Stones of the Earth phase

14 stones.

Agate Banded chalcedony, translucent to opaque, in grey, white, brown, red and blue layers; a cut slice may show the bands as rings or as a landscape. Agate is the tradition's stone of steadiness. Pliny takes the name from the river Achates in Sicily and reports that it was carried against scorpion and snake bite, and that athletes wore it to keep their nerve. Its bands are the point: the tradition reads a stone that grew in patient layers as an argument for doing the same. Hold the agate and find one band with your thumbnail. Name one thing you will not be moved on today. Put it in your pocket.
Amber Transparent to cloudy honey-yellow through orange to deep red-brown, often with insects, bark or bubbles caught inside; rare green and blue forms exist. Amber is not stone. It is the resin of pine forests that stood tens of millions of years ago, hardened and washed out of the Baltic. Pliny knew this and said so, against the poets who called it the tears of Phaethon's sisters. It has been worn as a protective amulet longer than almost any other material, and Pliny reports it hung on infants for that reason. Warm a piece of amber in your closed hand until it is blood temperature. Say the name of somebody you have lost. Put it in your pocket.
Calcite Transparent to opaque in almost any colour: glass-clear as Iceland spar, and commonly honey yellow, orange, green, pale blue, pink or chalky white. Clear pieces show every line beneath them doubled. Calcite is the commonest carbonate on earth: limestone, marble, chalk, shell and stalactite are all this one mineral. It has little old lore, because it was never rare. What practice it has is modern and follows colour — yellow and orange to the Sun, green to Venus, blue to the Moon and the voice. Clear Iceland spar doubles anything seen through it, which Bartholin described in 1669. Wipe the dust off your calcite with a dry cloth. Name one thing in the house you have been meaning to throw out, and throw it out now.
Citrine Transparent pale lemon through golden to a smoky madeira brown; most stones on sale are heat-treated amethyst and carry a faint reddish cast. Citrine is the tradition's stone of the open hand. It belongs to the Sun and, in later folk practice, to trade: dealers called it the merchant's stone and kept it in the till rather than wearing it. The lapidary line groups it with the yellow stones held to lift a heavy mood and steady anyone who has to ask other people for money. Put a citrine where you keep your money. Handle it once, name aloud one thing you intend to earn, and leave it there.
Jade Translucent to opaque. Jadeite runs from emerald green through lavender, white and orange; nephrite from creamy mutton-fat white through spinach green to near black. Two minerals answer to jade, jadeite and nephrite, and both are so tough that the ancients made axes and blades of them. That toughness is the whole of the tradition. Confucius, in the Book of Rites, reads the virtues of a good man in jade: its warmth, its evenness, the fact that it will break before it bends. Spanish sailors called it the stone of the flank, for colic. Put the jade on and leave it on. Each time you notice it today, finish the thing in front of you before starting another.
Malachite Opaque green in concentric light and dark bands, silky where it has grown in rounded botryoidal masses; polished slices show rings, eyes and stripes. Pliny calls it molochitis, mallow-green, and writes that it was hung on children's cradles as a guard against danger; that is the oldest protective use we have for it. Egypt ground it for green eye-paint, which we now know was a poor idea. Its banded eyes made malachite the tradition's watcher, a stone held to see trouble coming. Set the malachite by the door you come home through. Look at its rings once, and leave whatever the day did outside.
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.
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.
Red Jasper Opaque brick to brownish red, sometimes veined with darker lines or carrying a grey rind. Completely opaque: hold it to a lamp and nothing at all passes through it. Egypt put red jasper at the throat of the dead. The Book of the Dead's spell for the tyet, the knot of Isis, calls for it in that stone and calls the amulet the blood of Isis. Pliny says the whole of the East wore iaspis as an amulet. Rome cut it for seals. It is the plainest of the Mars stones: no fire, no shine, only holding on. Stand with both feet flat, the stone in your fist, and count backwards from twenty. Put it in your pocket and go back in.
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.
Shungite Matt black to steel grey and dull in the common rock; the noble grade is bright silvery black, lustrous and brittle, and marks paper like a pencil Shungite is nearly pure carbon from Karelia, laid down about two billion years ago. Peter the Great founded a spa on a shungite spring in 1719 and had his soldiers carry lumps to keep their water sweet. That is the tradition it has: a stone of the ground and of water. The modern claim that it screens electronics is not established, and this entry does not make it. Put a piece on the desk between you and the thing you are avoiding. Work for twenty minutes without touching your phone. Then move the stone aside and stop.
Smoky Quartz Transparent to translucent smoky brown or grey, from a faint tint to almost black; six-sided prisms with a pointed termination Smoky quartz is quartz that has stood for ages in the ground beside something radioactive. The colour is the record of that. In Scotland it is cairngorm, set in dirk hilts and shoulder brooches, which gives it a real national history. The tradition gives it to Saturn and keeps it for weight: it is held to take the charge out of a mood without dulling the person. Sit with it in your lap for five minutes, both feet flat on the floor. Breathe out for longer than you breathe in. Then put it down and stand up.
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.
Tiger's Eye Opaque golden brown in bands of light and dark, with a silky sheen that slides across the face as it turns; the blue form is hawk's eye and heated material goes red. Tiger's eye is quartz that grew through blue asbestos fibres, so a band of light travels across it as it turns. The tradition gives it to the Sun in a guarded mood: a stone for watching without being watched. Its own lore is young, because the material was only worked from the nineteenth century, and it stands in for the older eye-agates worn against the evil eye. Turn the tiger's eye until the band of light crosses it. Ask yourself one plain question about a decision you are avoiding. Answer it.