Stones of Moon

11 stones.

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.
Chalcedony Translucent and waxy: milk white, pale grey or soft blue-grey, sometimes faintly banded. The look is half-lit rather than glassy. Chalcedony is quartz grown too fine to see, which gives it a waxy, half-lit look. It is the parent of agate, carnelian and onyx, but the pale grey-blue kind is its own stone. Roman seal-cutters favoured it because it takes a crisp intaglio and does not stick to warm wax. The lapidaries give it to speech, and to people who must say the same thing patiently many times over. Hold the chalcedony while you say, in a level voice, the thing you have already said five times, a sixth time.
Clear Quartz Colourless and glass-clear to milky white; six-sided prisms ending in a pyramid, often holding veils, needles or rainbows from internal fractures The Greeks called it krystallos, ice, and held that it was water frozen so hard in the Alps that it could never thaw. Pliny reports this. Physicians cut it into balls to gather the sun and cauterise wounds, a use for a stone said to concentrate. Agrippa places crystal under the Moon. The tradition keeps it as the stone that takes the shape of the intention put into it. Hold the point and say what you want in one present-tense sentence. Set it where you will see it in the morning. Say the sentence again then.
Howlite Opaque chalk white to grey-white, threaded with fine grey or black veins like a web; nodular and cauliflower-shaped in the rough Howlite came out of a Nova Scotian gypsum quarry and was described in 1868 by Henry How, a chemist. There is no ancient lore behind it and this entry will not invent any. Its tradition is modern and domestic: it is the stone people keep for a mind that will not stop working at night. The veining is why it is dyed so often, since it mimics turquoise. When your thoughts will not stop, hold it and trace one grey vein with a fingertip, slowly, end to end. Then trace another. Stop when you lose interest.
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.
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.
Moonstone Translucent to nearly transparent white, grey, peach or smoke, with a blue-white sheen that floats below the surface and moves as you tilt it. Moonstone is feldspar built in layers so fine that light scatters between them, and a blue-white sheen seems to float over the surface as it tilts. Pliny describes a selenitis that waxes and wanes with the Moon, though what he had in hand was probably not this stone. The association held regardless: it is worn for the parts of a life that come and go. Put the moonstone under your pillow tonight. In the morning, before you speak to anybody at all, write down whatever is left of the dream.
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.
Selenite Colourless to white: glassy and transparent in blades, silky and fibrous as satin spar, or bladed into rosettes. It splits into thin flexible sheets. Selenite is gypsum grown clear, in blades and sheets that peel apart like glass. The Romans quarried it as lapis specularis and glazed their windows with it, so it is literally a stone you can see through. The later tradition makes it the cleaner of the shelf: the piece other stones are laid against, held to take off whatever they have gathered. Lay your other stones on the selenite tonight and leave them until morning. Keep it dry, and let nothing wet near it.