Stones of Capricorn

15 stones.

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.
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.
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.
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.
Malachite Opaque green in concentric light and dark bands, silky where it has grown in rounded botryoidal masses; polished slices show rings, eyes and stripes. Pliny calls it molochitis, mallow-green, and writes that it was hung on children's cradles as a guard against danger; that is the oldest protective use we have for it. Egypt ground it for green eye-paint, which we now know was a poor idea. Its banded eyes made malachite the tradition's watcher, a stone held to see trouble coming. Set the malachite by the door you come home through. Look at its rings once, and leave whatever the day did outside.
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.
Tiger's Eye Opaque golden brown in bands of light and dark, with a silky sheen that slides across the face as it turns; the blue form is hawk's eye and heated material goes red. Tiger's eye is quartz that grew through blue asbestos fibres, so a band of light travels across it as it turns. The tradition gives it to the Sun in a guarded mood: a stone for watching without being watched. Its own lore is young, because the material was only worked from the nineteenth century, and it stands in for the older eye-agates worn against the evil eye. Turn the tiger's eye until the band of light crosses it. Ask yourself one plain question about a decision you are avoiding. Answer it.
Zircon Transparent and brilliant with strong fire: colourless, honey, golden brown, red, and a heat-treated blue; the back facets visibly double when you look through it. Zircon is the oldest thing a person can hold. Crystals from Western Australia have been dated past four billion years, older than any surviving rock. Under the name jacinth it runs all through the medieval lapidaries, where Marbode writes that it brings sleep and keeps a traveller safe and welcome in a strange house. It is a stone for arriving somewhere you do not know. Put zircon in the bag you are travelling with. Before you leave, say aloud where you are going and when you mean to be back.