Azurite
Also Chessylite, Azzurro della Magna
Deep dark azure, almost navy in the mass, often streaked or crusted with green malachite; small crystals are glassy and translucent, earthy coatings dull
- Crystal system
- Monoclinic
- Hardness
- 3.5-4 Mohs
- Handling
- A copper carbonate, and the dust is toxic. Never grind, sand or lick it, and wash your hands after handling a raw specimen. Keep it out of water entirely, elixirs included. It is soft, acids destroy it, and in damp air it slowly alters to green malachite, which is why so many medieval blue skies are green today.
- In water
- No
What it is held to be for
Azurite is copper, and painters knew it long before magicians did. It is the blue of medieval manuscripts and altarpieces, the azzurro della Magna of Cennini's handbook. Many of those blues have since turned green, because the stone slowly becomes malachite in damp air. It changes while you own it. The tradition gives it to the inward eye and to a mind being made to look at something.
Cennini, Il libro dell'arte, on azurite; folk tradition
Correspondences
These are the tradition's ascriptions, not properties of the mineral.
- Planet
- Venus, Mercury
- Element
- Air
- Signs
- Sagittarius, Libra
- Chinese phase
- Water
- Year animal
- Rat, Dragon
- Centre
- Brow Ajna
- Sephirah
- Hod
How it is used
Kept on a desk or an altar, dry, out of the sun and on a dish of its own. Looked at while thinking rather than worn. Hands washed after a raw specimen has been handled.
Today
Sit with it and look into the blue for two minutes without deciding anything. Then write down the first clear sentence that arrives.
A longer working
On a Wednesday, take a question you have been asking in the same words for months. Write it out, set the azurite on the paper, and leave both while you do something entirely physical for an hour: cook, walk, clean. Come back and rewrite the question differently, keeping none of the original wording. Wash your hands. Work with the new version for a week and see whether anything moves.
Works with
- Herb
- Eyebright
- Incense
- Mastic