Many people use the large plates in their refrigerators to enhance flavor and freshness. By placing a glass of water on a small purple plate for approximately 5 minutes, you induce the high spiritual vibration of the seventh color ray (violet.) Violet is also the color of the flame of Saint Germain, and corresponds with the 7th energy center in our bodies, also known as the crown chakra. Some people sleep with a plate beneath their pillow to ensure restfulness, even when one has only slept a short time. Others cannot sleep with the plates nearby, as they will remain awake. Wearing a small plate will cause most people to feel an increase in energy. Others find the best results wearing them for shorter periods of time, perhaps 30 minutes or an hour each day. The time spent wearing one all depends on the person and experimenting with the plates will let you know how much your particular chemistry is influenced by them. My own experience with purple plates, for the past 2 and a half years, has been an adventure to be sure. I regularly place all my drinking water on the plates and find that when I drink this water I am noticeably more energetic and less fatigued. However when I tried to sleep with a small purple plate under my pillow I suffered insomnia. I also tested placing inexpensive wine on the plate after reading that it would much improve the taste, and was nothing less than amazed by the results. Strangely though, others claim that it will turn quality wine to vinegar, and a mixed drink, such as vodka and soda, to mere water.

When I first read about purple plates in Linda Goodman's Star Signs book, I was hesitant to believe in the seemingly miraculous properties of these bright, strange looking plates, but I was extremely curious to see if they did in fact influence all she claimed they would. Goodman mentions that strangely the person who created the plates with Nikola Tesla preferred to remain anonymous. However, after the inventor's death the company which produced the plates decided to give him due credit. The inventor, Ralph Bergstresser, was born in 1912 in Pueblo, Colorado of German parents who immigrated to the United States.

He was extremely interested in free energy, or Zero Point Energy as it is now called in scientific circles. Bergstresser carefully studied anything written about Nikola Tesla's experiments, and attended many lectures given by Tesla. At one point they were introduced, and quickly became friends due to like interest in free energy. Over the course of the next 20 years until Tesla's death they had numerous conversations on the process of tapping free energy. After Tesla's death Bergstresser was able to discover the secret of altering the aluminum in the Positive Energy Plates from clues and notations in Tesla's notebooks.

Also instrumental in leading Bergstresser to the discovery of healing energy was an incident which took place while he was a guest of a maharaja in India some 60 years ago. Wrote Bergstresser; "The maharaja had an 8 month old son that was very sick. I asked if he was going to get a doctor. He said 'no, we have sent a man to obtain some holy water from the Ganges River.' In 3 days, the man came back with one gallon of water. They fed the water to the sick child and...and like magic, the child was healed and back to normal. To me, a miracle is an inability to understand a scientific fact. How could the water cure the child? That was the problem. It was this incident that triggered my curious mind to find the answer and this led me into the present knowledge."

He goes on to explain why the water of the Ganges purportedly has the power to heal. " For thousands of years the native population of India have used the water from the Ganges for healing. Gallon jugs of this water from the Ganges have been stored for over half a century at the University of Calcutta, and are still completely free if bacteria. What causes the water to have such fantastic healing powers? A tributary of water, that eventually finds its way into the Ganges River, originates and begins its long journey from high into the Himalayan Mountains. It is there, high in the mountains where the atmosphere is clear and clean, that nature begins the natural process of creating special water. This process starts when the mountain and its snow cover is bombarded by the higher energies of the Universe: known as cosmic energy. This bombardment by cosmic 4th dimensional energy alters the atomic and molecular structure of the rocks and granite that constitute these magnificent mountains, and in turn, changes the chemistry of the snow and water as it flows over them and down to the lowlands. This chemistry change is adding the Life Force Energy to the water. It is the Life Force Energy, which has now become an intricate part of the water, that produces the healing miracles of the Ganges River. The key to this phenomenon is now known and utilized to produce the energy plates and products." Bergstresser, who was also the author of a handful of metaphysical books, died in 1998 at the age of 86.

Perhaps most curious to me in Linda Goodman's description of the plates were the paragraphs concerning the influencing of persons with the plates. Within the more than dozen pages pertaining to Purple Plates in her book, Goodman writes that the plates possess the power to influence a person through the use of a photograph placed face down on the surface. She uses the example of a friend's husband who was an alcoholic prone to negative behavior, and who was badly in need of positivity. Soon after using the husband's photograph on the purple plate, he began a recovery which included sobriety and hopefulness. However, Goodman, as well as others, warn that leaving a photograph on the plate for any more than 15 minutes to a half hour at a time can cause nervousness or anxiety in some people. She also warns that attempting to influence a person in a negative fashion will not work.