Stones for the year of the Rabbit

15 stones.

Amazonite Opaque blue-green to soft turquoise, streaked and gridded with white where the feldspar has separated into fine bands. 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. 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.
Aventurine Opaque to lightly translucent green, sometimes peach, grey or blue, with a soft glitter from flecks of mica scattered through it. 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. Put the aventurine in your hand. Say out loud the one thing you want and have not asked for. Then ask for it today.
Celestite Pale sky blue, sometimes colourless or faintly straw yellow; transparent tabular crystals with a glassy shine, usually standing in a geode Celestite was named in 1799 for its colour, from the Latin caelestis, of the sky. It has almost no old lore, because the fine crystals come from geodes opened only in the last two centuries. What tradition it has is about stillness. It is a strontium mineral, pale and soft and easily ruined, and the practice built around it treats it the same way, kept in one quiet place. Put it where you can see it from your pillow. Before sleep, look at it and say the one thing you are going to stop thinking about tonight.
Charoite Opaque violet in swirled, feathery, fibrous bands, lilac through to deep purple, streaked with white feldspar, orange-brown tinaksite and black aegirine. It has a pearly, almost silky sheen where the fibres catch the light. Charoite comes from one place on earth: the Murun massif on the Chara River in Siberia, described in 1978. Sellers like to say the name means enchanting in Russian; the mineralogists say it is the river. There is no old tradition to draw on. What has grown up around it in forty years is a stone for the person who knows the change is coming and is dragging their heels. Hold it and say out loud the change you have been putting off, with a date attached. Any date. Then write the date down.
Chrysoprase Translucent apple-green to deep green, evenly coloured rather than banded, with a waxy rather than glassy shine. Pliny lists chrysoprasus among the green stones, and medieval Europe prized the Silesian material enough to line chapel walls with it. Its tradition is gentler than emerald's. Where emerald is the long vow, chrysoprase is recovery, and practice gives it to people coming out of a bad year, on the argument that green returns to ground that was burnt. Hold the chrysoprase and name one thing that is better now than it was a year ago. Say it aloud, even if it is small.
Emerald Transparent to translucent deep green, almost always with visible internal fractures and inclusions; the trade calls that internal world the jardin, the garden. Pliny holds that no colour is more pleasing to the eye than the emerald's, and reports that gem-cutters rested their sight on one after fine work. From that comes its whole tradition: the stone of the long look and the patient love. Lapidaries gave it to lovers as a truth-teller, and said that it clouded when a vow was broken. Look at the emerald until your eyes rest. Then look up, name the promise you are still keeping, and go and keep it today.
Green Tourmaline Transparent green, from pale grass through bottle to a dark olive, in three-sided prisms grooved lengthwise like its black sibling. Strongly dichroic: much darker looked at down the length of the crystal than across it. Tourmaline reached Europe in 1703, brought from Ceylon by Dutch traders, so it has no classical lore; the name comes from the Sinhala turamali, a word for mixed-coloured stones. Green and black are the same mineral family, and practice splits them cleanly. Where schorl is a boundary and keeps things out, verdelite is given to increase: the heart, the garden, the thing that is meant to get bigger. Put the green tourmaline in your pocket and spend one uninterrupted hour on the thing you want to grow. Not planning it — doing it.
Kunzite Transparent pink to lilac, palest at the edges. Strongly pleochroic: turn the crystal and the colour deepens along its length, then almost drains away. Kunzite is a young stone. George Kunz described it in 1902 from Pala in California, and everything said about it since has been said in a hundred years, not a thousand. The tradition that grew up is consistent: a stone for a heart that has taken a blow. Venus claims it for its colour and for the gentleness of its work. Hold it in your closed hand and name, out loud, the one person you are still angry with. Then put it in a dark drawer.
Lepidolite Lilac to rose-purple, sometimes grey, with a pearly sheen; either a glittering mass of small mica plates or a solid violet stone, often shot through with pink tourmaline Lepidolite is a lithium mica, named in 1792 from the Greek for scale, because it splits into glittering flakes. The lithium is genuinely there but bound in the rock, and it does nothing to the person holding the stone. The tradition keeps it for the low weeks: not a crisis, but the flat stretch where the work is simply to keep going until the season turns. Put it where you make your morning drink. Touch it while the kettle boils and name one thing you will do today that is entirely for yourself.
Moonstone Translucent to nearly transparent white, grey, peach or smoke, with a blue-white sheen that floats below the surface and moves as you tilt it. Moonstone is feldspar built in layers so fine that light scatters between them, and a blue-white sheen seems to float over the surface as it tilts. Pliny describes a selenitis that waxes and wanes with the Moon, though what he had in hand was probably not this stone. The association held regardless: it is worn for the parts of a life that come and go. Put the moonstone under your pillow tonight. In the morning, before you speak to anybody at all, write down whatever is left of the dream.
Prehnite Translucent pale yellow-green to apple green, with a soft inner glow and a fibrous grain; often botryoidal, sometimes crowded with black epidote needles Prehnite came into the record too late for Pliny. It was described in 1788 and named for a Dutch colonel who brought a specimen back from the Cape, the first mineral named after a person. Its lore is modern, and honesty requires saying so. The tradition keeps it as the stone of the settled mind: the one held to quiet the noise around a decision before the decision is made. Hold it in a closed hand. Name the decision aloud, once. Then say nothing for a full minute and notice which thought arrives first.
Rose Quartz Translucent and cloudy rather than clear, in pale to dusky pink; the haze comes from microscopic fibres running through the quartz. Rose quartz has no ancient citation to lean on and does not need one; the folk line is unbroken and specific. It is the stone of ordinary affection rather than desire, of the love you already have and have stopped noticing. Practice gives it to the grieving and the newly alone as readily as to lovers, and that is the older use. Hold the rose quartz and think of one person you love and have not told. Send them a message now saying so.
Selenite Colourless to white: glassy and transparent in blades, silky and fibrous as satin spar, or bladed into rosettes. It splits into thin flexible sheets. Selenite is gypsum grown clear, in blades and sheets that peel apart like glass. The Romans quarried it as lapis specularis and glazed their windows with it, so it is literally a stone you can see through. The later tradition makes it the cleaner of the shelf: the piece other stones are laid against, held to take off whatever they have gathered. Lay your other stones on the selenite tonight and leave them until morning. Keep it dry, and let nothing wet near it.
Serpentine Waxy or greasy-lustred green, from pale olive to nearly black, mottled and veined like a snake's back; the finer bowenite is translucent Pliny calls it ophites, the snake stone, for the mottling that runs across it like a skin, and the old lapidaries hung it against venom and headache. Because a serpent sheds and then carries on, the tradition took the stone for whatever is being shed: an old habit, an old post, an old name. It is held for moulting rather than for change in general. Name one habit you are finished with. Say when it ends, giving a date and not the word soon. Write the date where you will see it.
Turquoise Opaque sky-blue through to green, usually webbed or blotched with the brown or black rock it grew in, which dealers call matrix. The blue greens as the stone loses water or takes up oil. Persia mined it at Nishapur and put it on the bridle: turquoise is the horseman's stone, worn against a fall, and held to crack in the rider's place. Boodt wrote in 1609 that it changes colour with its owner's health, which it does, though the cause is oil and water, not omen. Tibet, the Pueblo peoples and the Dine all keep it as a stone of sky and rain. Put it in the bag you travel with and say where you are going and when you intend to be back.