e47. Rainbow Obsidian for Awareness, Guardianship and Forgiveness in the Dimensions of the Unconscious

August 06, 2026

This one came from a request in the YouTube comments, and the timing was perfect. Sarah dives into rainbow obsidian — what it actually is geologically, what it does energetically, and why it might be the most unapologetic stone in the mineral kingdom. Obsidian forms when magma cools too fast to crystallize, which is why it's technically not a crystal at all — it's volcanic glass. That same amorphous structure is what lets it fracture into an edge sharp enough to use as a surgical blade, and it's also what makes it such a clear black mirror. Sarah walks through why that mirror quality matters: obsidian doesn't soften anything, it shows you exactly what's in your unconscious, no filter, no fluff. From there the episode moves into the deeper work — the 75-floor apartment building metaphor for the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mind, why Carl Jung called the unconscious the thing quietly running your life while you call it fate, and how obsidian acts as a hinge that lets shadow material rise up out of the dark and into view. Sarah also gets into: Why forgiveness — especially of yourself — is the real work once something surfaces The "altar of the heart" practice for taking something you're carrying and lifting it up to be met by the divine Why rainbow obsidian specifically is the heart-centered version of this work, and how the rainbow represents the field of all possibility A story about John Dee using black obsidian as a scrying mirror, and what that says about obsidian as a portal stone Why obsidian is a stone for people who are in denial or avoiding their own initiation — it doesn't let you look away In this episode: What makes obsidian a mineraloid rather than a true crystal, and why that matters for how it works The unconscious as an iceberg — and why obsidian is one of the few stones built to go there Forgiveness as the mechanism, not just the outcome, of shadow work How to use rainbow obsidian on the body during a session Why obsidian has always been known as a protector and guardian through the dark Mentioned in this episode: Join the newsletter for updates on upcoming trainings and free talks Enter the Cave — Level 1 Certification in Stone Medicine & Crystal Healing, live online this fall — join the waitlist to hear first Clarity Crystal Shop — ethically sourced, all-natural stones hand-selected by Sarah Got a stone you want covered on the podcast? Drop it in the comments on YouTube.

Episode Transcript

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[00:00:00] Well, hello, and welcome to episode 47 of the Crystal Clarity podcast. My name is Sarah Thomas, and I will be your guide for the journey through episode 47, which is going to be about rainbow obsidian. I received a request to speak about rainbow obsidian in the comments on YouTube, and it said, "Sarah, will you please talk about rainbow obsidian?

I feel like it's always been a very powerful stone for me, and I would love to hear what you have to say about it." And I'm happy to, and it is perfect, right timing, so thank you for this request. Before we dive in, I would love to ask you all to join my newsletter and receive emails from me about things coming up, and the trainings that we have, and connect into some of the knowledge that I share in the newsletter.

And all you have to do is click the link below to get that, because there's a lot of good things going on at the school, the Upper Clarity School of Stone Medicine, and it's always good to be connected and hear about things first. And we also have our [00:01:00] crystal shop, the Clarity Crystal Shop, and that is where we have stones for all of our students that are related to the stones that we're studying and what we're going through, that are all natural.

We don't carry any synthetically altered stones, and we carry amazing stones, ethically sourced, uh, from around the world, from great people. And some of the most powerful and chi-filled stones that you can find will be there, and I hand-select all of them. So the newsletter will get you connected to all of that.

And the other thing is that we are having Enter the Cave. I believe it will be our ninth year, maybe... Yeah, maybe our ninth year of Enter the Cave this year, which is our certification course that you can take in stone medicine and crystal healing, that is so deep and so profound and so different from what you're used to in crystal healing education.

You can learn so many things that you can bring into your work and practices, and really serve with, that have a real ancient tradition behind them and a lot of depth behind them. [00:02:00] And so that begins every fall, and I would love for you to get on the wait list for Enter the Cave, because if you do decide to take that journey with me this fall in the live online training, it is good to be on the wait list, 'cause those are the first people that ever hear about anything or get to do anything.

