From: helle@brewich.hou.tx.us (Helle vonBrun)
Subject: Re: Amber
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 94 17:19:38 CST

wstowe@desire.wright.edu writes:
> 	Hello, I have a question.  I recently bought a beautiful piece
> of Amber.  It even has a bug in it.  I was wondering what kind of
> use the Amber can have from a spiritual point of view.  Magickal
> uses, what kind of energies it can have, the works.  Thanks!

[The paragraphs below have been edited to be easier to read.]
According to Scott Cunningham (and for those of you who don't like
him, find your own sources and post them ;) amber is projective; it's
planet is the Sun; Elements are Fire and Spirit; Deity is the Great
Mother; powers are luck, healing, strength, protection, beauty and
love.

Supposedly, because amber is warm to the touch and contains insect
fragments, it was thought to possess life. The early Chinese
visualized the souls of tigers transmuting into amber upon their
earthly deaths. It was sacred to worshipper of the Mother Goddess in
classical times because it was believed to contain the very essense of
life itself - the animating principle. 

Because it is also a fossil, it is associated with time, cycles, and
longevity. Since it was once tree sap and thus the living blood of the
tree, it is related to the fifth element, Spirit.  Spirit binds and
governs the other four elements (Earth, Air, Fire and Water). In some
contemporary Wiccan covens, women (usually HPS'), wear necklaces with
jet and amber alternating. It is said that these two stones represent
the Goddess and the God, feminine and masculine, projective and
receptive (you get the picture....:). When rubbed with silk or wool,
amber retains a charge (and if I remember correctly, so does jet).

Some suggested magical uses are: protection against negativity,
safegauarding children's health, potent magical protectant for sexual
and regenerative functions, attracting love and increasing enjoyment
of pleasurable activities, fertility, ridding the wearer of disease
(convulsions, deafness, insanity, sore throat, earache, headache,
toothache, asthma, rheumatism, digestive troubles, and almost every
internal ailment), strengthening the eyes, aiding childbirth, halting
a nosebleed by inhaling the smouldering crushed incense, increasing
strength, business success, stimulate flow of money to the magician,
attraction spells (such as: love, money, power, success), and finally,
adding a bit of powdered amber to any incense will increase its
effectiveness.

(As I look over what I have written, I would highly recommend _NOT_
inhaling smouldering anything...you might just try the smoke that is
the result of the smouldering ;).

Hope this helps <grin>,

BB, Helle

My opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Baba Yaga's.