kind, have a way of slinking off to find easier targets if they know they’re being watched.

You can believe or not believe. There is no scam being perpetrated. No one pretends the amulet is anything other than what it is. Blue glass with a purpose baked in. The price is fair, the item is beautiful, and all it asks is that you hang it in a spot (perhaps a sunlit window) where it can watch out for you.

This is a simple, beautiful, and harmless form of magick that anyone can do, should they choose to do so. And it is frankly, honestly, done with glass.

So.

Being glass isn’t the problem with Andara. Being human-created isn’t the problem. You can purify a glass amulet, and you can program it with intention to create magick. It is possible. It is even rather common.

The problem is deception. If you buy and sell an item with an inflated price based on a story that is kinda, sorta, not really true, what kind of energy do you think the item will have?

My crystal work is focused on easy, friendly, open-hearted work. My stones are invited to do their thing for the mutual benefit of all. I won’t be selling glass by the gram any time soon.

And that’s fine. That’s the energy I like to send out into the universe.

I have enough. I am enough.

You have enough. You are enough.

And it’s beautiful.

Andara without tears

Andara too can be enough. It can be a precious thing of value and beauty. All you need do is respect it for what it is, rather than for what it isn’t.

One of the tenets of Wicca — and, indeed, traditional craft — is that you don’t haggle over price when you’re buying a metaphysical tool. Deception is, above all, a form of haggling coming from the seller. They are trying to manipulate you into paying more than you would normally pay.

Ethical artists can use Andara in their creations with great success, as long as they are honest about their materials. I have a beautiful example in my personal collection.

Some years ago, I was in touch with a Michigan spheremaker Jim Meeker. Most of his found cullet was small tumble-worthy items, which he sometimes tucked into my sphere orders as “bonus” items. For a time, he branched out from cutting native materials, and one of those items was a 4.1-inch diameter bottle-green Andara glass sphere.

Jim was very open to the point of being blunt that he did not agree with the marketing practices associated with Andara glass. He identified it as cullet glass, a human-created product, and distanced himself explicitly from any metaphysical claims. His ethics weren’t for sale.

There is no negative energy in such a transaction. Indeed, he created a true work of art that gives me ongoing joy as a centerpiece of my sphere collection.

May all your magickal finds bring the same joy to you.

Photo Credit Note: “SLAG GLASS STORE” by twig73010 is licensed under CC BY 2.0 & was lightly edited by this author.

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