Stones of Mercury
8 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Aventurine Opaque to lightly translucent green, sometimes peach, grey or blue, with a soft glitter from flecks of mica scattered through it. Aventurine's name comes from an accident. Venetian glassmakers spilled copper filings into a melt in the seventeenth century and got a glittering stone-like glass they called avventurina, by chance. The mineral was named after the imitation. Tradition took the glitter as a sign of fortune, and made aventurine the stone of the chance you have to take yourself. Put the aventurine in your hand. Say out loud the one thing you want and have not asked for. Then ask for it today.
- 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.
- Fluorite Transparent to translucent, in purple, green, blue, yellow and colourless, often several of those banded within one crystal. Glassy, and frequently found as clean cubes. Fluorite takes its name from the Latin fluere, to flow: smelters added it to ore to make the metal run clean. The tradition reads that literally, and gives fluorite to a mind clogged with too many half-thoughts. Agricola named the fluores in 1546, and the murrhine cups Pliny prized are widely thought to have been carved from it. Set the fluorite on the page you are avoiding. Look at it, name the first small step out loud, and start with that.
- 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.
- 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.