It’s January 2025! I managed to go a whole year without posting here on the blog. (sorry!) As you probably can imagine, Holiday season for a small business can be pretty crazy. So dropping off after October 2023 might not have been too surprising. But the fact that I didn’t come back at ALL in 2024… well, I didn’t intend it to be so.

After the Holiday rush, I was exhausted and my projected year, astrologically and otherwise, seemed to evolve around rest and respite. Not something that’s easy to do as a business owner… so I put new projects on the back-burner and made a list of the most important things vs things I could let go of for the time being. Can you guess which list the blog made? haha

Anyhow, I intend to be back this year! I even have a couple months of content ready to go. I am geared up and ready for new exciting things and bringing back old ones that we have missed this past year, like the blog. Let’s hope the fire doesn’t wear off anytime soon!

So let’s get to it. This January’s crystal of the month is….Garnet! Yes, it’s the traditional January birthstone. Yes, choosing it was a little lazy on my part, but after a little more research, it actually ended up being (what I think is) a good fit for this month all-around. Let me tell you why!

Did you know Garnet is known as the “Persephone stone”? If you know the story, it will make sense. The Greek myth is where Demeter, the Goddess of the flowers, was teaching her daughter Persephone how to care for the flowers when she was noticed and kidnapped by Hades, the God of the Underworld. Demeter was so upset that her daughter was taken, that she stopped caring for flowers and crops across Greece and this concerned the main guy in charge, the God Zues. Zues then told Hades to allow Persephone to leave the Underworld. Hades told him he would allow her to leave if she hadn’t eaten any of the food he had given her. Well, if you know anything about the Greek Gods, they were tricky tricky and Hades was no exception. He had given Persephone lots of food that she refused to eat in protest, but he had also included something she had never had before. A pomegranate. A beautiful, delicious, rare and intriguing pomegranate. By the time Zues had arrived to barter for her return, she had already consumed six tiny seeds of the pomegranate, thus creating a new deal that allowed her to stay with Hades six months of the year, and with her mother Demeter the other six months. And thus the myth of why we have seasons was born! During the spring, Demeter gets her daughter back and together they care for the crops and the flowers, and at the end of the summer, Hades comes for Persephone and things slowly die off and become the Fall, and then the Winter, until she returns again and we have Spring.

Aside from that fun little mythology bit, the Garnet has some actual helpful qualities too. It is a highly uplifting stone, and as we are deep within the drudges of winter, we can certainly use a little “pick me up”. With its rich colors and warming glow you really can’t help but feel supported and nurtured by all its amazing healing properties such as its ability to help regenerate the nervous system. This is something we can all use after depleting ourselves in the previous month’s hustle and bustle.

It is also a great grounding stone, connecting to our root chakra. Which comes in handy when it may be too cold to get outside and ground in the earth. Meditating with Garnet, and wearing it in the winter can help to keep you from getting too inside your head when you are cooped up inside.

And lastly, especially since this first January post is happening in the middle of the month, we can carry this stone into February where it makes a great stone to put into a collection of “love stones”, for your Valentine’s escapades. That’s because it’s good for “sexxy time”. Yes! Garnet is said to increase sex drive and libido, and also for inspiring romance. Put that by your bedside table if ya know what I mean 😉 (Or don’t, if that’s not your cup of tea, ha!)

And here’s the part where I tell you about all the awesome Garnet we have in the shop for you to purchase. I loooooove me some Garnet jewelry. It’s seriously one of my favorite stones. And I have several Garnet jewelry pieces that are gorgeous! We have some pomegranate seed shaped Garnet earrings and necklaces, some with gold plated pomegranate charms. We have some super sweet heart shaped garnet necklaces in both gold and silver toned stainless steel chains. We have Garnet stud earrings set in 925 silver and some lovely tear shaped garnet dangle earrings and matching necklaces.

And if jewelry isn’t your thing, we have raw tumbled garnet pocket stones, and a couple 3-4 inch Garnet towers. The pocket stones are a perfect sized for carrying around, and the towers would be perfect for that bedside table 😉