So join me for that. Okay, welcome to new people. Welcome to old people who have been following the story. Thank you so much for joining, clicking the links, and doing things, and just connecting so that I know that you're here. Also, leaving comments is great. I'm, I'm really excited to just be able to respond to a comment today and share with you about rainbow obsidian.

And let's dive right in. So- The rainbow is the cherry on top. The obsidian is what we really want to talk about and remind ourselves about. And the rainbow's gonna come in at the end, and it has an important feature to it. But before we go into the rainbow, we [00:03:00] really have to go into the obsidian. And the obsidian is a stone that is formed in volcanic processes where magma cools quickly on the surface of the earth, and this magma cooling really quickly turns into this iron, magnesium-rich amorphous stone.

So it's not really a crystal because it doesn't have one of the seven crystal systems. It's amorphous, almost more like glass. So it's like a black glass. And the obsidian is, because it's amorphous, it gets a special superpower out of that. It is able to be so thin, it is able to break so thin that it can be used as a scalpel or a surgical blade.

There can be just a few atoms of thickness in an obsidian at the end of a blade of obsidian [00:04:00] holding together. So that is very, very sharp and very exacting, and it has to do with that amorphous crystal structure. Well, non-crystal structure that it has. So it becomes this very exacting, sharp blade born from these volcanic processes, and it's this black stone, right?

When you hold it up, it's very shiny and it's like a mirror, and you can see yourself in obsidian like a mirror. You can see into the black mirror. It's the black mirror. And there's other mirrors in stone medicine. This is the black mirror. And, um, I wanna kinda start by saying that it is a powerful stone.

It really is... W- when I have worked with obsidian in really deep relationship with it, in the moments that I really feel like I'm talking to it and engaging with it deeply, it is like a straight to the point stone. It is that friend that you have that [00:05:00] just says it like it is, that goes right to the truth.

Um, sometimes feels like there's no filter, just in your face, "Let's bring this up right into your face and deal with it," kind of stone, which I really appreciate. It's like exacting and going right to the point. It can really find what needs to be seen and go right to the point with that. It just doesn't create a lot of fluff around anything.

So sometimes that can feel hard, like we didn't wanna really see that, we didn't really wanna face that truth. But that's what it is, and that's the gift that it brings. And the important part about obsidian too is that it goes to the unconscious. Now, you are like a great big apartment building where it has 75 floors on the apartment building, and you are just living on the 75th floor on the top, and you have no idea what's going on on [00:06:00] the 74 flows, floors below you.

That is actually what it is like, the conscious, the subconscious, and the unconscious. So there's all this stuff going on inside you that you don't even know is happening. There's all of so much patterns in your jing, past life programs, karmas programs, beliefs, things inherited, things installed that you have no idea what's going on.

I just-- I really want you to embrace for a moment. Like you are on the top floor of 75 floors. There's 75 four more floors inside you. You really don't know what's going on, and that's actually a little bit scary if you think about it. It's like, wow, there could be a bunch of termites on one floor. There could be a bunch of rats on one floor.

There could be a bunch of entities on another floor. There could be all kind of crazy beliefs about money or love, et cetera, on one floor that you're not even seeing, that you don't even know are there, and that's the unconscious. I mean, [00:07:00] it is generous to say that you're conscious about 5% of what's going on with you.

It's really probably more like 1% or less. We just-- we are like an iceberg, and we have all of this stuff within us from lifetimes, from, you know, the vastness of our soul over time is millions and billions of years old. And Carl Jung said it best when he said that it's really the unconscious is controlling your life and creating your life, and you're just up here calling it fate.

"Oh, I guess I was supposed to meet that person. I guess I was supposed to get fired." It's actually your unconscious and all those grids and programs and projections from your unconscious creating your life and your relationships, like, like it's mirroring all around you. It's projecting all around you.

