Fluorite
Also Fluorspar, Blue John
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.
- Crystal system
- Cubic
- Hardness
- 4 Mohs
- Handling
- Soft, only 4 on Mohs, and it cleaves perfectly in four directions, so a single knock can split a piece cleanly. It also fades in sunlight, the purples worst. Wipe it, do not soak it, and keep it away from salt, hot water and anything abrasive. No elixirs.
- In water
- No
What it is held to be for
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.
Agricola, De Natura Fossilium (1546); Pliny, Natural History XXXVII, on murrhine
Correspondences
These are the tradition's ascriptions, not properties of the mineral.
- Planet
- Mercury, Saturn
- Element
- Air
- Signs
- Gemini, Pisces
- Chinese phase
- Metal
- Year animal
- Monkey, Rooster
- Centre
- Brow Ajna
- Sephirah
- Hod
How it is used
Set on a desk beside the work rather than worn, since it is too soft for a ring. Traditionally handled at the start of study and put down once the reading has actually begun.
Today
Set the fluorite on the page you are avoiding. Look at it, name the first small step out loud, and start with that.
A longer working
Choose a Wednesday evening and a task you have been circling for weeks. Put the fluorite on the table, out of the sun. Write the task at the top of a sheet of paper, and beneath it write every part of it you can name, in any order. When you run out, number them. Work only on the first. Leave the stone on the paper overnight and clear the sheet in the morning.
Works with
- Herb
- Lavender
- Incense
- Sandalwood