Stones of Libra

15 stones.

Azurite Deep dark azure, almost navy in the mass, often streaked or crusted with green malachite; small crystals are glassy and translucent, earthy coatings dull Azurite is copper, and painters knew it long before magicians did. It is the blue of medieval manuscripts and altarpieces, the azzurro della Magna of Cennini's handbook. Many of those blues have since turned green, because the stone slowly becomes malachite in damp air. It changes while you own it. The tradition gives it to the inward eye and to a mind being made to look at something. Sit with it and look into the blue for two minutes without deciding anything. Then write down the first clear sentence that arrives.
Celestite Pale sky blue, sometimes colourless or faintly straw yellow; transparent tabular crystals with a glassy shine, usually standing in a geode Celestite was named in 1799 for its colour, from the Latin caelestis, of the sky. It has almost no old lore, because the fine crystals come from geodes opened only in the last two centuries. What tradition it has is about stillness. It is a strontium mineral, pale and soft and easily ruined, and the practice built around it treats it the same way, kept in one quiet place. Put it where you can see it from your pillow. Before sleep, look at it and say the one thing you are going to stop thinking about tonight.
Chrysoprase Translucent apple-green to deep green, evenly coloured rather than banded, with a waxy rather than glassy shine. Pliny lists chrysoprasus among the green stones, and medieval Europe prized the Silesian material enough to line chapel walls with it. Its tradition is gentler than emerald's. Where emerald is the long vow, chrysoprase is recovery, and practice gives it to people coming out of a bad year, on the argument that green returns to ground that was burnt. Hold the chrysoprase and name one thing that is better now than it was a year ago. Say it aloud, even if it is small.
Green Tourmaline Transparent green, from pale grass through bottle to a dark olive, in three-sided prisms grooved lengthwise like its black sibling. Strongly dichroic: much darker looked at down the length of the crystal than across it. Tourmaline reached Europe in 1703, brought from Ceylon by Dutch traders, so it has no classical lore; the name comes from the Sinhala turamali, a word for mixed-coloured stones. Green and black are the same mineral family, and practice splits them cleanly. Where schorl is a boundary and keeps things out, verdelite is given to increase: the heart, the garden, the thing that is meant to get bigger. Put the green tourmaline in your pocket and spend one uninterrupted hour on the thing you want to grow. Not planning it — doing it.
Iolite Transparent violet-blue, and famously two-faced: turn the stone and it shifts from blue to a smoky straw-yellow or almost nothing. That pleochroism is the whole character of it. Iolite has no ancient name; it was described in 1813 and called after the Greek for violet. You will read that Norse navigators used it to find the sun through cloud. Treat that carefully: the sagas mention a sunstone without saying what it was, and no iolite has been found in a Norse burial. The modern tradition is milder, a stone for keeping your bearings. Turn the stone slowly in a window until the blue goes pale. Ask yourself which of the two colours today has been, and answer.
Jade Translucent to opaque. Jadeite runs from emerald green through lavender, white and orange; nephrite from creamy mutton-fat white through spinach green to near black. Two minerals answer to jade, jadeite and nephrite, and both are so tough that the ancients made axes and blades of them. That toughness is the whole of the tradition. Confucius, in the Book of Rites, reads the virtues of a good man in jade: its warmth, its evenness, the fact that it will break before it bends. Spanish sailors called it the stone of the flank, for colic. Put the jade on and leave it on. Each time you notice it today, finish the thing in front of you before starting another.
Kunzite Transparent pink to lilac, palest at the edges. Strongly pleochroic: turn the crystal and the colour deepens along its length, then almost drains away. Kunzite is a young stone. George Kunz described it in 1902 from Pala in California, and everything said about it since has been said in a hundred years, not a thousand. The tradition that grew up is consistent: a stone for a heart that has taken a blow. Venus claims it for its colour and for the gentleness of its work. Hold it in your closed hand and name, out loud, the one person you are still angry with. Then put it in a dark drawer.