Now, sometimes by grace These millions and billions of programs within us, and they, they're not all bad. You've got [00:08:00] millions and billions of programs within you. Some are good, some are bad. And what I mean by good and bad is that good basically helps us live a life where we remember the spiritual light, and we have success, and, like, we feel good in our lives.

Bad programs are things that can hold us down, make us sad, make us not fulfill our destiny potentially. So that's very general, but we all have a lot of good and bad programs installed in us from our parents and our ancestral lines and also our cosmic jing, which is- includes all these other things. And, um, when we have these moments of grace, sometimes we will see...

It's like all the stuff in our unconscious will come into our periphery, and we kinda see it. We're like, "Holy moly, that's what's going on on the 63rd floor," and we see it. Now, if we choose to repress it back in that moment, that's one thing. If we choose to [00:09:00] pull it front and center in that moment, that's another thing.

Perhaps this is all happening by grace. I mean, I know to see is to be free, and that grace helps us to see. It's really our divine that helps us to see. It's a higher consciousness. It's not the consciousness that we're in. It helps us to see. It helps us to have that moment. We have some kinda choice, though, of, like, if we wanna pull it front and center and deal with it and look at it or if we wanna push it back again.

And in the movie, um, the Guy Ritchie movie, King Arthur, which is a really good movie, great movie, and nobody talks about it. It's an underrated movie. But there's a scene in there where the mage, who is, like, the, the woo, the magician for King Arthur, she says to him, "The difference between a man and a king is that a man just keeps pushing everything in the periphery back down, and a king brings the periphery front and center and deals with things and faces them head-on [00:10:00] and kind of, like, tells the truth to himself."

So, that's a play right there that is taking place that obsidian is involved in that Letting things come out of the unconscious and letting things also in the unconscious that are in the shadow realms to come up and out. And by shadow realms, I just mean the things that are really hard to look at, the things from our past that we're like, "Oh, God, I cannot believe I did that," and we just push it back down.

"I cannot believe I hurt that person that way," and we can just push it back down. Or we can bring it front and center and deal with it. But, um, that unconscious, that shadow material, and I think there's... There-- I mean, we are all hard on ourselves, and we all have a lot of shame, and I think that, I mean, in, in ways about our past, like, there's not anybody who's free of shame totally.

There's not anybody who's free of guilt totally. It's just part of walking around with this ancient mind that we call the self. [00:11:00] But when we have these moments where these things come up into our periphery from the shadow realms, it's, it is really so easy as, for us to push that back down. Now, I'm talking about...

I mean, we all have had relationships where we hurt people. I mean, we all have had relationships where we, like, really hurt people. We have relationships where we hurt nature. We just-- We have so much of that, you know? And the question is, starting to rain really hard as I say this. The question is, like, is this gonna come up and out, and are we gonna deal with it?

And I, I really want to say that obsidian is this hinge. It's this hinge of these things coming out of the shadow. It's this hinge of this unconscious because it is a black mirror. It's the black mirror, so it's going to show you what's in the dark. It's gonna show you what's in your unconscious. It's gonna show you what is in those 74 layers, [00:12:00] the 74 floors under the 75th floor, and there's a lot.

It shows it in a non-apologetic way. It shows it in a straight to the point way. I mean, sometimes it'll just punch you in the face. It just feels like something actually punched you in the face. But sometimes we need to punch in the face or water thrown on our face, you know, to, like, get it. Obsidian's like that.

It's like, phew. So we th- see these things in the black mirror. We see ourselves. We see our shadow parts. And I do wanna really, um, share about- This p- these pieces in us that we have repressed or we keep pushing back to the unconscious, they're so painful, and I just wanna keep illuminating. It's just human to have this, so we've got to bring forgiveness to this, and we've got to be devoted to forgiveness.

