Stones of Aries

11 stones.

Bloodstone Opaque dark green chalcedony flecked and spotted with red iron oxide, so that it looks like drops of blood on moss. Some pieces are nearly black-green with only two or three marks. Pliny knew it as heliotropium and reports that the magi claimed it made the bearer invisible, a claim he did not believe. Christian Europe renamed it. The red flecks became the blood that fell on green jasper at the foot of the cross, and carvers cut Passion scenes into it. It has been a soldier's stone and a healer's stone since. Wash it under the cold tap, dry it on a clean towel, and put it in the pocket of whatever you will wear tomorrow.
Carnelian Translucent orange to deep red-brown, sometimes banded. Held up to a lamp it glows through like a coal; the darker brown material is usually called sard. Pliny calls it sarda, after Sardis where it was first cut, and notes the practical reason it filled Roman signet rings: hot wax does not stick to it. Egypt cut it into amulets for the dead. Islamic tradition prizes the aqiq ring above other stones. Everywhere it turns up it is a stone of doing rather than dreaming, the one you take to the thing you have been avoiding. Put it on the table beside your work. Do not touch it until you have done twenty minutes without stopping, then pick it up.
Diamond Transparent and colourless at its finest, but also yellow, brown, grey and rarely pink, blue or green; the lustre is unlike any other stone, hard and oily-bright, throwing sharp flashes of spectral colour when it is cut. Adamas means unconquerable, and that is its whole old meaning. Pliny reports that it defeats the hammer and the anvil, and repeats the story that only goat's blood will break it. The lapidaries gave it invulnerability rather than romance: proof against poison and fear. Western tables put it under the Sun, Indian astrology under Venus. Its link with betrothal is modern, built largely by De Beers advertising from 1947. Put the diamond on. Name one decision you will not reverse, out loud, once. Take it off only when the decision has been carried out.
Flint Opaque grey to black, brown or honey, usually inside a white chalky rind. A fresh break is waxy or glassy and shells out in curved flakes, and a thin flake is translucent brown at the edge. Flint is the oldest worked stone. Where ploughs turned up ancient arrowheads, Britain and Ireland called them elf-shot and set them in silver as a guard. Nodules that came out of the ground whole were thunderstones, held to have fallen with the lightning and to keep a house from being struck again. Herodotus says the Egyptian embalmer opened the body with a stone knife; Zipporah used flint in Exodus. Hold the flint against a piece of string and cut the string with scissors while you name what you are ending. Throw the short piece away.
Garnet Most often deep red, from wine-dark to nearly black in a thick piece, though the group also runs orange, green and honey. Transparent to translucent, with a glassy, almost resinous shine. The ancients had no word for garnet alone. Pliny's carbunculi are the fiery red stones, named for a live coal, and garnet is most of what he means. Out of that came the medieval carbuncle that shines in the dark: the lamp said to have lit Noah's ark. What survives is plainer. Garnet is held to keep a promise burning after the feeling that made it has cooled. Hold it up to a lamp until you find the light inside it. Then put it on and do the dull part of the work.
Hematite Steel-grey to black with a bright metallic shine when polished; earthy and botryoidal masses are a dull red-brown. Whatever the surface colour, it always leaves a red-brown streak, and that is the test. The Greeks named it from haima, blood, because it bleeds: grind it or saw it and the water goes red. Pliny prescribes haematites for the eyes and for bleeding. It is iron ore, the ore Mars is made of, and it was polished into some of the earliest mirrors, so it carries both meanings, the weapon and the true reflection. Modern practice uses it for one thing above all: weight. Sit down. Rest one in each palm, hands on your knees, and breathe until you can feel their weight and nothing else.
Magnetite Opaque black with a submetallic to metallic shine and a black streak. Crystals are often sharp octahedra. The same mineral in sand-sized grains is what makes some beaches grey and clings in beards to a magnet dragged through them. Magnetite is the one common mineral that is magnetic by itself, and lodestone is the rarer thing again: a piece that has been permanently magnetised in the ground, most likely by a lightning strike. Claudian describes a temple where an iron Mars was drawn across to a lodestone Venus and the priests called it a wedding. Folk practice feeds a lodestone iron filings to keep it drawing. Hold a paperclip near it until you feel the pull. Say what you want to come, once, then set the stone down facing the door.
Pyrite Opaque brassy metallic yellow, often in sharp cubes or flat radiating discs; tarnishes with age to a dull brown iridescence. Pyrite grows in cubes so square they look cut. Its name is Greek for fire-stone: struck against steel it throws sparks, and both Theophrastus and Pliny record it doing exactly that. That is the whole of its tradition, a stone holding fire in a cold form. It is kept for nerve rather than for luck, and its likeness to gold earned it the name fool's gold. Set the pyrite where the light catches it. Name the task you have been circling for weeks. Do the first five minutes of it now.
Red Jasper Opaque brick to brownish red, sometimes veined with darker lines or carrying a grey rind. Completely opaque: hold it to a lamp and nothing at all passes through it. Egypt put red jasper at the throat of the dead. The Book of the Dead's spell for the tyet, the knot of Isis, calls for it in that stone and calls the amulet the blood of Isis. Pliny says the whole of the East wore iaspis as an amulet. Rome cut it for seals. It is the plainest of the Mars stones: no fire, no shine, only holding on. Stand with both feet flat, the stone in your fist, and count backwards from twenty. Put it in your pocket and go back in.
Ruby Transparent to translucent red, from pinkish through to the deep tone dealers call pigeon's blood. Fine silk-like inclusions are common and can give a six-rayed star when the stone is cut domed. Sanskrit calls it ratnaraja, king of gems. Medieval lapidaries, Marbode among them, hold that it drives off sadness and that it darkens to warn its wearer of coming trouble. Note the disagreement: Western planetary tables give ruby to Mars, while Indian astrology gives it to the Sun and will not let a weak Sun wear one. Both traditions agree it is a stone of rank. Put it on. Stand up straight, say the first sentence of what you have to say, out loud, to the mirror. Then go.
Sunstone Translucent to opaque orange, honey or red-brown, flecked with metallic copper-coloured platelets that flash as it turns; Oregon material can be clear red or green. Sunstone is feldspar shot through with tiny plates of copper or iron, so that when it turns the light inside it flashes. The tradition takes that literally and holds it a stone of warmth put back into a person, given to those who have made themselves small. Where citrine is for asking, sunstone is for being seen while you ask. Hold the sunstone at a window and turn it until the flash comes. Say one thing you are good at, out loud, and go.