Amazonite
Also Amazon stone, Green microcline
Opaque blue-green to soft turquoise, streaked and gridded with white where the feldspar has separated into fine bands.
- Crystal system
- Triclinic
- Hardness
- 6-6.5 Mohs
- Handling
- Hard enough for daily wear, but it cleaves in two directions, so a knock takes a chip off a corner. The blue-green comes from traces of lead held inside the feldspar: do not grind or polish it dry, and do not make an elixir with it. Prolonged sunlight pales the colour. A quick rinse and a dry cloth are fine.
- In water
- No
What it is held to be for
Amazonite was named for the Amazon in the eighteenth century, though nobody ever found the deposit there; the green stones traded from that river were probably something else entirely. It kept the name and gathered a reputation as the stone of plain speech. What the tradition asks of it is that you say the true thing without dressing it up.
Named for the Amazon, 18th century; folk tradition
Correspondences
These are the tradition's ascriptions, not properties of the mineral.
- Planet
- Mercury
- Element
- Air
- Signs
- Virgo, Aquarius
- Chinese phase
- Water
- Year animal
- Rabbit, Pig
- Centre
- Throat Vishuddha
- Sephirah
- Hod
How it is used
Worn at the throat, or kept beside a phone or a keyboard. Practice puts it near the place where you write the messages you are most tempted to soften.
Today
Read back what you just wrote with the amazonite in your hand. Cut every sentence that is only there to be liked. Then send it.
A longer working
On a Wednesday evening, take the amazonite and something you have written and not sent: a letter, a message, a resignation. Read it aloud. Mark every line that exists to make you look reasonable rather than to be understood, and strike them out. Rewrite what is left in your own voice. Put the stone on the page overnight, out of the sun. Decide in the morning, not now, whether to send it.
Works with
- Herb
- Chamomile
- Incense
- Myrrh