We've gotta be devoted to inner [00:13:00] forgiveness. Don't worry about forgiving others, 'cause when you forgive yourself, it trickles out to everybody else. Don't worry about telling the truth to others, 'cause when you tell the truth to yourself, it trickles out to everybody else. Don't worry about loving others, 'cause when you love yourself, it just trickles out to everybody else.

And particularly around forgiveness with this obsidian, because these are things in dark places. These are things in shadow places. These are things in kind of like hard and unknown territories, and there's a lot of fear in the unconscious, too. That is, like, the one emotion that's gonna be coming up with a lot of this stuff and underneath a lot of what we're feeling with the unconscious.

So forgiveness is key. And just commit. Even as I'm saying this, be like, "Can I be commi- committed to forgiveness inside myself?" And I was just telling this to my class. Now

We, [00:14:00] all we have to do is when grace s- shows us something that's down there that's hard to see or in a shadow realm or that's really scary or that we've repressed for a long time, when it comes into the periphery, we just wanna be having a choice that in that moment, we wanna raise that stuff up to the heart.

And all we have to do is raise it up to the level of the heart, okay? So you're down there with those hard things. You're down there with that person you hurt. You're down there with that animal you hurt. You're down there with that awful time you went unconscious and did whatever was so bad, you know?

It's like it's being down there in those parts like, "That was so bad what I did." And you've gotta just be committed to forgiveness enough just to get it up to your heart. And at the heart here, [00:15:00] at this point, Ren-17 at the heart, which is, it's right within... It's right, it's between the nipples, um, right in the center of the chest.

It's like at the, the exact center of the heart chakra. If you can get this phenomenon up to the altar of the heart. You can just lay it on the altar of the heart, and that is where the spiritual light, your heart and the spiritual light of the divine can touch that and take it the rest of the way. If you can be committed to forgiveness enough to get this, just, just get it up to here.

Just be like, "I can look at the face of this person I hurt. I can, like, I can feel that moment. I can feel that memory. I can bring light into it and compassion and gentleness and forgiveness enough into that moment just enough to get it up to here." Just get it up to here. And what I mean is this is called altar of the heart.

I want you to lay this down then on the altar of the heart. Just give it [00:16:00] to God is what I'm saying. Give it to your divine. The heart is where your divine can touch it. Your heart is where your divine can, like, spill the rest of the spiritual light on it, where you can feel absolved of your sins fully, where you can feel like you forgive yourself fully.

And when you leave that stuff down there, the hard things that have happened, the bad things that you have done, you know, what I've always been aware of in my life is that you want those people, animals, lands, every, every living thing that was involved in any of those situations, you don't want them trapped down in the darkness of your own body.

You don't want them trapped down in the darkness of your own form. Like, if you can even just do it for them, just get them up to the light of the heart, the altar of the heart for them, 'cause just let them be free. 'Cause they can be fully free. When they're partly trapped in your body and your own unconscious like that and your own repressed [00:17:00] pain like that, it's...

Their, their, their whole, like, grid of who they are is not able to just be fully free Use all the spiritual light you can to just get it to here at least, and the divine will take it the rest of the way. Now, how all of that darkness and repression and obsidian, it shows you what's there. It also takes you there, and it also protects you in those places.

It can handle all that heat, right? It can handle all that. It, it's, it's like a guardian that walks with you through those worlds and says, "We can do this. We can do hard things." It has always been a protection for people. It has always been a guardian through the shadow worlds and through the dark nights.

And when the obsidian brings it up, what is that? It's an eruption. You know, volcanic stones, when they bring things up, it's... [00:18:00] Volcanic stones can cause an eruption, so they, they hold the energy of something erupting, something finally releasing, something finally getting free. So that imprint is there.

Obsidian is formed when something finally erupts, it finally gets free. So it's gonna cause these eruptions from the unconscious, and I just want you to trace it up there with your own devotion to your own forgiveness, your own devotion to setting free the, the, your inner child, the people that you hurt, the, the things that you feel like you hurt, like the darkness inside you, the things you can't forgive yourself for.

