Apache tears are one of the few stones you can use for intense healing of the emotional body, especially in times of grief and sadness. It brings supportive energies that can bring relief when you are devastated. Learn more about this soothing stone by reading below.
What are Apache Tears?
Also known as Smoky Obsidian or Marekanite, the apache tears are the small, rounded, pebble-like variety of black obsidian.
It is often found in greyish volcanic material known as perlite, a more lightweight and porous form of obsidian. It is created when hot lava spews out of volcanoes, solidifying before it hits the ground. This stone may seem opaque at first glance. However, when you hold it against a source of light, it features a semi-transparent natural which is the typical quality found in volcanic glass.
These obsidian stones may then have water-worn, featuring smooth surfaces of indented ones and forming the apache tears crystal. So, basically, apache tears are little pebbles of obsidian crystal.
The most important extraction sites of apache tears are located in the US, with the most popular site being Superior, Arizona where apache warriors lost their lives. In addition, specimens are also found in the state of Nevada, other parts of the southwest US, and even in Mexico.
The Meaning and Uses of Apache Tears
Apache tears got its unique name from the tragic American Indian history. In the early 1870s, 75 Apache warriors wound themselves outnumbered and surrounded by the US cavalry. Instead of surrendering, these courageous warriors leaped from a cliff to their death.
According to legend, when the Apache tribe women found out they had lost their husbands, fathers, and sons in a tragic way, they cried day and night for a month or more. Their tears, upon falling on the ground, formed the oval-shaped crystals now known as the apache tears.
For this reason, ancient lore believed that those who carry or own a piece of this stone should never need to cry again since the apache tribe women cried enough tears for all those who mourn.
It is often used as a rubbing stone or during meditation. Apache tears are also fashioned into pieces of jewelry such as pendants, bracelets, beads, rings, and earrings, not only for fashion but to also benefit from its metaphysical energy. This is why the apache tears are best known for their metaphysical use.
Obsidians have been used in various cultures and history as valuable tools. Going back to the stone Age, obsidians like apache tears can be shaped into really sharp tools used as arrowheads, spear points, knives, ax heads, scrapers, and other cutting tools.
In today’s modern world, obsidians are still famous for producing sharp, thin edges for surgical scalpels and knives.
Apache Tears Metaphysical Properties
Without a doubt, the apache tears are one of the gentlest grounding and protective stones known to man. It not only shields your energy from energy vampires or psychic attacks but also keeps conflict and hostility at bay.
This gentle stone can easily link with your emotional body. It helps in cleansing and healing old wounds, as well as long-held emotions and grievances. It also helps in uncovering the frozen or stagnant emotional patterns that you held below your level of awareness.
In addition, the apache tears can also be used as a rescue bead for fear, shock, and panic. It is best known for its comforting and supportive energies during times of grief and mourning. This is particularly useful for those dealing with grief related to suicide, connecting the survivors with their families and loved ones who chose to die in order to cope and understand their decision.
This stone can teach you that grief can be a tremendous spiritual learning tool that encourages self-acceptance, self-awareness, and empathy toward those who feel overwhelmed by sorrow and heartache. It helps in protecting your aura from dense negative energies while enhancing the nourishing and kind ones.
Furthermore, the apache tear also carries the strong earthy energy of the planet which links with the sacred aspects of the physical world. It can also serve as a reminder that all frequencies of energy come from the divine. This stone can also be a potent source of spiritual knowledge and wisdom. It helps open you to the realms of spirits and other cohabitants of the earth and other universal dimensions. Plus, it helps stimulate the mind and heart and promotes a forgiving spirit.
The Benefits of Apache Tears
The apache tears offer several healing benefits that you will surely love. Here are some of them.
For Physical Healing
Since it is a product of fire and earth energies, metaphysical healers believed that carrying apache tears can provide you sustenance while stimulating strength, energy, and vitality. This is particularly true for those individuals who saw their health take a dive after a traumatic or shocking experience or the loss of a loved one.
Native American healers claimed that regularly wearing apache tears can help calm the nervous system, reducing nerve inflammation and soothing brain activity. It is also said to help those struggling with pain related to joints, bones, or even muscle spasms. This stone is even believed to help accelerate the healing of wounds, bruises, and scrapes.
Not only that, but this stone also helps in clearing and detoxifying the body of toxins and waste substances while balancing our energetic system. It is also said to provide relief for issues that can affect the stomach, kidneys, and adrenal glands.
Being a form of obsidian, the apache tears can help in relieving stress, and ease tensions in the muscles while improving your blood vessels and circulatory system. With its supportive energies, this stone is said to assist in overcoming dependencies such as smoking, overeating, drinking, or using drugs.
For Emotional Healing
Even though apache tears may not be one of the most well-known forms of obsidian, these are go-to gems for those experiencing grieving and extreme sadness. This stone offers tranquil and supportive energies that can be perfect for healing and managing emotional wounds.
