Aventurine
Also Green aventurine, Indian jade
Opaque to lightly translucent green, sometimes peach, grey or blue, with a soft glitter from flecks of mica scattered through it.
- Crystal system
- Trigonal
- Hardness
- 6.5-7 Mohs
- Handling
- Hard and durable, and safe in water. The green comes from flecks of chromium mica, which pale after months of direct sun, so keep it off a bright windowsill. Otherwise it takes daily wear without complaint.
- In water
- Safe
What it is held to be for
Aventurine's name comes from an accident. Venetian glassmakers spilled copper filings into a melt in the seventeenth century and got a glittering stone-like glass they called avventurina, by chance. The mineral was named after the imitation. Tradition took the glitter as a sign of fortune, and made aventurine the stone of the chance you have to take yourself.
Folk tradition; named after Venetian avventurina glass, 17th century
Correspondences
These are the tradition's ascriptions, not properties of the mineral.
- Planet
- Mercury, Jupiter
- Element
- Earth
- Signs
- Virgo, Taurus
- Chinese phase
- Wood
- Year animal
- Rabbit, Dragon
- Centre
- Heart Anahata
- Sephirah
- Netzach
How it is used
Kept where money moves: a purse, a till, a desk drawer, the pocket you interview in. Practice says carry it to the thing you are nervous of asking for, not home from it.
Today
Put the aventurine in your hand. Say out loud the one thing you want and have not asked for. Then ask for it today.
A longer working
Take a coin from your pocket and the aventurine, and set them together on the windowsill on a Wednesday morning. Leave them until dark. Spend the coin the next day on something small and unnecessary, a stamp or a loaf, and keep the stone. The tradition is that fortune answers movement rather than hoarding. Repeat whenever the money feels stuck.
Works with
- Herb
- Clover
- Incense
- Cinnamon