Stones of the Brow
9 stones.
- Azurite Deep dark azure, almost navy in the mass, often streaked or crusted with green malachite; small crystals are glassy and translucent, earthy coatings dull 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. Sit with it and look into the blue for two minutes without deciding anything. Then write down the first clear sentence that arrives.
- 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.
- Iolite Transparent violet-blue, and famously two-faced: turn the stone and it shifts from blue to a smoky straw-yellow or almost nothing. That pleochroism is the whole character of it. Iolite has no ancient name; it was described in 1813 and called after the Greek for violet. You will read that Norse navigators used it to find the sun through cloud. Treat that carefully: the sagas mention a sunstone without saying what it was, and no iolite has been found in a Norse burial. The modern tradition is milder, a stone for keeping your bearings. Turn the stone slowly in a window until the blue goes pale. Ask yourself which of the two colours today has been, and answer.
- Labradorite Dull grey to grey-brown until it is turned, when a broad flash of blue, green, gold or violet crosses the whole face. Labradorite looks like a grey pebble until it turns, and then the whole face lights blue or gold. The effect comes from layers inside the feldspar splitting the light. It was described from the Labrador coast in 1770, so its lore is young and honesty says so, but it has settled firmly into one use: a stone for people who keep far more inside than they show. Turn the labradorite until it flashes. Note what you have been holding back today. You do not have to say it aloud to anyone.
- Lapis Lazuli Deep blue to violet-blue and completely opaque, dusted with brassy gold pyrite and veined or clouded with white calcite. The best material is even and dark with only a scattering of gold. Lapis was the sky brought indoors. Sumer gave its gods lapis beards and sent Inanna into the underworld wearing a lapis rod and necklace. Egypt cut it for the heart scarab. Pliny's sapphirus, sprinkled with gold, is this stone and not the corundum we now call sapphire. Ground and washed for weeks it becomes ultramarine, the costliest pigment in Europe, kept for the Virgin's robe. Hold it and say the difficult sentence to the empty room three times, changing a word each time, until it is short enough to mean it.
- 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.
- Sapphire Transparent corundum in every colour except red, which is called ruby instead. Classically cornflower to inky blue, but also yellow, green, pink and colourless, often with fine silk that can throw a star. In the Middle Ages sapphire was the stone of bishops and kings: Marbode holds that it keeps the limbs whole and makes peace between enemies, and clergy wore it to cool the body. Two cautions. The sapphire of the Bible is almost certainly lapis. And Agrippa lists the saphir among the things of Saturn, though the later tables and this library place it under Jupiter. Wash it under the tap. Put it on and say one true thing you have been softening, in the plainest words you have.
- 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.