Book Review of Shadows: Crystal Skulls by Judy Hall

🔮🔮🔮🔮/5!

Crystal skulls are human-skull hardstone carvings often made of clear or milky white quartz known as “rock crystal.” They are allegedly pre-Columbian Mesoamerican artifacts and can be found in the permanent collections of a number of world-class museums, including the Smithsonian and the British Museum.

In this book, best-selling occultist and crystal expert Judy Hall provides a basic primer on crystal skulls:

• What they are

• Where they are found

• Their role in legend and lore around the world

• Their uses for physical and psychic healing

Also included here in this stunning introductory text is an examination of the prominent “skull keepers” of the past 100 years and examination of how to use and communicate with a crystal skull.

This is a terrific introductory text for those interested in occult and ancient mysteries and/or the power of gems and crystals. – Amazon.ca

You might recognize the name JUDY HALL from her incredible Crystal Bibles that come highly recommended by every metaphysical shop employee you can find. Honestly, they’re some of the best guides of all manner of magic rocks you can find so I was pretty excited to find this book she published with Weiser last year.

I’ll admit I knew very little about crystal skulls when I ordered the book, so I can say with absolute certainty that it’s super easy for beginners to read to get a really wide understanding about the skulls right off the bat. The first part of the book covers some of the legends, lore, and rumours about the crystal skulls. She talks about famous skulls through history (like the infamous SKULL OF DOOM of Indiana Jones fame), legends that appear to point to Atlantis, and even the validity of a lot of the claims. I was super impressed with how honest she was that there’s no conclusive evidence of any of this, and it’s up to you to decide what to believe. I loved that. I didn’t feel guilty when I thought something sounded too wild or I even laughed out loud.

The book also introduces living people who work with crystal skulls on a regular basis and offers actual blurbs and stories written by them. All these people have a different voice and tone, and some were so entertaining or insightful I found myself wishing they had written their own book! In some chapters I did feel like the tone was really all over the place because of that, but it was still interesting to hear other perspectives and it really kept up that “it’s up to you to decide what to believe” vibe.

Finally, in the second half of the book she talks about using, buying, cleansing and caring for your skull. Though she gives a nice list of the “skill set” of crystal skulls, when you get right down to it the skulls are believed to house the consciousness of a being – whether that be an ancestor, or deity, or “starbeing”, or Atlantean priestess or whatever. I’ll admit that that’s not really my bag and I faltered a bit. I kept putting the book down because reading an instructional guide on something you know you’re not interested in is kind of hard. I really liked the idea of using the skulls when working with the akashic record and as a meditation or scrying tool, though!

I struggled with the rating to give this book, because it took me kind of a while to finish as I lost a little interest, but that’s not really the fault of the book. The writing was good, the information was extensive and really well laid out and the book covered everything you need to know to get started working with crystal skulls, and even introduces you to a glossary of really popular terms in the metaphysical and new age community, types of crystals, and a bit about how crystals work in general. It also cuts through some bullshit and is fully non judgemental – she never tells you to sell your house to buy an ancient skull because new carvings are just as good, she never tries to shove any mythology down your throat as facts, and the book still has a lot of fun personality. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone interested in this subject.

Thank you to Weiser Books for sending me the book to review!