Stones of the Water phase

21 stones.

Amazonite Opaque blue-green to soft turquoise, streaked and gridded with white where the feldspar has separated into fine bands. Amazonite was named for the Amazon in the eighteenth century, though nobody ever found the deposit there; the green stones traded from that river were probably something else entirely. It kept the name and gathered a reputation as the stone of plain speech. What the tradition asks of it is that you say the true thing without dressing it up. Read back what you just wrote with the amazonite in your hand. Cut every sentence that is only there to be liked. Then send it.
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.
Apache Tear A rounded pebble, black and opaque by reflected light, but clear smoky brown all through when held up to a lamp; often frosted grey where the enclosing rock has weathered off An Apache tear is a nodule of obsidian weathered free of its rock. Black in the hand, it is clear brown when held up to a lamp. The name comes from a nineteenth-century Arizona story of women weeping for warriors lost at the cliff, their tears falling as stone. It is folk tradition and no older. It is kept for grief carried while ordinary life goes on. Hold it up to a window or a lamp until you can see light through it. Then close your hand and let yourself feel whatever that brought up.
Apatite Transparent to translucent, most often a strong sea-blue or blue-green, also yellow, violet and colourless. Bright, glassy, and usually small. Apatite was named from the Greek for deceit, because it was forever being mistaken for other stones: beryl, tourmaline, peridot. The tradition turned the joke round and made it a stone of accurate seeing, a reminder that appetite and appearance both mislead, and that the honest question is what a thing actually is. Hold the apatite and name one thing you have been pretending about. Say the true version aloud. Then get back to work.
Aquamarine Transparent pale blue to blue-green, usually very clean; the colour deepens with size, and most stones are heated to take the green out. Aquamarine is beryl the colour of shallow sea. Pliny says the Indians cut beryls into long six-sided prisms because the colour looks dull otherwise, which is a jeweller's note rather than a magician's. Sailors carried it, and the lapidary line makes it a stone of safe passage and of speaking calmly under pressure, on the understanding that the two are the same skill. Hold the aquamarine and say the difficult sentence out loud to the empty room first. Then go and make the call.
Azurite Deep dark azure, almost navy in the mass, often streaked or crusted with green malachite; small crystals are glassy and translucent, earthy coatings dull Azurite is copper, and painters knew it long before magicians did. It is the blue of medieval manuscripts and altarpieces, the azzurro della Magna of Cennini's handbook. Many of those blues have since turned green, because the stone slowly becomes malachite in damp air. It changes while you own it. The tradition gives it to the inward eye and to a mind being made to look at something. Sit with it and look into the blue for two minutes without deciding anything. Then write down the first clear sentence that arrives.
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.
Chrysocolla Opaque blue-green to sky-blue, often mottled or veined with black, brown and rust-coloured host rock; chalky where it is soft, glassy where quartz has hardened it. Chrysocolla means gold-glue. Pliny knew it as the green copper substance goldsmiths used to solder gold, and the lapidaries kept the name long after the trade changed. Tradition made it a stone of the throat, for the thing that is true, has waited years, and still has to be said out loud without shouting. Hold the chrysocolla and say the sentence you have been avoiding, quietly, to the empty room. Then wash your hands and say it to the person.
Iolite Transparent violet-blue, and famously two-faced: turn the stone and it shifts from blue to a smoky straw-yellow or almost nothing. That pleochroism is the whole character of it. Iolite has no ancient name; it was described in 1813 and called after the Greek for violet. You will read that Norse navigators used it to find the sun through cloud. Treat that carefully: the sagas mention a sunstone without saying what it was, and no iolite has been found in a Norse burial. The modern tradition is milder, a stone for keeping your bearings. Turn the stone slowly in a window until the blue goes pale. Ask yourself which of the two colours today has been, and answer.
Jet Opaque velvet black to very dark brown, taking a deep polish; unusually light in the hand and warm to the touch, never cold like stone Jet is wood that sank in a Jurassic sea and turned to coal. Pliny calls it gagates, after a river in Lycia, and reports that burning it drove off snakes. Rubbed on cloth it takes a charge and lifts a hair. Whitby cut it by the ton after Victoria's widowhood, so it is the stone of English mourning, and the tradition keeps it for exactly that. Hold it until it is as warm as your hand. Say the name of what you have lost. Then put it in your pocket and go about the day.
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.
Kyanite Translucent to transparent blades of blue, paler at the edges and deeper along the central streaks; also grey, green, orange and near-black. It grows in flat, splintery fans. Kyanite's old name is disthene, two strengths, for the plain fact that it is soft along its length and hard across it. The lapidary tradition likes a stone that admits to being two things at once, and gives kyanite to people who must hold a difficult position and stay flexible about how they hold it. Lay the kyanite blade flat on your palm. Name the position you are keeping and the thing you will bend on. Both, out loud.
Labradorite Dull grey to grey-brown until it is turned, when a broad flash of blue, green, gold or violet crosses the whole face. Labradorite looks like a grey pebble until it turns, and then the whole face lights blue or gold. The effect comes from layers inside the feldspar splitting the light. It was described from the Labrador coast in 1770, so its lore is young and honesty says so, but it has settled firmly into one use: a stone for people who keep far more inside than they show. Turn the labradorite until it flashes. Note what you have been holding back today. You do not have to say it aloud to anyone.
Lapis Lazuli 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. 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. 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.
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.
Obsidian Glassy jet black with a bright wet lustre; also brown, or grey-flecked as snowflake obsidian, or with a gold or rainbow sheen when turned to the light Pliny records obsidian as named for Obsius, who found it in Ethiopia, and notes that it was cut into mirrors giving back the shadow of a face rather than a likeness. Later scryers used the same black glass, John Dee's speculum among them. The tradition holds it to show what is there rather than what is wanted. It is given to anyone asking to see plainly. Set it somewhere you will pass. Each time you pass it today, say one true sentence about the thing you are avoiding. Keep the sentences short.
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.
Sapphire Transparent corundum in every colour except red, which is called ruby instead. Classically cornflower to inky blue, but also yellow, green, pink and colourless, often with fine silk that can throw a star. In the Middle Ages sapphire was the stone of bishops and kings: Marbode holds that it keeps the limbs whole and makes peace between enemies, and clergy wore it to cool the body. Two cautions. The sapphire of the Bible is almost certainly lapis. And Agrippa lists the saphir among the things of Saturn, though the later tables and this library place it under Jupiter. Wash it under the tap. Put it on and say one true thing you have been softening, in the plainest words you have.
Sodalite Opaque deep royal blue, marbled with white calcite veins, with occasional grey or violet patches. Sodalite came out of Greenland in 1811 and has no ancient lapidary behind it, so what it carries is recent and honest: a stone for people who think faster than they can speak. Practice gives it to teachers, witnesses and anyone who has to hold a line of argument steady while being interrupted. Before you speak, hold the sodalite and put what you mean into one sentence. Say that sentence. Then stop talking.