Why Your Gemstone Isn’t Working: The Tantric Way to Energize It

Remedies · Gemstones · 9 min read

Tirth Doshi · Vedic astrologer, Ahmedabad · Parāśarī and Jaimini, True Citrapakṣa ayanāṁśa · about the author · 21 October 2026

If your pukhrāj or nīlam has done nothing for you in years, there is a good chance nobody ever put life into it. What the jeweller calls energizing is a wash. This is the Tantric method of prāṇa pratiṣṭhā, the way my jyotish guru taught it, with the full mantra.

A good number of people who come to me for a reading are already wearing a stone. A pukhrāj on the index finger, or a nīlam they bought in a panic when sāḍe sātī started. Some of them have had it on for two or three years, nothing has changed, and they want to know whether the astrologer gave them the wrong stone.

Sometimes they did, and I’ll come to that. But the first thing I ask is whether the stone was energized before they put it on. Most of them say yes, the jeweller did it. Then I ask what exactly the jeweller did, and whose name was said while doing it.

Ask yourself the same two questions about your own stone. If you don’t know the answer to the second one, or the answer is nobody’s, your stone was washed and never energized.

What your jeweller calls energizing

One of the well-known gem sellers in Jaipur describes prāṇa pratiṣṭhā on its own website like this. You put the ring in a copper or silver bowl, add a spoon or two each of honey, ghee, tulsi leaves, raw milk and Gaṅgājal, “keep it for at least five minutes”, chant the planet’s mantra 108 times, put kumkum and rice on it and wear it. Another big online seller writes that prāṇa pratiṣṭhā “is normally carried out by expert priests who have a good knowledge of all the four Vedas” and “consists of 16 traditional rites”, and then the steps it actually gives you are a 10 to 20 minute dip in pañcāmṛta and the same 108 recitations.

Five minutes in milk and honey, and it is being sold to people as prāṇa pratiṣṭhā. Every website tells you the same thing because they never do any research of their own. All they know is to copy from one place and paste into another. It is a big misery that so many of our rituals have lost the way they were meant to be done and have come down to milk and honey. We have to do better than this and bring the change.

Washing a stone is fine. It has been through a mine, a cutter’s wheel, a dealer’s paper packet and a jeweller’s counter, and a wash in Gaṅgājal does it no harm. The japa is worship of the planet, which is also good. Neither of them puts life into the stone though, and putting life into it is the only thing the words prāṇa pratiṣṭhā mean.

Prāṇa pratiṣṭhā

Every mūrti in a temple started as a stone that a sculptor carved. Until the day it is installed it is just a lifeless stone, and the sculptor moves it around his workshop like any other block. On the day of installation the priest performs prāṇa pratiṣṭhā and establishes life in it. From that moment only, the deity enters it and worship is carried out before it.

Nobody does pūjā to a statue that is still lying in the sculptor’s workshop. Yet that is exactly what you are doing when you wear a stone that was only washed. My jyotish guru always said that a stone in this state is jaḍa, dead matter. It can be flawless and certified and it will still sit on your finger like a rock, until someone gives it prāṇa and tells it who it belongs to.

The mantra

The rite my guru taught is built on the prāṇa pratiṣṭhā in the Mantra Mahodadhi, the Tantric manual Mahīdhara wrote in Kāśī around 1588. You will find it in the very first chapter, alongside bhūta śuddhi and nyāsa, the groundwork that comes before everything else in that book.

The mantra calls three things into the stone, one after the other. First the prāṇa (prāṇāḥ iha prāṇāḥ, “the breath is here”). Then the jīva (jīva iha sthitaḥ, “the living self is seated here”). Then the indriyas, each one called by name, the five senses, the five organs of action and the mind, and all of them asked to come and stay sukhaṁ ciraṁ, happily and for a long time.

There are two blanks in it, one for the stone and one for the person wearing it. Why the wearer’s name? Because the stone is being given life for one person only. That is also why a stone that was energized for your father or your brother has to be done again before you put it on.

ॐ आं ह्रीं क्रों यं रं लं वं शं षं सं हं सः सोऽहम् अस्यां [रत्ननाम] [धारकनाम] प्राणाः इह प्राणाः ।
ॐ आं ह्रीं क्रों यं रं लं वं शं षं सं हं सः सोऽहम् अस्यां [रत्ननाम] [धारकनाम] जीव इह स्थितः ।
ॐ आं ह्रीं क्रों यं रं लं वं शं षं सं हं सः सोऽहम् अस्यां [रत्ननाम] [धारकनाम] सर्वेन्द्रियाणि वाङ्मनस्त्वक्चक्षुःश्रोत्रजिह्वाघ्राणपाणिपादपायूपस्थानि इहैवागत्य सुखं चिरं तिष्ठन्तु स्वाहा ॥

oṁ āṁ hrīṁ kroṁ yaṁ raṁ laṁ vaṁ śaṁ ṣaṁ saṁ haṁ saḥ so’ham asyāṁ [ratna] [dhāraka] prāṇāḥ iha prāṇāḥ |
oṁ āṁ hrīṁ kroṁ yaṁ raṁ laṁ vaṁ śaṁ ṣaṁ saṁ haṁ saḥ so’ham asyāṁ [ratna] [dhāraka] jīva iha sthitaḥ |
oṁ āṁ hrīṁ kroṁ yaṁ raṁ laṁ vaṁ śaṁ ṣaṁ saṁ haṁ saḥ so’ham asyāṁ [ratna] [dhāraka] sarvendriyāṇi vāṅmanastvakcakṣuḥśrotrajihvāghrāṇapāṇipādapāyūpasthāni ihaivāgatya sukhaṁ ciraṁ tiṣṭhantu svāhā ||

“In this stone, for this wearer, the breath is here. The living self is seated here. All the faculties, speech and mind, touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell, the hands, the feet and the organs below, come here and stay happily for a long time. Svāhā.”

