Have Crystals Been Done To Death?

[JadedSidhe]

It seems psychic abilities are intimately tied to crystals. Its everywhere. They are used with mysticism, psychic healing, Wicca, and so on. Even in fiction and science fiction books, they are tied together.

I'm guilty of it.

In the story I'm writing there are people, and in some cases, entire races of people who have psychic abilities.
Abilities are tied to the 5 elements, planet/earth, wind, fire, water, spirit and that correspondence determines their abilities.

A couple of examples:
Planet:
(Planet, Land)
(Planet, Plants)
(Planet, Metals)
(Planet, Gravity)
*
Air:
(Air, Electricity)
(Air, Telekinesis)
(Air, Wind)
(Air, Levitation)
(Air, Aura)

While the 'how it all works' is the same, they aren't viewed as the same. (one culture considers it magic, another has the right of it, etc)

Some races have developed their psychic abilities alongside their technology and have even combined the two so it is part science/technology, part psychic abilities. (I still have no idea what to call the mix of tech and psychic abilities) One race has developed this to the point that crystals are used for a wide array of things, storage of energy, memories, histories, an entire library of information crystals. They can even use the crystals (providing they have the right correspondence) to link to computers and ships)

They have found certain crystals are able to amplify their abilities (sort of the way different types of crystals are used in Chakra healing and balancing).

After recently seeing several instances of crystal and magic/mystic/psychic connections, I'm rethinking my use of them. Is the concept still interesting or is it ho-hum, another psychic crystal connection?

[Amanita]

The Darkover series by Marion Zimmer-Bradley has done something quite similar, up to the parts of combining psychic abilites and technology. I really liked it there, but I do think it's a case where you should be careful not to come too close. She hasn't used an element-based system but the rest seemed quite like it. Everyone with magical abilites had a crystal of his or her own that was linked to him and someone else touching this crystal or taking it away meant extreme torture. They also used them for mining, transmitting information, healing and creation of weapons of mass destruction among other things.

Generally, I really like systems that combine magic and technology in some way and I don't mind crystals, quite the opposite. Their looks and property make them a rather obvious choice for magical doings.

[Saigonnus]

I don't think they are overly used at all, the majority of fantasy novels I have read make magic more of a natural force or internal force that don't need a physical catalyst. If I was going to use something along that lines, I would probably create a system that uses different elements instead of crystals and perhaps make "magic" more like alchemy.

[Benjamin Clayborne]

After recently seeing several instances of crystal and magic/mystic/psychic connections, I'm rethinking my use of them. Is the concept still interesting or is it ho-hum, another psychic crystal connection?

I dunno, sounds reasonable to me. The only issue I have with the idea of connecting crystal and psychic powers is when people go around claiming that it's possible in the real world. ;-) In fantasy fiction, magic-users actually using crystals as a magic focus (or for a variety of other purposes, as you said) seems entirely reasonable. I actually like the idea of them using the crystals for energy/data storage, and manipulating the energy/data by way of magic. Now I'm thinking about how to make a magic computer...

[ShortHair]

Have Crystals Been Done To Death?

Goodness gracious, I hope not!

[Lord Darkstorm]

I haven't seen them overused myself. I use them all the time in my fiction, but most of my use of them is data storage. I write more scifi than fantasy and in this case, crystals for storage has been used often enough it is easy for people to accept it as such without any real explanation.

[JadedSidhe]

The Darkover series by Marion Zimmer-Bradley has done something quite similar, up to the parts of combining psychic abilites and technology.

I've loved the Darkover series since my mother gave me Shattered Chain when I was sixteen. Ms Bradley has become such an icon in the sf/f genres and her works are so widely known, I'm not sure anyone could pair psychics with crystals and not have a connection made. Her writing has had a big influence on me and I am keeping that in mind where my writing is concerned.

Thanks for the replies. I'm feeling better about the crystal use, but I'm still considering swinging back and forth in the use of them. I might just keep them as, for lack of a better phrase, tech interfaces.

[Svrtnsse]

I'm not sure about overused, but I do feel that I see them a lot and that they're a little bit cliche. Then again there's probably a good reason for that. Crystals are mysterious, alluring and beautiful (like elves), and it's not hard to imagine that they may have magical powers.

It may be they're more common in computer games than in litterature though. In gaming, magical crystals are all over the place.

[ThinkerX]

For some reason I am reminded of the crystal radio's I used to build as a kid. Some of them didn't even have batteries...

[Anders Ämting]

I don't know about overdone, but a lot of the connotations crystals have in fiction (psychic powers, healing, spiritual containers, etc) strike me as kinda arbitrary. Like crystals can do stuff like that just because, and you could probably replace them with something else entirely and it would make just as much sense.