Clear Quartz
Also Rock crystal, Krystallos, Crystal
Colourless and glass-clear to milky white; six-sided prisms ending in a pyramid, often holding veils, needles or rainbows from internal fractures
- Crystal system
- Trigonal
- Hardness
- 7 Mohs
- Handling
- Hard, stable and genuinely unproblematic. Safe in water and it does not fade. A natural point will chip at the tip if it is knocked, and can crack if taken straight from hot water to cold, so let it change temperature slowly.
- In water
- Safe
What it is held to be for
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.
Pliny XXXVII, on crystallus; Agrippa I, things under the Moon
Correspondences
These are the tradition's ascriptions, not properties of the mineral.
- Planet
- Moon, Sun
- Element
- Water
- Signs
- Cancer, Pisces
- Chinese phase
- Metal
- Year animal
- Monkey, Rooster
- Centre
- Crown Sahasrara
- Sephirah
- Kether
How it is used
Worn or carried anywhere, and set beside whatever needs attention rather than kept always in one spot. A point is placed with its tip turned toward the thing you want strengthened. Rinsed under a running tap.
Today
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.
A longer working
Fill a glass with water and stand the quartz beside it on a windowsill, from dusk until dawn. In the morning drink the water and take the stone with you. For that one day, every time you catch yourself explaining what you want in more than one sentence, stop and cut it back to the sentence. Do this three days running when a plan will not come clear, and keep the last version.
Works with
- Herb
- Lemon balm
- Incense
- Frankincense