Amethyst
Also Purple quartz
Transparent purple, from pale lilac to a deep grape, and the colour is usually uneven: it sits in bands, or gathers in the crystal tips and thins away towards the base.
- Crystal system
- Trigonal
- Hardness
- 7 Mohs
- Handling
- Amethyst fades in sunlight, and it does not come back. A month on a bright sill or a car dashboard will take a deep purple to a washed grey-pink for good, so keep it out of direct sun. Heat does the same faster, which is why a great deal of the citrine on sale is baked amethyst. Otherwise it is easy: hard, safe in water and salt, no dust hazard.
- In water
- Safe
What it is held to be for
The name is Greek and means not drunken. Pliny reports the promise, wear it and you will not be overcome by wine, and says the magi lie when they claim more. The Church kept it anyway: amethyst is the bishop's stone. Agrippa's own tables list it among the things of Mars; the later planetary tables give it to Jupiter, and that is the line taken here.
Pliny XXXVII, on amethystos; Agrippa, Occult Philosophy I
Correspondences
These are the tradition's ascriptions, not properties of the mineral.
- Planet
- Jupiter, Mars
- Element
- Water
- Signs
- Sagittarius, Pisces, Aquarius
- Chinese phase
- Water
- Year animal
- Pig, Rat
- Centre
- Crown Sahasrara
- Sephirah
- Chesed
How it is used
Kept by the bed or under the pillow, and worn when you want to stay clear-headed in company. Keep it off the window ledge, because a summer on a bright sill will take the purple out of it for good.
Today
Put it under your pillow before you go out for the evening. When you come home, hold it and decide honestly whether the night was as good as it felt.
A longer working
On a Thursday night, in the dark, set the amethyst in a cup of water on the bedside table, the stone in the cup, the cup where you will see it first thing. Before sleep, name one thing you keep doing that you would rather not. Say it plainly, without excuse. In the morning, pour the water into a houseplant and put the stone back in a drawer, out of the light. Repeat weekly until the sentence changes.
Works with
- Herb
- Lavender
- Incense
- Sandalwood