Trace it up there. Just give it enough light from your own self. Give it enough compassion from your own self to just at least get it up to here, and then I promise you can give it to the divine

The rainbow is the heart. The rainbow is always the heart. So when you... The rainbow is all possibility, right? [00:19:00] It's all colors of visible light. When we see a rainbow, we see all possibilities, so there's a totality, there's a completeness, there's a wholeness. It's like this is the all when we see the rainbow.

So it reminds us of higher worlds, places of much greater possibility, places like heaven. Um, and that is living in your heart. The rainbow is living in your heart. The rainbow crystalline grid is how you are connected to your divine through your heart. That is what the rainbow crystalline grid is. It's all possibility.

So just getting that pain just up to the altar of the heart, where the rainbow of the heart can shine on it, where all possibility can shine on it, that's rainbow obsidian. Rainbow obsidian can help you with that whole thing. Can I lift this pain and what I haven't been able to forgive myself for and what's hidden down there up to the level of the heart and let the rainbow touch it?

Let the light of the divine touch it. Let all possibility, the field of all possibility touch it. And you've [00:20:00] gotta give it, give it at that point. You know? You can get it so far, and then give it to your divine. Obsidian, like I always feel like rainbow obsidian is ... I wanna use this stone with someone when I feel like they're just being delusional, being in denial, won't look at the shadow parts, just keep saying everything's great, just keep saying they're great, or like they won't take the initiation journey.

Obsidian will rock them into that initiation journey. And it's also just great for somebody if they just keep repressing something that's really painful and holding it in pain, and therefore holding everything involved with it in pain, to just be like, "Can we like have this protector, this guardian, this," um

It's kind of like a guardian angel on that journey through bringing things out of just our periphery and just [00:21:00] bring it front and center so we can see it. The black mirror. We see our own shadow side.

John Dee, the famous magician from England and, um, occultist and alchemist, would use black obsidian to summon all of these, like, demons and dark for- forces out of the black mirror, because mirrors can be portals. They can be places where other dimensional energy can enter this dimension. So he's known for using black obsidian to, like, summon dark forces.

Now, I'm not saying you're bl- having black sidi- obsidian around you or anything is gonna summon dark forces. But I wanna say that the, the obsidian and these mirror stones are also portals, and you can use them as, uh, intentionally use them as something that you can walk through to take a journey into kind of another dimension of yourself.[00:22:00]

So you can walk through the shadow of the black mirror or walk through the black mirror into your own shadow side, to your own unconscious, to your own, uh, places of repression. Man, if the difference... Like, if the mage was right, and the difference between a king and a man is that a man keep things in repression and pushes things back out of the periphery, and a man pulls them front and center, that takes courage, and the only reason we don't do that is because of fear.

And obsidian has always been a stone that is powerful in dealing with fear. It's just will help you deal with... It makes you feel strong, makes you feel like, "I can go into this battle. I can dance with these devils." That's it, my friend. That's it, my friend, in the comments. And hopefully, you guys, that is how I would use rainbow obsidian.

Just, you got it, okay? And place it on the heart, but track that journey with people. Help [00:23:00] people bring things up out. You can also place it in the places right below the heart where that journey of darkness kind of comes through until it hits the light of the shine, until it hits the light of the heart.

An eruption, an exacting stone, a boss, a protector, a guardian, a straightforward stone, a truth teller, um, someone that helps you see, helps you see yourself, and helps you see your shadow sides and can lift all of that up into the light of forgiveness, the light of the heart, and the light of all possibility.

I love you guys all. I'll see you soon, okay? Thank you for listening. I'll see you-- Hopefully I'll see you in Enter the Cave this year, and, um, we also have f- some free talks coming up soon, so just get on the newsletter and you'll get all of that. I'll see you soon. Take care. I love episode 47. I love the number 47, so thanks for being here.