Topaz
Also Imperial topaz, Precious topaz
Transparent and glassy: colourless, pale blue, sherry-yellow, gold, and rare pink; the golden-orange imperial topaz is the most prized.
- Crystal system
- Orthorhombic
- Hardness
- 8 Mohs
- Handling
- Hard at 8 and safe in water, but it has one perfect cleavage plane and a knock in the wrong direction will split it clean through. Keep it out of ultrasonic and steam cleaners. Heat and long sunlight can pale yellow and brown stones.
- In water
- Safe
What it is held to be for
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.
Pliny, Natural History XXXVII (topazos); Marbode of Rennes, De lapidibus
Correspondences
These are the tradition's ascriptions, not properties of the mineral.
- Planet
- Sun, Jupiter
- Element
- Fire
- Signs
- Sagittarius, Scorpio
- Chinese phase
- Fire
- Year animal
- Horse, Dragon
- Centre
- Solar plexus Manipura
- Sephirah
- Chesed
How it is used
Set in a ring or a pendant and worn when you have to be fair to somebody you resent. Left off in a temper: the tradition holds it no use at all to a wearer who will not be honest.
Today
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.
A longer working
On a Thursday, write two lists: what you are owed, and what you owe. Set the topaz on the second list. Read that one aloud, all of it, without softening a word. Leave the stone on the page overnight. In the morning pick one item from that list and do it before noon, however small. Only then may the stone be worn again.
Works with
- Herb
- Chamomile
- Incense
- Cinnamon