Stones for Love
13 stones.
- Chrysoprase Translucent apple-green to deep green, evenly coloured rather than banded, with a waxy rather than glassy shine. Pliny lists chrysoprasus among the green stones, and medieval Europe prized the Silesian material enough to line chapel walls with it. Its tradition is gentler than emerald's. Where emerald is the long vow, chrysoprase is recovery, and practice gives it to people coming out of a bad year, on the argument that green returns to ground that was burnt. Hold the chrysoprase and name one thing that is better now than it was a year ago. Say it aloud, even if it is small.
- 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.
- Garnet Most often deep red, from wine-dark to nearly black in a thick piece, though the group also runs orange, green and honey. Transparent to translucent, with a glassy, almost resinous shine. The ancients had no word for garnet alone. Pliny's carbunculi are the fiery red stones, named for a live coal, and garnet is most of what he means. Out of that came the medieval carbuncle that shines in the dark: the lamp said to have lit Noah's ark. What survives is plainer. Garnet is held to keep a promise burning after the feeling that made it has cooled. Hold it up to a lamp until you find the light inside it. Then put it on and do the dull part of the work.
- Green Tourmaline 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. 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. Put the green tourmaline in your pocket and spend one uninterrupted hour on the thing you want to grow. Not planning it — doing it.
- Kunzite Transparent pink to lilac, palest at the edges. Strongly pleochroic: turn the crystal and the colour deepens along its length, then almost drains away. Kunzite is a young stone. George Kunz described it in 1902 from Pala in California, and everything said about it since has been said in a hundred years, not a thousand. The tradition that grew up is consistent: a stone for a heart that has taken a blow. Venus claims it for its colour and for the gentleness of its work. Hold it in your closed hand and name, out loud, the one person you are still angry with. Then put it in a dark drawer.
- 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.
- Morganite Transparent pale pink to peach or salmon, the colour often faint enough that stones are cut deep to hold it. Morganite is pink beryl, named in 1911 by the gemmologist George Kunz for the banker J. P. Morgan, whose mineral collection he had bought. It is the youngest stone in this part of the library, and its tradition is correspondingly plain: the clarity of the beryl family turned towards tenderness. Practice gives it for patience with people, including yourself. Touch the morganite and think of whoever is annoying you most. Give them one more chance than you meant to give.
- 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.
- Pearl Opaque white, cream, rose, gold, grey or black, with a soft inner glow called orient that comes from the layering of the nacre rather than from any pigment. A pearl is not a stone. It is nacre, laid down in fine layers by a living mollusc around something that irritated it, and that is the whole of its meaning in the tradition: the grain of sand answered with patience. Pliny puts pearls in his book on sea creatures rather than his book on gems, and tells there how Cleopatra dissolved one in vinegar to win a wager. Put on the pearl and name, silently, the thing that hurt and the thing you made of it afterwards. Wear it for the day.
- Rhodochrosite Banded rose-pink and white in stalactite slices, or transparent raspberry-red rhombs where it has grown as clear crystals. The Argentine deposits were worked from old Inca silver mines, which is where the name Inca rose comes from. Banded pink and white, it became the tradition's stone of returning delight, given to people who have grown competent and joyless. The lapidary line is simple enough: it is held to remember what you liked before you learned to be sensible. Hold the rhodochrosite and name one thing you loved doing at ten years old. Then do fifteen minutes of it today.
- Rhodonite Opaque to slightly translucent rose-pink to red, nearly always webbed and patched with black manganese oxide. Rhodonite is rose-pink shot through with black, and the tradition never separates the two. This is the stone of love that has been damaged and is being kept anyway. Russia mined it as orlets and cut it for the imperial court. Practice gives it after a betrayal or a family falling-out, and to anyone who must forgive without pretending nothing happened. Hold the rhodonite and trace one black vein with your thumb. Name the harm honestly. Then name one thing you will still do for them.
- Rose Quartz Translucent and cloudy rather than clear, in pale to dusky pink; the haze comes from microscopic fibres running through the quartz. Rose quartz has no ancient citation to lean on and does not need one; the folk line is unbroken and specific. It is the stone of ordinary affection rather than desire, of the love you already have and have stopped noticing. Practice gives it to the grieving and the newly alone as readily as to lovers, and that is the older use. Hold the rose quartz and think of one person you love and have not told. Send them a message now saying so.
- Ruby Transparent to translucent red, from pinkish through to the deep tone dealers call pigeon's blood. Fine silk-like inclusions are common and can give a six-rayed star when the stone is cut domed. Sanskrit calls it ratnaraja, king of gems. Medieval lapidaries, Marbode among them, hold that it drives off sadness and that it darkens to warn its wearer of coming trouble. Note the disagreement: Western planetary tables give ruby to Mars, while Indian astrology gives it to the Sun and will not let a weak Sun wear one. Both traditions agree it is a stone of rank. Put it on. Stand up straight, say the first sentence of what you have to say, out loud, to the mirror. Then go.