Green Tourmaline
Also Verdelite, Elbaite
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.
- Crystal system
- Trigonal
- Hardness
- 7-7.5 Mohs
- Handling
- Hard and safe in water, like all tourmaline. It is brittle in the direction across the prism, so it chips or snaps when dropped, and many green stones carry internal fractures that a steam or ultrasonic cleaner will open; wash it by hand in cool soapy water. Heat can change the colour permanently, so keep it off a hot lamp and away from a jeweller's torch. Warmed, it takes the same electrical charge schorl does, and then pulls dust and lint onto itself.
- In water
- Safe
What it is held to be for
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.
Folk tradition; tourmaline in Europe from Ceylon, 1703
Correspondences
These are the tradition's ascriptions, not properties of the mineral.
- Planet
- Jupiter, Venus
- Element
- Earth
- Signs
- Sagittarius, Taurus, Libra
- Chinese phase
- Wood
- Year animal
- Tiger, Rabbit
- Centre
- Heart Anahata
- Sephirah
- Chesed
How it is used
Worn at the throat or the breastbone rather than placed, which is the reverse of its black sibling: this one is kept close. Put it on when something starts and keep it on until that thing is grown.
Today
Put the green tourmaline in your pocket and spend one uninterrupted hour on the thing you want to grow. Not planning it — doing it.
A longer working
On a Thursday, in the waxing Moon, write down the one thing you want bigger in a year: a skill, a friendship, a garden. Underneath it write the smallest weekly action that would make it so. Set the green tourmaline on the paper overnight. Afterwards, wear the stone on the day you do that action, and only then. If a month passes and you have not worn it, the plan was wrong. Write a smaller one.
Works with
- Herb
- Borage
- Incense
- Cedar