Its energies can help in moving the deep-rooted and toxic emotions caused by traumas or suffering. It then helps in removing these blockages from your emotional body in order to move forward and completely heal.
Apache tears are also known for providing freedom, healing, and strength. Their quiet and brave nature can act as a guiding light to those doing through dark times. This stone can be your formidable companion during hard times, encouraging you to release the self-limiting barrier, forgive yourself, and go back to your true essence.
It helps in clearing the heart and emotional body of worries, fear, resentments, and disappointments, helping you to forgive without bitterness. Exposing your wounds, this stone can help you accept responsibility for your own healing. It also teaches you the necessary actions you need to do to release them, moving forward with renewed feelings and compassion.
For Chakra Healing and Balancing
As a form of black obsidian, the apache tears carry the black energies that align well with the root chakra and earth star chakra.
The root or base chakra is your first chakra located at the base of your spine. It is mainly responsible for your energy— kinesthetic feeling and movement. It is also the foundation of your physical and spiritual energies.
When out of balance, the root chakra can cause lethargy, low enthusiasm, and low levels of activity. You will need constant stimulation as well as suffering from spiritual imbalances. You become disconnected from reality, distant, and feeling flighty. You also begin to doubt your beliefs or find yourself deriving joy from the physical pleasures of life.
The black energies of the apache tears can help bring balance to this chakra. As a result, it helps in rekindling passion, stamina, and strength. It also fires up your spiritual energy in the form of security, stability, and safety in your own power.
Meanwhile, the earth chakra is located just below your feet. This holds out your soul into carnation and provides a solid connection to mother earth. It also helps in releasing the out-of-balance and excessively negative energies from the body. With the energies of apache tear, you can bring a stronger connection with the root chakra and your earth chakra, allowing you to be more certain of the next step in your life.
Other than these lower chakras, the apache tears also offer unique vibrations that connect with the heart chakra, despite being darker in color than other popular crystals for the heart. The apache tears offer gentle emotional healing, that cleanses and removes the negative vibrations and imbalances in your heart chakra. It then stimulates the heart to exude positive energies and fill the space with compassion, love, and kindness.
For Wealth Fetching and Abundance
The apache tears may not be a premier wealth stone; however, you can still use its energies to attract abundance.
The best way to use this stone if you wish to improve your financial situation is to access its nurturing and grounding qualities. This stone can help in dispelling and deflecting all kinds of negativity from your aura and surrounding. This helps bring your interactions and communication more smoothly while instilling self-belief, awareness, and confidence.
These qualities can also provide to be invaluable when looking to increase your income. It helps in increasing your positive vibes while removing negative thinking and self-limiting beliefs that might be stopping you from reaching your financial goals.
For Relationship and Love
Apache tears can help in supporting the emotional body and helping you uncover the truth about your feelings. It helps in pulling out the negativity from any situation while encouraging compassion, kindness, and understanding between couples. It helps you see your partner’s perspective and replace feelings of impatience and irritation with understanding and tolerance. It also helps keep you from being scared or intimidated, pushing you to try new things for new experiences.
Apache tears are also useful when you’re feeling bullied or abused in your relationship. It provides the courageous energy to stand up for yourself and what you think is right. In addition, the apache tears can also bring calmness and strength and establish personal boundaries. It shall infuse you with courage and strength if you want to leave an unhealthy or abusive relationship.
As mentioned before, the apache tears are a powerful support stone when you’re currently experiencing a period of incredible grief or crisis. It helps in filling the void that’s left in your heart after suffering a loss, easing your pain and heartbreak.
For Protection
Like any black crystal, the apache tears stone is a reliable protective stone. With its interesting feature of forming fractures like flint, this stone sometimes features sharp edges that can be used for metaphysically cutting through lies, blockages, and destructive thoughts and habits.
Being glass, apache tears can also help in reflecting all your negative traits, characteristics, and past behaviors. It allows you to be honest with yourself, moving forward with self-development. It is a crystal favored by shamans and metaphysical healers to return ill-wishing, curses, sorcery, and witchcraft.
Furthermore, the apache tears are an excellent protective and rescue tool for shock, traumas, and negative blockages. It helps anchor your feet during trying times and turmoil. Also, it has the ability to block geopathic stress and absorb the environmental pollution to be released later on.
For Sleep Insomnia
If you typically find yourself having negative ideas and thoughts when trying to sleep, or you’re suffering from grief and mourning, then you know how hard it is to fall asleep. To remove these negative emotions and thoughts and blockages, the apache tears can help cleanse these away.
The apache tears are loved for their neutralizing capabilities. It can help in erasing and removing all kinds of negative thoughts and energies. Then, it provides support and nurturing energies that can help calm down your emotional body and bring peace and tranquility into the night.
