2023-06-25 13:23:49
“For a fracture, what would you advise me? asks a young woman to Astrid Schilling. “Amber”, replies tit for tat the former television director who has become, according to her brochure, an expert in lithotherapy. We are in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, a quiet Alsatian town, which for four days becomes the epicenter of the mineral world. The Mineral & Gem show, an institution, brings together wholesalers and customers from all over the world. On hundreds of stands, professionals come to stock up on Australian opal, fossils from America or amber from the Baltic countries.
Alongside this market activity, the stock exchange organizes conferences. Three rooms are reserved from Friday to Sunday for lithotherapy, a scientifically unproven practice that uses stones to respond to various physical and mental ailments. The curious are thus invited to look into “the stones of luck and the development of self-confidence” or are invited to discover how “to purify the crystals with resin incense”.
Astrid Schilling is to give one this Friday at 1 p.m. on “the use of stones and crystals in personal development”. In the meantime, she waits in the small room reserved for lithotherapist exhibitors. In front of her, a purple amethyst and two of her books. One is called crystal medicine. “The title is from the publisher”, she develops, when asked if the title can be confusing, suggesting that one can treat oneself with stones. On the internet, sites offer you the opportunity to use one or more stones to deal with health problems, from the most benign to the most serious, such as fertility problems.
mystery and supernatural
“Lithorapy is a help, it’s not the only way to treat”, defends Astrid Schilling, who does not sell crystals but organizes courses. A practice that she does not put on the same level as medicine: “For me, lithotherapy is the care of the soul, of well-being, of the spiritual. The practice indeed flirts with the supernatural: lithotherapy teaches that we have several invisible bodies beyond our physical body. We would also have seven chakras. The energy of the stones would resonate with that of the chakras and other bodies.
The practice is coated with another layer of mystery: to use a stone, it must be “programmed”, that is to say, given an “intention”. Sites advise to “recharge” the stone, by placing it in the moonlight or in the sun, or even by burying it or using distilled water. Acts that lean more towards ritual than towards science.
Hundreds of exhibitors offer minerals and crystals, some already ready to be used as jewelry. – Mathilde Cousin / 20 Minutes
Joël Bécot, a lithotherapist met with his partner following a conference, kindly offers us to test. Indeed, since the practice professes that there are energies in the stones, what better than to try to feel them? The Grenoblois takes out of his bag a white crystal of regarding ten centimeters that he has just bought on one of the stands of the show. The mineral is a beautiful object, polished on several sides, pleasant to contemplate. In a calm voice, the practitioner invites us to gently approach it with our hand. Despite several attempts, no heat or tingling is felt.
Astrid Schilling recognizes that to find a beneficial effect in minerals, you have to believe in them. “If people wear a jewel with a stone, but they don’t pay attention to the effects of this stone, it won’t matter, because they are not in the consciousness”, she develops.
Joë Bécot and his partner are also convinced of this: “Lithotherapy is a practice of well-being. It is the meeting of the stone with my energy, with what I feel. “Sometimes they go to hospitals with patients, but agree that lithotherapy “will never replace traditional medicine”.
In the aisles of this huge salon, which spreads out in the center of Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, not everyone is convinced by these practices. Alphonse, a Belgian who offers objects for sale new age with his Dutch associates, brushes it all aside. “When clients ask us if such a stone is for headaches, we tell them yes, yes, but you know, it’s above all business. »
So what are these rituals doing in the middle of a renowned stock market, which attracts hundreds of professional buyers who come to stock up on stones of all kinds? The organizers of the show explain to 20 Minutes responding to the demand for “exhibitors and visitors” by creating this “Crystal & Health” space. However, they warn that they “cannot be held responsible for the comments of exhibitors and speakers in this space” and want to “warn visitors regarding the scope and veracity of the speeches held”.
Twenty years ago, the show already offered such conferences. At the time, it was already possible to listen to speakers talk regarding “strange particles in quartz” or even “rock crystal harmonization tools”, as noted by pharmacist Pierre-Yves Boudard, author of a thesis on lithotherapy.
No study has demonstrated, beyond the placebo effect, an effect on health of these rituals with the stones. As for any energy emitted by the stones, the scientists are formal: no phenomenon such as those described by lithotherapists has been observed. The fraud crackdown has previously nabbed jewelry industry professionals for “fanciful, biased or misleading claims,” such as “wellbeing properties allegedly attributed to gemstones.”
Associations for the prevention of sectarian movements have been sounding the alarm for several years: “We receive 1,200 requests for help and information each year. Nearly 40%, or even more, relate to unconventional care and well-being practices,” Didier Pachoud already explained in November 2012. The former president of Gemppi, an association for helping victims of sects, stressed that “the concepts used [dans les pratiques de soins non conventionnelles] – energy, vibration, etc. – fall under spirituality and reuse the beliefs of Hinduism in a universal soul in a pseudo-scientific register”.
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