Stones of the Fire phase
8 stones.
- Carnelian Translucent orange to deep red-brown, sometimes banded. Held up to a lamp it glows through like a coal; the darker brown material is usually called sard. Pliny calls it sarda, after Sardis where it was first cut, and notes the practical reason it filled Roman signet rings: hot wax does not stick to it. Egypt cut it into amulets for the dead. Islamic tradition prizes the aqiq ring above other stones. Everywhere it turns up it is a stone of doing rather than dreaming, the one you take to the thing you have been avoiding. Put it on the table beside your work. Do not touch it until you have done twenty minutes without stopping, then pick it up.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Sunstone Translucent to opaque orange, honey or red-brown, flecked with metallic copper-coloured platelets that flash as it turns; Oregon material can be clear red or green. Sunstone is feldspar shot through with tiny plates of copper or iron, so that when it turns the light inside it flashes. The tradition takes that literally and holds it a stone of warmth put back into a person, given to those who have made themselves small. Where citrine is for asking, sunstone is for being seen while you ask. Hold the sunstone at a window and turn it until the flash comes. Say one thing you are good at, out loud, and go.
- Topaz Transparent and glassy: colourless, pale blue, sherry-yellow, gold, and rare pink; the golden-orange imperial topaz is the most prized. Topaz is the hardest stone in this group and the tradition treats it as the Sun's cold side: judgement rather than warmth. Medieval lapidaries hold it to quiet anger and make the wearer plain-spoken. Pliny's topazos is a different stone, a green one from an island in the Red Sea and almost certainly peridot, so the name has moved across the centuries. Hold topaz up to the light and look through it. Say the fairest true sentence you can manage about a person who has wronged you.