A powerful yet gentle healer and cleanser, Amber draws out and transmutes negative energy of all kinds on all levels. Amber aids in physical self-healing, emotional healing of depression, and environmental clearing. Amber opens and cleanses all of the Chakras.
Highly protective, Amber also aids in the manifestation of ideas to reality. The life force trapped within Amber promotes fertility, and its protective and environmental clearing properties make it a good stone to use to prepare a healing or birthing room. Use Amber with the Solar Plexus Chakra to increase confidence, mental clarity, and creative self-expression.
Physically, Amber helps with the organs of elimination, including the liver, kidneys, bladder, and stomach. Also a stone of the Throat Chakra, Amber can help with laryngitis and goiter.
In very simple terms, in order to qualify a piece of resin as true Amber, a couple of things need to have happened. First, the molecules must have formed a polymer (a compound where two or more molecules have joined together) and secondly, the specimen must be at least 100,000 years old.
Copal or Copalite is the term given to organic resins that are not old enough (i.e. younger than 100,000 years) to have fossilized and hardened sufficiently to become Amber.
Amber is often imitated by plastics, colored glasses and some modern tree resins. True Ambers have a low specific gravity (amber can float on salt water) and inclusions can distinguish it from plastics and glasses.
In Africa, Copal is found in the coastal countries of East and West Africa, but especially on Madagascar. This so-called Madagascar Amber is solidified resin of the Amber Pine but is only 1,000 - 10,000 years old.
Most Amber from Columbia is less than 250 years old and in fact is not Amber at all, but the softer, younger version called Copal.