The prāṇa pratiṣṭhā mantra as my jyotish guru taught it · built on the Mantra Mahodadhi, first taraṅga

Where it says [ratna], say the name of your stone (māṇikya, pukhrāj, nīlam and so on), and where it says [dhāraka], say your own name. Then close with this verse.

ॐ अस्यै प्राणाः प्रतिष्ठन्तु अस्यै प्राणाः क्षरन्तु च ।
अस्यै देवत्वमर्चायै मामहेति च कश्चन ॥

oṁ asyai prāṇāḥ pratiṣṭhantu asyai prāṇāḥ kṣarantu ca |
asyai devatvam arcāyai māmaheti ca kaścana ||

“May the breath of life be established in this, may it flow in this, and may this hold the divine presence for worship.”

The closing verse of the rite

How to do it

Do it on the weekday of the stone’s planet, in that planet’s horā. Every weekday starts with the horā of its own planet at sunrise, so the simplest time is the first hour after sunrise. In Ahmedabad that is roughly 6:40 to 7:35 am in late October, and earlier in summer.

Rāhu and Ketu have no weekday of their own. For them you go by the lord of the sign they are sitting in, so if Rāhu is in Gemini in your chart, your gomed gets done on a Wednesday in Mercury’s horā.

On the day:

1. Recite the aṣṭottara śatanāmāvalī of the planet, its 108 names. For Rāhu and Ketu, recite their own 108 names (only the day and the horā come from the sign lord).
2. Keep the stone in your left palm and cover it with your right hand.
3. Holding it like that, say the mantra three times, with the stone’s name and your own name in the blanks.
4. Say the closing verse and put the stone on.

You will find the aṣṭottara of each graha in any Navagraha pūjā book.

Doing it again

If you take the stone off for a long time, the prāṇa pratiṣṭhā has to be done again before you put it back on, on the planet’s day and in its horā, the same way as the first time. The same goes for a stone that passes to someone else in the family. It was given life in your name, so it has to be done again in theirs.

Before you energize anything

Once a stone has life in it, it works. That is the whole point of doing this, and it is also why you should be very sure about the stone first, because a wrong stone that has been properly energized will work just as hard in the wrong direction.

A lot of stones are still sold by Moon sign (the “rāśi ratna”) or by birth month. Neither tells you whether that planet is good for you. I choose a stone from the lagna, the yogakāraka and where the planet is actually placed. If the planet is a yogakāraka for your lagna and it is well placed, you can close your eyes and wear its stone. If it rules bad houses for you, you should never wear it, however hard it is being pushed on you.

Then there is the finger. The index finger is the ahaṅkāra, the ego, which is why we fold it down in jñāna mudrā when we sit to pray. A stone on that finger feeds the ego. Any spiritual person, or anyone giving spiritual advice, should never ever prescribe a stone on the index finger, because that person will have to take another birth for it. And the index finger is exactly where most people are told to wear their pukhrāj.

I also don’t give a fifth-house stone to anyone who has children or is planning to have them. The fifth house is your children, your students, your successors and the people under you, and wearing that stone is deciding for all of them, and it can turn and affect the children.

The left hand works the other way round. A stone on the left hand suppresses a planet instead of strengthening it, so you can use it to hold down a māraka or Rāhu for the length of its daśā (the Vimśottarī daśā calculator gives you the dates) and take it off when the daśā is over. Never put the stone of your lagna lord on the left hand.

Questions people ask

How do I know if my gemstone is energized?

Ask whoever did it what they did and whose name they said. If it was a soak in milk and 108 recitations and no name was said, it was washed.

Can I energize a gemstone myself, or do I need a pandit?

You can do it yourself, and it is better that you do, because it is your name that goes into the mantra.

Is soaking a gemstone in milk the same as energizing it?

No. The soak cleans the stone. Prāṇa pratiṣṭhā is what puts life into it.

Which finger should I wear pukhrāj on?

That depends on your chart. The one finger I never use is the index finger, for the reason above.

How do I re-energize a gemstone?

If it has been off your finger for a long time, do the full prāṇa pratiṣṭhā again on the planet’s day and in its horā.

Can I wear a gemstone that was energized for someone else?

Only after it has been done again in your name.

Sources: Mantra Mahodadhi of Mahīdhara, first taraṅga (prāṇa pratiṣṭhā), in the Sri Satguru edition with the Naukā commentary (Delhi, 1981); the mantra, the closing verse and the procedure as my jyotish guru taught them.