Practical Witchery: Don't make gem stone elixers.

 Dear Reader,

There's a popular practice of putting gem stones (precious and semi-precious ones) into water to make an elixer that 'absorbs' the magical qualities of the stones that you can drink to acquire something of that essence. I can tell you right now, this is a terrible practice and a great way to poison yourself or someone else. You don't know what stones are water soluble and what ones are not. If you're using alcohol, the likelihood of dissolving something goes up because alcohol is a very good chemical for dissolving things. It's one of the reason why it is used in cleaning products.

If you want to infuse the energy of your gem stones into your elixers, there are much safe ways than dunking them into a solution and waiting to see what happens. Just as you can transfer energy from one item to another by creating a magical tie through the use of a wand and focused personal energy, you can do the same with gem stones and your water or alcohol base. Make sure that all other ingredients of your elixer are potable and safe to consume if they're going into the water or alcohol. Other wise, draw your energetic tie from the item sitting in your work space to your solution and let it sit until you can tell the energy has hit its saturation point.

Be safe with your elixers and potions. Remember the basics of chemistry and home chemical safety (i.e. never mix chlorine with ammonia or urine). And make sure that everything that you're putting into the elixer is safe for consumption. You can use energetic ties to build up the resonant energy in your elixer for all other components. That's what you're doing when you steep them in the liquid.