In addition, with its strong connection to the root chakra, the apache tears can also help in grounding your emotional body along with your emotions and thoughts to the present moment. It helps promote a feeling of deep healing and calmness, easing stress, grief, and mourning so you can sleep a little better.
For Depression and Anxiety
The apache tears are one of the best stones you can use for easing depression and anxiety caused by extreme sadness, the loss of a loved one, and grief. It is a master healer that keeps your spirits high even during worrying or expressive situations.
This stone can enhance your emotional body by absorbing all kinds of negative energy. It acts as a powerful absorber, soaking all negative emotions and thoughts from within. Then, it also helps in deflecting the toxic energies and frequencies from entering your auric body. This helps in alleviating sadness and melancholy, allowing you to get out of your head for a while.
Apache tears will also offer you compassion, comfort, and peace f mind. It helps you go through a life crisis or depressive and challenging situations. It teaches you to maintain control over your physical, mental, and emotional body. And thanks to its strong connection to the root chakra, this stone can provide grounding energies that release stagnant energies and allow you to focus and overcome anxiety and depressive symptoms.
For Career Success
In the workplace, the apache tear can also be a powerful ally so you can always work in a clean, positive, and clear environment.
This stone is best for clearing away all kinds of negativity. It helps in cleansing the emotional body of toxic emotions and feelings. Also, it then shields you from the negative thoughts, energies, and emotions of other people or your co-workers. By clearing up these negative energies, you can attract positive vibes that can help increase your productivity and upping up your career.
In addition, being a powerful stimulator of the root chakra, this stone can also help induce the much-needed energy and stamina for the daily workload. It also brings positivity and enthusiasm while firing up your passion and vitality in your work.
For Empaths
Apache tears offer fiery protective energies for sensitive individuals or empaths. It mainly helps in keeping the unwanted negative frequencies and providing a barrier from outside influences. It also helps keep your distance from emotionally needy or draining people.
In addition, its reflective property can also help you see the truth in every situation. Whether you are affected by other people’s negative thoughts or battling your own imbalances, the apache tear can help bring them to the surface for identification and solving and then releasing.
With this stone by your side, it can teach you to see the positive things while not completely detaching yourself from pain. It teaches you that there’s always light in the darkness and vice versa. By accepting grief and suffering as a natural part, you get to embrace vulnerability. This helps you become a better listener and friend to those who are going through tough times.
Combining Apache Tears With Other Crystal Stones
The apache tears can be paired with other crystal stones in order to enhance their healing energies. Here are some of the best crystal combinations for the apache tears.
Apache Tears + Smoky Quartz
For a powerful grounding combo, try apache tears and smoky quartz.
The elements of fire, water, and earth create the potent energies of the apache tears for intense grounding, especially during times of trauma or grieving. It has a strong connection with the mother, making it one of the best stones for grounding yourself during spiritual work or in difficult times.
Meanwhile, smoky quartz is one of the most favored crystals for grounding. Its high vibrational energies can help ground your crown chakra passing through all chakras and to your root chakra. This makes it one of the more spiritually grounding stones that stimulate stability and awareness.
Both stones also have the ability to neutralize negative and toxic energies while providing balance to your base chakra. This brings a sense of calmness, serenity, and feelings of safety ad security if you’re feeling overwhelmed during times of stress and mourning.
Apache Tear + Lepidolite
For promoting emotional healing, combing the apache tears with lepidolite.
As an empathic crystal, the apache tear can promote intense emotional cleansing and healing. Much like the tribal women who require a level of acceptance after the deaths of their brave warriors, the apache crystal can teach you to forgive yourself and others. It is a highly spiritual stone to have during difficult and tumultuous times.
Lepidolite with its nurturing energies, on the other hand, makes a perfect combination for apache tears. It contains lithium, which is a mineral used for anti-anxiety and anti-depressive drugs. Thus, making a perfect stone for overcoming grief by stimulating relaxation and calmness. It also helps in establishing balanced and stable mental health. This should restore a sense of normality during difficult periods.
Together, both crystals can work to release any trapped emotions. Apache tears and lepidolite can provide much-needed support and comfort, guiding you during the darkest days of your life.
Apache Tears + Zoisite
Another great pairing to support you during loss and grief, the apache tears and zoisite is a must-try if the previous combination seems lacking.
Zoisite is a powerful stone with potent spiritual energies that can assist you when grieving. Being a stone of transmutation, this stone can actually absorb negative and toxic energies from within and transform them into positive vibes. Not only that, but this stone can also offer you spiritual and emotional support and comfort during extreme sadness and pain. It helps in regaining your energy, stamina, and passion for life without shutting off the deeper emotions.
Use it in conjunction with the apache tears and you can experience more empathic energy of healing. Being an empathic stone, the apache tears are one of the most favored crystals to use during times of loss and grieving. Promoting emotional cleansing and healing, this stone can provide a level of acceptance and support during a loss of a loved one. It helps you through the process while encouraging you to forgive yourself, and other people.
