Stones for Insight

19 stones.

Amethyst Transparent purple, from pale lilac to a deep grape, and the colour is usually uneven: it sits in bands, or gathers in the crystal tips and thins away towards the base. The name is Greek and means not drunken. Pliny reports the promise, wear it and you will not be overcome by wine, and says the magi lie when they claim more. The Church kept it anyway: amethyst is the bishop's stone. Agrippa's own tables list it among the things of Mars; the later planetary tables give it to Jupiter, and that is the line taken here. Put it under your pillow before you go out for the evening. When you come home, hold it and decide honestly whether the night was as good as it felt.
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.
Charoite Opaque violet in swirled, feathery, fibrous bands, lilac through to deep purple, streaked with white feldspar, orange-brown tinaksite and black aegirine. It has a pearly, almost silky sheen where the fibres catch the light. Charoite comes from one place on earth: the Murun massif on the Chara River in Siberia, described in 1978. Sellers like to say the name means enchanting in Russian; the mineralogists say it is the river. There is no old tradition to draw on. What has grown up around it in forty years is a stone for the person who knows the change is coming and is dragging their heels. Hold it and say out loud the change you have been putting off, with a date attached. Any date. Then write the date down.
Chrysocolla Opaque blue-green to sky-blue, often mottled or veined with black, brown and rust-coloured host rock; chalky where it is soft, glassy where quartz has hardened it. Chrysocolla means gold-glue. Pliny knew it as the green copper substance goldsmiths used to solder gold, and the lapidaries kept the name long after the trade changed. Tradition made it a stone of the throat, for the thing that is true, has waited years, and still has to be said out loud without shouting. Hold the chrysocolla and say the sentence you have been avoiding, quietly, to the empty room. Then wash your hands and say it to the person.
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.
Emerald Transparent to translucent deep green, almost always with visible internal fractures and inclusions; the trade calls that internal world the jardin, the garden. Pliny holds that no colour is more pleasing to the eye than the emerald's, and reports that gem-cutters rested their sight on one after fine work. From that comes its whole tradition: the stone of the long look and the patient love. Lapidaries gave it to lovers as a truth-teller, and said that it clouded when a vow was broken. Look at the emerald until your eyes rest. Then look up, name the promise you are still keeping, and go and keep it today.
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.
Heliodor Transparent pale greenish-yellow to warm gold, usually very clean, and often found in long six-sided prisms. Heliodor is golden beryl, named in 1910 from the Greek for gift of the Sun. The name is new but the family is not: beryl was the scrying stone of the medieval lapidaries, gazed into for what the eye could not otherwise reach. Heliodor keeps that use and turns it outward, and is held for study, for long reading, and for staying awake to a hard thing. Set heliodor beside your work. Read one page you have been putting off, aloud and slowly. Then put the stone away until the next page.
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.
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.
Opal A white, grey, black or transparent body carrying flashes of spectral colour that shift with the angle; fire opal is orange to red and may show no play of colour at all. Opal is silica that never crystallised, holding water inside its structure. Its flashes come from the way that structure bends light, not from any colour in the stone. Pliny thought it the finest of gems and tells of the senator Nonius, who chose exile rather than surrender his opal to Mark Antony. Its reputation for bad luck is modern, and traces to a novel published in 1829. Turn the opal until a colour appears that you were not expecting. Name one thing in your life that has changed without your permission.
Petrified Wood Opaque brown, red, honey, grey and black in bands and streaks, with the growth rings, grain and sometimes the bark still readable; takes a glassy polish Petrified wood is a tree replaced cell by cell with silica. What you hold is quartz in the shape of timber, with the rings and often the bark still legible. The tradition takes it exactly as it looks: the past made solid and still readable. It is kept for ancestry, for long patience, and for anyone weighing whether a thing is worth another twenty years of their life. Find the growth rings and count ten of them with a fingertip. That is ten years of a life. Then say what you want your next ten to hold.
Prehnite Translucent pale yellow-green to apple green, with a soft inner glow and a fibrous grain; often botryoidal, sometimes crowded with black epidote needles Prehnite came into the record too late for Pliny. It was described in 1788 and named for a Dutch colonel who brought a specimen back from the Cape, the first mineral named after a person. Its lore is modern, and honesty requires saying so. The tradition keeps it as the stone of the settled mind: the one held to quiet the noise around a decision before the decision is made. Hold it in a closed hand. Name the decision aloud, once. Then say nothing for a full minute and notice which thought arrives first.
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.
Selenite Colourless to white: glassy and transparent in blades, silky and fibrous as satin spar, or bladed into rosettes. It splits into thin flexible sheets. Selenite is gypsum grown clear, in blades and sheets that peel apart like glass. The Romans quarried it as lapis specularis and glazed their windows with it, so it is literally a stone you can see through. The later tradition makes it the cleaner of the shelf: the piece other stones are laid against, held to take off whatever they have gathered. Lay your other stones on the selenite tonight and leave them until morning. Keep it dry, and let nothing wet near it.
Sodalite Opaque deep royal blue, marbled with white calcite veins, with occasional grey or violet patches. Sodalite came out of Greenland in 1811 and has no ancient lapidary behind it, so what it carries is recent and honest: a stone for people who think faster than they can speak. Practice gives it to teachers, witnesses and anyone who has to hold a line of argument steady while being interrupted. Before you speak, hold the sodalite and put what you mean into one sentence. Say that sentence. Then stop talking.
Sugilite Opaque purple, running from a soft lilac-grey to an intense magenta-violet, usually mottled or veined and often carrying black manganese oxide or brown patches. Only rarely translucent at an edge. There is no lapidary behind sugilite. A pale form was found in Japan in 1944 and named for the geologist who described it; the deep purple that made its name came out of the Wessels Mine in South Africa in 1979. Everything ascribed to it has been ascribed since about 1980, and mostly by people working with the dying and the bereaved. That is a young tradition, said plainly. Put it in the hand of someone who is having a bad week and say nothing about crystals. Let them keep it.