Ilvaite is a black, orthorhombic mineral, which is quite common in the earth but only rarely forms crystals. It has a hardness of 5 to 6 on the Moh scale.

We believe that Ilvaite is one of the best-kept secrets in the world of crystal therapy and healing…

At the time of writing, the only written account about Ilvaite is in Melody’s book Love is in the Earth, where she writes that Ilvaite helps us to be more patient.

Now, patience is a virtue… but it’s definitely not one of the more sexy virtues, which is why Ilvaite may have been overlooked.

Patience is up there with delayed gratification… sounds nice… but I will start working on it tomorrow… or next week… in fact, I might just delay developing delayed gratification indefinitely!

However, Ilvaite can do so much more!

Because it is one of the few crystals available which grounds from the Sacral chakra, which means it helps to ground our emotions.

Just think about that for a moment…

One of the ways in which other people try to control us is through our emotions… and the most common emotions are fear, guilt, anger, and shame…

The parent who tries to make us feel ashamed, the friend who is always making us feel angry, the so-called psychic who tries to stir up our fears, the boss who tries to make us feel guilty… all of these people are trying to control us, and use our emotions as their way to manipulate our minds.

Because Ilvaite grounds from the Sacral chakra, when we have access to its vibration, it is much, much harder for someone else to manipulate us emotionally, to knock us off our emotional centre. Or the turbulent situations… which we all encounter in our life, from time to time, which can knock us off centre… because we remain grounded and centred…

When working with Ilvaite, you will find it is much easier to hold your emotional centre or come back to your emotional centre if you have been knocked off balance emotionally.

You become like the Willow Tree… you may bend, but you are not uprooted. Being able to emotionally ground is a really important skill to have in our modern world, where everyone seems to want a piece of us emotionally. The black of Ilvaite helps us to disguise and disengage our emotions, while the orthorhombic structure also helps us to remain cool and distant when required.

Ilvaite is a wonderful friend to have in your crystal collection, whenever you need to find your emotional centre, to ground and centre your emotions.

Sue Lilly, a well-known crystal author, always says that you need to have a good sense of who you are, because that helps you recognise when someone has pushed you off centre, and you can say to yourself… “Wait a minute, this isn’t me talking and acting here!” And this may be why many people feel that Ilvaite is associated with patience.

What does patience require?

Emotional control, an ability to delay emotional gratification, and the ability to ground our feelings… so it all ties in really.

Interesting story… During one ICGT Certificate crystal course, we gave each student a piece of Ilvaite to take home with them, so they could work out what it did overnight, to intuitively figure out the unique qualities of its vibration were.

Next morning, each one of them REFUSED to give their piece back and bought it off us.

It’s that good. (And yes… we have never repeated that experiment again.)

Paradoxically, Ilvaite is quite common, it is abundant in the earth, but because it is gone unrecognised for so long, you may not be able to get it from the usual sources, but you can usually find pieces for sale online.

Ilvaite tends to be a gentle vibration… unless you really need to be emotionally grounded… brought back… in which case you will really feel it working…

For us, Ilvaite is up there as one of the most important crystals in our or any crystal collection… but… ssshhh… let’s keep that to ourselves, OK?