Using both stones, you can have the guidance and support you need during difficult times.
Apache Tears + Black Tourmaline
For a protective duo, go with the black color energies of apache tears and black tourmaline.
Combining the raw elements of earth, water, and fire, the apache tears can help protect you against blockages, lies, and destructive habits. It also helps in resolving negative emotions and toxic thought patterns.
Pair it with the all-around stone for protection, and you get twice the protective energies. Black tourmaline is perhaps the most favored stone for repelling and deflecting lower energies and frequency. It then transmutes these negativities into positive vibes that will fill your life with enthusiasm, hope, and energy.
Both crystals can also provide a strong connection between your root chakra and the earth. It is also a suitable pairing for empaths, with both stones creating a powerful shield to hide sensitive people from all kinds of negativity in life.
Is Apache Tears a Birthstone or Zodiac Crystal?
The apache tears are not a birthstone. However, it is considered a zodiac crystal.
Apache Tears is Zodiac Crystal Stone for Scorpio, Capricorn, and Sagittarius
Apache tear is a powerful amulet for those born under the banner of Scorpio. Scorpios tend to be very passionate, and intense and carry fiery energies. It is also the sign ruled by the god of war, Mars, and the god of the underworld Pluto.
Such intense energy can be quite advantageous to the Scorpios. However, it is also crucial that they stay protected when brimming with such intense emotions. And this is where the apache tears sweep in.
Being an intense crystal formed from fire and earth energies and then smoothened by water frequency, the apache tears can provide stability and balance in a Scorpio’s emotional and physical body. Its mirror-like appearance also helps Scorpios to look deeper into their inner selves. Not only that, but this crystal can also help them stay grounded even when moving deeper into the murky depths of themselves for shadow work. This should bring greater healing to their life.
Apache tears are also suitable for those born under the zodiac Capricorn. People born under this banner tend to be serious, strong-willed, and quite determined to accomplish what they want. They are also patient and honest individuals and are great and funny companions.
The apache tears can help in strengthening such characteristics while also protecting the Capricorn from over-demanding energies. This stone can help hide the ever-willing Capricorns from the draining energies of toxic and negative people.
Lastly, the Sagittarius can also benefit from the energies of apache tears. The fiery, supportive, and soothing energies of obsidian pair well with the honest, adventurous, and needy Sagittarians. This stone can serve as a powerful protector for the Sagittarians always leaping around and dashing out to their next adventure without looking at their destination.
So, whenever the Sagittarians are flying too high which can sweep them off of their feet, the energies of apache tears can help keep them grounded in a way that does not make them feel bound or gagged. It simply sends out the excess energy flowing down to mother earth while keeping their feet planted on the ground.
Meditation with Apache Tears
The apache tear, unlike the regular black obsidians, carries gentle energy of healing suitable for the newbies in meditation. This stone can help you dive deep into your subconscious and provide a clear view of your mind and thoughts.
This should inspire understanding and wisdom that can be attained through meditation and reflection. This stone is also great for stimulating total surrendering during meditative states.
How to Cleanse and Charge Apache Tears?
Like any protective and grounding crystal, it is crucial that you keep your apache tears charged and cleansed. This is even more crucial if you use it during times of intense suffering or emotional breakdowns. This stone can become clogged and filled with negative energies that hinder it from properly working. Thus, recharging and cleansing your stone on a daily basis can ensure the smooth flow of beneficial and positive frequencies.
Physically cleaning your apache tears is quite easy. You simply wash it in warm soapy waters. Using your fingers or a clean cloth, you can remove the accumulated debris and dust from its surface. Then, you can rinse it and pat dry it with a cloth.
As a stone that welcomes all elements into its soul, the apache tears can be charged in several ways. The simplest way to do so is to let it soak in the powerful lunar energies. Leave this stone overnight during a full moon to recharge its exhausted energies.
With its strong connection to the earth, the apache tears also like soaking up in earthy energies. Leaving it in your garden or burying it in a pot filled with nutrient-rich soil can soak up the negative vibes and recharge its energies.
If you want a cleaner approach, you can try soaking it in seawater or burying it in a bowl filled with sea salt. Doing so will remove the toxicity from the stone. Also, you can simply smudge the stone with your favorite herb or incense stick.
If you have a singing bowl, you can try sound cleansing and charging. Apache tears respond really well to this kind of healing vibration. Lastly, you can simply let your apache tears charge with large crystal quartz from your collection.
Final Thoughts
The apache tears are stones holding great spiritual significance. Its energies can bring intense healing and cleansing of negativity in your daily life. In its truest form, the apache tea will emanate gentle energies, allowing you to cope with emotional and spiritual traumas and changes.
