Apache Tears are a variety of Obsidian, a silica-rich, glassy volcanic rock with a water content of less than one percent. Their hardness is 5 to 5.5. Apache tears are native to Mexico and the Southwest of the USA. Apache Tears are roundish, about ½ inch to one inch in diameter, and are usually semitransparent and black, brown in color. Apache Tears can be used for grounding and for protection from negative energies. They link easily with one’s emotional body and can be used to cleanse and heal old wounds or emotional baggage one may be carrying from the past, whether in this life or a previous one. Apache Tears facilitate processing and release of frozen emotional patterns, especially those held below one’s level of awareness. Meditation with Apache Tears can open the floodgates of grief, allowing cleansing and release of feelings of woundedness or victimization. Apache Tears are excellent talismans of protection from all sorts of negative forces. They raise one’s level of psychic attunement so that one can “feel” the approach of threatening persons, situations or energies. They can be used to cleanse one’s auric field and etheric body of astral parasites, or one’s own self-inflicted limitations and burdens. Apache Tears ally themselves with grounding and protective stones such as Smoky Quartz, Black Tourmaline, Aegirine, Red Garnet and Healer’s Gold, as well as Moldavite, Tibetan Tektite and Libyan Gold Tektite.