Stones of Saturn
9 stones.
- 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.
- Black Tourmaline Opaque glossy black, in three-sided prisms with deep grooves running the length of the crystal, like a bundle of rods fused together Schorl was a miner's word long before it was a magician's. Dutch traders in the eighteenth century called tourmaline the ash-drawer, because a warm crystal pulled pipe ash across the table. The stone really is electric when heated, and the tradition took its character from that: something that gathers what is loose and holds it away from you. It is the plain protective stone, given to thresholds. Set one piece on the floor beside your front door tonight. Each time you come in, touch the frame and leave the day's argument on the other side of it.
- 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.
- 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.
- Onyx Opaque black, or straight parallel bands of black and chalk white; sardonyx bands brown and white. Waxy lustre, takes a mirror polish The Greeks called it onyx, fingernail, for the pale band running through the dark. The story ran that Cupid cut Venus's nails with an arrowhead and the Fates turned the clippings to stone. Pliny knew it as a carving stone, and cameo cutters have worked its layers ever since. Agrippa sets it under Saturn. It is held to hold a thing steady rather than to lighten it. Put it in your pocket before a conversation you expect to be difficult. Touch it once before you answer anything. Then answer more slowly than you want to.
- 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.
- Serpentine Waxy or greasy-lustred green, from pale olive to nearly black, mottled and veined like a snake's back; the finer bowenite is translucent Pliny calls it ophites, the snake stone, for the mottling that runs across it like a skin, and the old lapidaries hung it against venom and headache. Because a serpent sheds and then carries on, the tradition took the stone for whatever is being shed: an old habit, an old post, an old name. It is held for moulting rather than for change in general. Name one habit you are finished with. Say when it ends, giving a date and not the word soon. Write the date where you will see it.
- 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.