Stones for Sleep and dreams

13 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.
Celestite Pale sky blue, sometimes colourless or faintly straw yellow; transparent tabular crystals with a glassy shine, usually standing in a geode Celestite was named in 1799 for its colour, from the Latin caelestis, of the sky. It has almost no old lore, because the fine crystals come from geodes opened only in the last two centuries. What tradition it has is about stillness. It is a strontium mineral, pale and soft and easily ruined, and the practice built around it treats it the same way, kept in one quiet place. Put it where you can see it from your pillow. Before sleep, look at it and say the one thing you are going to stop thinking about tonight.
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.
Howlite Opaque chalk white to grey-white, threaded with fine grey or black veins like a web; nodular and cauliflower-shaped in the rough Howlite came out of a Nova Scotian gypsum quarry and was described in 1868 by Henry How, a chemist. There is no ancient lore behind it and this entry will not invent any. Its tradition is modern and domestic: it is the stone people keep for a mind that will not stop working at night. The veining is why it is dyed so often, since it mimics turquoise. When your thoughts will not stop, hold it and trace one grey vein with a fingertip, slowly, end to end. Then trace another. Stop when you lose interest.
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.
Larimar Opaque sea-blue to green-blue, mottled and marbled with white and sometimes rust-red, in patterns like sunlight falling through shallow water. Larimar is blue pectolite, found in one river valley in the Dominican Republic and nowhere else on earth. It was named in 1974, so there is no old lapidary standing behind it and honesty requires saying so plainly. Its use has grown quickly all the same, and it is now held as a calming stone, for the temper that runs hot and speaks faster than it thinks. Hold the larimar in your palm and take six slow breaths before you answer. Answer on the seventh, or do not answer at all.
Lepidolite Lilac to rose-purple, sometimes grey, with a pearly sheen; either a glittering mass of small mica plates or a solid violet stone, often shot through with pink tourmaline Lepidolite is a lithium mica, named in 1792 from the Greek for scale, because it splits into glittering flakes. The lithium is genuinely there but bound in the rock, and it does nothing to the person holding the stone. The tradition keeps it for the low weeks: not a crisis, but the flat stretch where the work is simply to keep going until the season turns. Put it where you make your morning drink. Touch it while the kettle boils and name one thing you will do today that is entirely for yourself.
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.
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.
Peridot Transparent olive to bottle green, always green and never any other colour, with an oily lustre; large stones show facet edges doubled when you look through them Pliny's topazos, mined at first light on an island in the Red Sea, is our peridot, and the medieval lapidaries called the same stone chrysolite, so the name has moved twice. Marbode of Rennes writes that set in gold it drives off the terrors of the night. It comes out of volcanoes and meteorites, and the tradition keeps it for what grows back. Wear it or hold it, and name one thing that is already recovering. Not a hope, but something you can point to. Say it out loud once.
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.
Zircon Transparent and brilliant with strong fire: colourless, honey, golden brown, red, and a heat-treated blue; the back facets visibly double when you look through it. Zircon is the oldest thing a person can hold. Crystals from Western Australia have been dated past four billion years, older than any surviving rock. Under the name jacinth it runs all through the medieval lapidaries, where Marbode writes that it brings sleep and keeps a traveller safe and welcome in a strange house. It is a stone for arriving somewhere you do not know. Put zircon in the bag you are travelling with. Before you leave, say aloud where you are going and when you mean to be back.