Shungite
Also Noble shungite, Elite 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
- Crystal system
- Amorphous
- Hardness
- 3.5-4 Mohs
- Handling
- Soft and sooty. Raw pieces blacken hands, cloth and pale surfaces, so keep them on a dish. Do not drink water it has stood in. The tradition does exactly that, but the rock commonly carries pyrite and other sulphides from its bed, and there is no way to know what a given lump holds.
- In water
- No
What it is held to be for
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.
Folk tradition (Karelia); Peter the Great's Marcial Waters, 1719
Correspondences
These are the tradition's ascriptions, not properties of the mineral.
- Planet
- Saturn
- Element
- Earth
- Signs
- Capricorn, Scorpio
- Chinese phase
- Earth
- Year animal
- Ox, Dog
- Centre
- Root Muladhara
- Sephirah
- Malkuth
How it is used
Kept as a block on a desk or shelf, or as a polished piece in a bag. Raw stone leaves black on light clothing, so it stays on a dish and is not worn. It belongs where you work.
Today
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.
A longer working
On a Saturday morning, take everything off one surface: a desk, a shelf, a kitchen table. Clean it properly. Put the shungite down first, before anything else goes back, and as you replace each object decide out loud whether it has earned the space. Whatever has not earned it leaves the room that day. Leave the stone standing there afterwards as the marker of what the surface is now for.
Works with
- Herb
- Nettle
- Incense
- Birch