Lapis Lazuli
Also Lapis, Sapphirus
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.
- Crystal system
- Cubic
- Hardness
- 5-5.5 Mohs
- Handling
- Lapis is a rock, not a single mineral: lazurite for the blue, pyrite for the gold, calcite for the white. The system given here is lazurite's. That mixture is also its weakness. Calcite dissolves in acid, so keep it away from vinegar, lemon juice, descaler and skin that has just had perfume on it. It is soft enough to scuff on a keyring. A great deal of it is dyed, pale stone soaked in blue and waxed, and dye bleeds into water, acetone and skin. Wipe with a damp cloth, never soak, and do not make an elixir.
- In water
- No
What it is held to be for
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.
Pliny XXXVII, on sapphirus; Egyptian Book of the Dead
Correspondences
These are the tradition's ascriptions, not properties of the mineral.
- Planet
- Jupiter, Venus
- Element
- Water
- Signs
- Sagittarius, Libra, Pisces
- Chinese phase
- Water
- Year animal
- Rat, Dragon
- Centre
- Brow Ajna
- Sephirah
- Chesed
How it is used
Worn at the throat, or held while you work out what to say. Set on the desk during writing. Take it off before perfume, hand cream or washing up: it drinks all three and the blue suffers.
Today
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.
A longer working
Thursday, in daylight, with paper and a pen. Put the lapis where the gold in it catches the light. Write the letter or the message you have been avoiding, longhand, and do not stop to correct. Read it aloud with the stone in your other hand and strike out every sentence that was written for effect. Copy what is left. Send that. Wipe the stone with a dry cloth and put it away.
Works with
- Herb
- Sage
- Incense
- Cedar