Crystals for People Who Have Low Expectations for Crystals

Crystals for People Who Have Low Expectations for Crystals
Illustration by Laura Callaghan

Blue-lace agate: This crystal will give you a baseline level of self-esteem. If worn regularly, it might even allow you to feel a fleeting sense of confidence in your own abilities and worth.

Garnet: This above-average rock will transform your bimonthly depression into seasonal depression.

Rose quartz: This crystal will lead you to a major realization that you forget to write down.

Beryl: Beryl’s low-grade magical powers will allow you to receive news alerts on your phone while still maintaining a stable sense of self.

Amethyst: Because of this crystal, you will replace a big source of anxiety with smaller, more meaningless sources of anxiety and temporarily achieve a state of semi-calm, until you remember the original source of anxiety.

Emerald: This charismatic stone will give you the confidence to stop peppering your conversations with apologies for things beyond your control.

Ruby: Wear this crystal to grow from a malcontent into a sometimes-content.

Celestine: This elevated mineral will make your existence briefly cohere before everything fragments into meaninglessness again.

Selenite: Sleep with this crystal under your pillow to open yourself up to higher worlds where you will still be miserable.

Jasper: This hardly-precious stone will protect you from other people’s negativity but will do nothing to resolve your own internal well of negativity.

Citrine: Show off your citrine on a necklace to feel a surface-level happiness that will quickly give way to a deeper sadness you didn’t even know was there.

Diamond: This crystal worked in 100 A.D., but it has slowly lost its potency and now has the mystical powers of a lowly piece of gravel.

Sapphire: It might mitigate the pain of everyday existence, but it also might make it worse.

Aquamarine: Irrespective of this crystal, the universe is a cold, shapeless chaos.

Jade: This crystal will help you evolve from an ordinary human into an ordinary human who now wears a crystal.

Onyx: This one doesn’t really do much.