Serpentine
Also Ophite, Bowenite, New jade
Waxy or greasy-lustred green, from pale olive to nearly black, mottled and veined like a snake's back; the finer bowenite is translucent
- Crystal system
- Monoclinic
- Hardness
- 2.5-5.5 Mohs
- Handling
- Soft and easily scratched, and it carries one real hazard: some serpentine occurs with chrysotile, the fibrous form that is white asbestos. A polished or tumbled stone is safe to hold. Never cut, grind, sand or dry-drill it, and do not buy crumbly or hairy-looking material. Keep it out of drinking water.
- In water
- No
What it is held to be for
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.
Pliny XXXVI, on ophites; folk use against snakebite
Correspondences
These are the tradition's ascriptions, not properties of the mineral.
- Planet
- Saturn, Mars
- Element
- Earth
- Signs
- Scorpio, Capricorn
- Chinese phase
- Wood
- Year animal
- Snake, Rabbit
- Centre
- Root Muladhara
- Sephirah
- Geburah
How it is used
Held in the hand rather than worn, and usually kept for one particular thing being given up. A tumbled piece sits well on the windowsill of the room where that thing used to happen.
Today
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.
A longer working
On the last day of a month, take the serpentine to an open window or outside. Say what you are leaving behind, then what you will do instead, in that order, and make the second sentence longer than the first. Wash your hands afterwards, not the stone. Put it somewhere it will be in your way for the first week of the new month, then move it to a shelf and let it be ordinary again.
Works with
- Herb
- Plantain
- Incense
- Cedar