Selenite
Also Satin spar, Desert rose, Lapis specularis
Colourless to white: glassy and transparent in blades, silky and fibrous as satin spar, or bladed into rosettes. It splits into thin flexible sheets.
- Crystal system
- Monoclinic
- Hardness
- 2 Mohs
- Handling
- Selenite dissolves in water. This is not a warning about dulling: gypsum is genuinely soluble, so a piece soaked or held under a tap turns cloudy and chalky and will in time fall apart. At hardness 2 a fingernail marks it. Dust it dry with a soft brush, keep it out of a steamy bathroom, and never make an elixir with it.
- In water
- No
What it is held to be for
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.
Pliny, Natural History XXXVI (lapis specularis)
Correspondences
These are the tradition's ascriptions, not properties of the mineral.
- Planet
- Moon
- Element
- Air
- Signs
- Cancer, Aquarius
- Chinese phase
- Metal
- Year animal
- Rat, Rabbit
- Centre
- Crown Sahasrara
- Sephirah
- Yesod
How it is used
Kept as a bar or a flat plate on the shelf, with other stones laid on it overnight. Handled little, because handling marks it, and never hung on a chain that will knock against things.
Today
Lay your other stones on the selenite tonight and leave them until morning. Keep it dry, and let nothing wet near it.
A longer working
Once a month, on the full Moon or the nearest clear night, take everything off the shelf. Dust each piece dry with a soft cloth. Lay them on the selenite in a single layer, none of them touching, and leave them overnight. In the morning put them back one at a time, and as you set each one down say what you keep it for. Anything you cannot answer for, put away.
Works with
- Herb
- Sage
- Incense
- Camphor