Stones for the year of the Rooster

10 stones.

Black Tourmaline Opaque glossy black, in three-sided prisms with deep grooves running the length of the crystal, like a bundle of rods fused together Schorl was a miner's word long before it was a magician's. Dutch traders in the eighteenth century called tourmaline the ash-drawer, because a warm crystal pulled pipe ash across the table. The stone really is electric when heated, and the tradition took its character from that: something that gathers what is loose and holds it away from you. It is the plain protective stone, given to thresholds. Set one piece on the floor beside your front door tonight. Each time you come in, touch the frame and leave the day's argument on the other side of it.
Clear Quartz Colourless and glass-clear to milky white; six-sided prisms ending in a pyramid, often holding veils, needles or rainbows from internal fractures The Greeks called it krystallos, ice, and held that it was water frozen so hard in the Alps that it could never thaw. Pliny reports this. Physicians cut it into balls to gather the sun and cauterise wounds, a use for a stone said to concentrate. Agrippa places crystal under the Moon. The tradition keeps it as the stone that takes the shape of the intention put into it. Hold the point and say what you want in one present-tense sentence. Set it where you will see it in the morning. Say the sentence again then.
Diamond Transparent and colourless at its finest, but also yellow, brown, grey and rarely pink, blue or green; the lustre is unlike any other stone, hard and oily-bright, throwing sharp flashes of spectral colour when it is cut. Adamas means unconquerable, and that is its whole old meaning. Pliny reports that it defeats the hammer and the anvil, and repeats the story that only goat's blood will break it. The lapidaries gave it invulnerability rather than romance: proof against poison and fear. Western tables put it under the Sun, Indian astrology under Venus. Its link with betrothal is modern, built largely by De Beers advertising from 1947. Put the diamond on. Name one decision you will not reverse, out loud, once. Take it off only when the decision has been carried out.
Fluorite Transparent to translucent, in purple, green, blue, yellow and colourless, often several of those banded within one crystal. Glassy, and frequently found as clean cubes. Fluorite takes its name from the Latin fluere, to flow: smelters added it to ore to make the metal run clean. The tradition reads that literally, and gives fluorite to a mind clogged with too many half-thoughts. Agricola named the fluores in 1546, and the murrhine cups Pliny prized are widely thought to have been carved from it. Set the fluorite on the page you are avoiding. Look at it, name the first small step out loud, and start with that.
Hematite Steel-grey to black with a bright metallic shine when polished; earthy and botryoidal masses are a dull red-brown. Whatever the surface colour, it always leaves a red-brown streak, and that is the test. The Greeks named it from haima, blood, because it bleeds: grind it or saw it and the water goes red. Pliny prescribes haematites for the eyes and for bleeding. It is iron ore, the ore Mars is made of, and it was polished into some of the earliest mirrors, so it carries both meanings, the weapon and the true reflection. Modern practice uses it for one thing above all: weight. Sit down. Rest one in each palm, hands on your knees, and breathe until you can feel their weight and nothing else.
Howlite Opaque chalk white to grey-white, threaded with fine grey or black veins like a web; nodular and cauliflower-shaped in the rough Howlite came out of a Nova Scotian gypsum quarry and was described in 1868 by Henry How, a chemist. There is no ancient lore behind it and this entry will not invent any. Its tradition is modern and domestic: it is the stone people keep for a mind that will not stop working at night. The veining is why it is dyed so often, since it mimics turquoise. When your thoughts will not stop, hold it and trace one grey vein with a fingertip, slowly, end to end. Then trace another. Stop when you lose interest.
Magnetite Opaque black with a submetallic to metallic shine and a black streak. Crystals are often sharp octahedra. The same mineral in sand-sized grains is what makes some beaches grey and clings in beards to a magnet dragged through them. Magnetite is the one common mineral that is magnetic by itself, and lodestone is the rarer thing again: a piece that has been permanently magnetised in the ground, most likely by a lightning strike. Claudian describes a temple where an iron Mars was drawn across to a lodestone Venus and the priests called it a wedding. Folk practice feeds a lodestone iron filings to keep it drawing. Hold a paperclip near it until you feel the pull. Say what you want to come, once, then set the stone down facing the door.
Onyx Opaque black, or straight parallel bands of black and chalk white; sardonyx bands brown and white. Waxy lustre, takes a mirror polish The Greeks called it onyx, fingernail, for the pale band running through the dark. The story ran that Cupid cut Venus's nails with an arrowhead and the Fates turned the clippings to stone. Pliny knew it as a carving stone, and cameo cutters have worked its layers ever since. Agrippa sets it under Saturn. It is held to hold a thing steady rather than to lighten it. Put it in your pocket before a conversation you expect to be difficult. Touch it once before you answer anything. Then answer more slowly than you want to.
Pyrite Opaque brassy metallic yellow, often in sharp cubes or flat radiating discs; tarnishes with age to a dull brown iridescence. Pyrite grows in cubes so square they look cut. Its name is Greek for fire-stone: struck against steel it throws sparks, and both Theophrastus and Pliny record it doing exactly that. That is the whole of its tradition, a stone holding fire in a cold form. It is kept for nerve rather than for luck, and its likeness to gold earned it the name fool's gold. Set the pyrite where the light catches it. Name the task you have been circling for weeks. Do the first five minutes of it now.
Zircon Transparent and brilliant with strong fire: colourless, honey, golden brown, red, and a heat-treated blue; the back facets visibly double when you look through it. Zircon is the oldest thing a person can hold. Crystals from Western Australia have been dated past four billion years, older than any surviving rock. Under the name jacinth it runs all through the medieval lapidaries, where Marbode writes that it brings sleep and keeps a traveller safe and welcome in a strange house. It is a stone for arriving somewhere you do not know. Put zircon in the bag you are travelling with. Before you leave, say aloud where you are going and when you mean to be back.