Kyanite Translucent to transparent blades of blue, paler at the edges and deeper along the central streaks; also grey, green, orange and near-black. It grows in flat, splintery fans. Kyanite's old name is disthene, two strengths, for the plain fact that it is soft along its length and hard across it. The lapidary tradition likes a stone that admits to being two things at once, and gives kyanite to people who must hold a difficult position and stay flexible about how they hold it. Lay the kyanite blade flat on your palm. Name the position you are keeping and the thing you will bend on. Both, out loud.
Lapis Lazuli Deep blue to violet-blue and completely opaque, dusted with brassy gold pyrite and veined or clouded with white calcite. The best material is even and dark with only a scattering of gold. Lapis was the sky brought indoors. Sumer gave its gods lapis beards and sent Inanna into the underworld wearing a lapis rod and necklace. Egypt cut it for the heart scarab. Pliny's sapphirus, sprinkled with gold, is this stone and not the corundum we now call sapphire. Ground and washed for weeks it becomes ultramarine, the costliest pigment in Europe, kept for the Virgin's robe. Hold it and say the difficult sentence to the empty room three times, changing a word each time, until it is short enough to mean it.
Lepidolite Lilac to rose-purple, sometimes grey, with a pearly sheen; either a glittering mass of small mica plates or a solid violet stone, often shot through with pink tourmaline Lepidolite is a lithium mica, named in 1792 from the Greek for scale, because it splits into glittering flakes. The lithium is genuinely there but bound in the rock, and it does nothing to the person holding the stone. The tradition keeps it for the low weeks: not a crisis, but the flat stretch where the work is simply to keep going until the season turns. Put it where you make your morning drink. Touch it while the kettle boils and name one thing you will do today that is entirely for yourself.
Morganite Transparent pale pink to peach or salmon, the colour often faint enough that stones are cut deep to hold it. Morganite is pink beryl, named in 1911 by the gemmologist George Kunz for the banker J. P. Morgan, whose mineral collection he had bought. It is the youngest stone in this part of the library, and its tradition is correspondingly plain: the clarity of the beryl family turned towards tenderness. Practice gives it for patience with people, including yourself. Touch the morganite and think of whoever is annoying you most. Give them one more chance than you meant to give.
Opal A white, grey, black or transparent body carrying flashes of spectral colour that shift with the angle; fire opal is orange to red and may show no play of colour at all. Opal is silica that never crystallised, holding water inside its structure. Its flashes come from the way that structure bends light, not from any colour in the stone. Pliny thought it the finest of gems and tells of the senator Nonius, who chose exile rather than surrender his opal to Mark Antony. Its reputation for bad luck is modern, and traces to a novel published in 1829. Turn the opal until a colour appears that you were not expecting. Name one thing in your life that has changed without your permission.
Prehnite Translucent pale yellow-green to apple green, with a soft inner glow and a fibrous grain; often botryoidal, sometimes crowded with black epidote needles Prehnite came into the record too late for Pliny. It was described in 1788 and named for a Dutch colonel who brought a specimen back from the Cape, the first mineral named after a person. Its lore is modern, and honesty requires saying so. The tradition keeps it as the stone of the settled mind: the one held to quiet the noise around a decision before the decision is made. Hold it in a closed hand. Name the decision aloud, once. Then say nothing for a full minute and notice which thought arrives first.
Rose Quartz Translucent and cloudy rather than clear, in pale to dusky pink; the haze comes from microscopic fibres running through the quartz. Rose quartz has no ancient citation to lean on and does not need one; the folk line is unbroken and specific. It is the stone of ordinary affection rather than desire, of the love you already have and have stopped noticing. Practice gives it to the grieving and the newly alone as readily as to lovers, and that is the older use. Hold the rose quartz and think of one person you love and have not told. Send them a message now saying so.
Sapphire Transparent corundum in every colour except red, which is called ruby instead. Classically cornflower to inky blue, but also yellow, green, pink and colourless, often with fine silk that can throw a star. In the Middle Ages sapphire was the stone of bishops and kings: Marbode holds that it keeps the limbs whole and makes peace between enemies, and clergy wore it to cool the body. Two cautions. The sapphire of the Bible is almost certainly lapis. And Agrippa lists the saphir among the things of Saturn, though the later tables and this library place it under Jupiter. Wash it under the tap. Put it on and say one true thing you have been softening, in the plainest words you have.