Stones of Scorpio

21 stones.

Apache Tear A rounded pebble, black and opaque by reflected light, but clear smoky brown all through when held up to a lamp; often frosted grey where the enclosing rock has weathered off An Apache tear is a nodule of obsidian weathered free of its rock. Black in the hand, it is clear brown when held up to a lamp. The name comes from a nineteenth-century Arizona story of women weeping for warriors lost at the cliff, their tears falling as stone. It is folk tradition and no older. It is kept for grief carried while ordinary life goes on. Hold it up to a window or a lamp until you can see light through it. Then close your hand and let yourself feel whatever that brought up.
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.
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.
Charoite Opaque violet in swirled, feathery, fibrous bands, lilac through to deep purple, streaked with white feldspar, orange-brown tinaksite and black aegirine. It has a pearly, almost silky sheen where the fibres catch the light. Charoite comes from one place on earth: the Murun massif on the Chara River in Siberia, described in 1978. Sellers like to say the name means enchanting in Russian; the mineralogists say it is the river. There is no old tradition to draw on. What has grown up around it in forty years is a stone for the person who knows the change is coming and is dragging their heels. Hold it and say out loud the change you have been putting off, with a date attached. Any date. Then write the date down.
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.
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.
Labradorite Dull grey to grey-brown until it is turned, when a broad flash of blue, green, gold or violet crosses the whole face. Labradorite looks like a grey pebble until it turns, and then the whole face lights blue or gold. The effect comes from layers inside the feldspar splitting the light. It was described from the Labrador coast in 1770, so its lore is young and honesty says so, but it has settled firmly into one use: a stone for people who keep far more inside than they show. Turn the labradorite until it flashes. Note what you have been holding back today. You do not have to say it aloud to anyone.
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.
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.
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.
Rhodochrosite Banded rose-pink and white in stalactite slices, or transparent raspberry-red rhombs where it has grown as clear crystals. The Argentine deposits were worked from old Inca silver mines, which is where the name Inca rose comes from. Banded pink and white, it became the tradition's stone of returning delight, given to people who have grown competent and joyless. The lapidary line is simple enough: it is held to remember what you liked before you learned to be sensible. Hold the rhodochrosite and name one thing you loved doing at ten years old. Then do fifteen minutes of it today.
Rhodonite Opaque to slightly translucent rose-pink to red, nearly always webbed and patched with black manganese oxide. Rhodonite is rose-pink shot through with black, and the tradition never separates the two. This is the stone of love that has been damaged and is being kept anyway. Russia mined it as orlets and cut it for the imperial court. Practice gives it after a betrayal or a family falling-out, and to anyone who must forgive without pretending nothing happened. Hold the rhodonite and trace one black vein with your thumb. Name the harm honestly. Then name one thing you will still do for them.
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.
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.
Topaz Transparent and glassy: colourless, pale blue, sherry-yellow, gold, and rare pink; the golden-orange imperial topaz is the most prized. Topaz is the hardest stone in this group and the tradition treats it as the Sun's cold side: judgement rather than warmth. Medieval lapidaries hold it to quiet anger and make the wearer plain-spoken. Pliny's topazos is a different stone, a green one from an island in the Red Sea and almost certainly peridot, so the name has moved across the centuries. Hold topaz up to the light and look through it. Say the fairest true sentence you can manage about a person who has wronged you.
Turquoise Opaque sky-blue through to green, usually webbed or blotched with the brown or black rock it grew in, which dealers call matrix. The blue greens as the stone loses water or takes up oil. Persia mined it at Nishapur and put it on the bridle: turquoise is the horseman's stone, worn against a fall, and held to crack in the rider's place. Boodt wrote in 1609 that it changes colour with its owner's health, which it does, though the cause is oil and water, not omen. Tibet, the Pueblo peoples and the Dine all keep it as a stone of sky and rain. Put it in the bag you travel with and say where you are going and when you intend to be back.