Crystals for courage

You have the words. You need something steady while you speak them.

This book lists 36 crystals tied to courage, from Alexandrite to Topaz. For the conversation you've been avoiding. They run A to Z, not best to worst, because nobody measures that. Every entry says what the mineral really is, how to tell a real one from a dyed or baked copy, and what each of the twelve signs is told about it.

• AAlexandrite8.5 Mohs · chrysoberyl · heart, crownAlexandrite should not exist. Beryllium collects in granite pegmatites, near the top of the crust. Chromium belongs to ultramafic rock…
• Aquamarine7.5-8 Mohs · silicate · throat, heartNearly every blue aquamarine in a shop window has been in an oven, at around 400 degrees, to burn the green out. It is permanent. No…
• Astrophyllite3-4 Mohs · silicate · crown, third-eye, solar-plexusAstrophyllite grows in a rare kind of igneous rock, in pockets where leftover elements like titanium end up. It fans out from a centre…
• Bloodstone6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · root, heartBloodstone set inside old lava. Hot water full of silica filled the gas pockets and stiffened, catching green flecks and rust red iron…
• Blue Apatite5 Mohs · phosphate · throat, third-eyeBlue apatite is the mineral your teeth are made of. Your bones too. One version grows in cooling rock, the other grows in you. The name…
• Bumblebee Jasper3-5 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · solar-plexus, sacralThis one is quietly falling apart. Left in sun the orange crumbles to powder. A coin will mark it. It formed in a volcanic vent in Java…
• Carnelian6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · sacral, rootMost carnelian was helped. Grey agate gets iron stained and baked until the orange comes up, and people have done that since before…
• Charoite5-6 Mohs · silicate · third-eye, crownCharoite comes from one place on earth. A hot alkaline body pushed into limestone in Siberia and cooked it, and the rock came out violet…
• Cherry Quartz5-6 Mohs · man-made · heart, sacralSomebody melted silica in a factory, stirred in gold or copper for the red, and pulled the whole thing into a rod. The white swirls are…
• Citrine (Heat-Treated Amethyst)7 Mohs · quartz · solar-plexus, sacralIt was amethyst. Purple, out of a geode in Brazil, until it went into an oven at around 450 degrees and came out brandy orange for good…
• Citrine (Natural)7 Mohs · quartz · solar-plexus, sacralThis pale thing is the real one. Natural citrine is a weak-tea yellow, quartz that took its colour from a trace of iron and the slow…
• Crazy Lace Agate6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · solar-plexus, sacralHold it up and follow one band with a fingernail. It doubles back, folds over itself and starts again. That is because the rock cracked…
• DDiamond10 Mohs · native element · crownA diamond is carbon that got buried. Around a hundred and fifty kilometres down, hot enough to melt most rock and squeezed harder than…
• Fire Agate6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · root, sacralTilt it under a lamp. Red and gold slide across the domes, then vanish when you hold still. That fire is not pigment. It is films of…
• Garnet6.5-7.5 Mohs · silicate · root, sacralGarnet grew inside rock that was being crushed. Heat and pressure squeezed the root of a mountain, and the garnet crystallised in the…
• Goldstone5-6 Mohs · man-made · sacral, solar-plexusIn Venice, four hundred years ago, a glassmaker melted sand with copper and shut the air out of the pot. As it cooled, small copper…
• Green Aventurine6.5-7 Mohs · quartz · heartIt began as plain sand on a seabed. Buried, pressed and cooked, the grains welded into one hard rock, and flecks of green mica got…
• Hematite5.5-6.5 Mohs · oxide · rootIt looks like machined steel. It is rust. Iron and oxygen joined in an old sea and settled in layers on the floor. Burial pressed those…
• Leopardskin Jasper6.5-7 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · root, sacralThe name lies twice. It is not jasper, and those are not animal markings. It is old lava that cooled with crystals growing outward from…
• Magnetite5-6 Mohs · oxide · rootHold it near a paperclip and the paperclip moves. That is not a trick. This rock is actually magnetic. It crystallized out of cooling…
• MMoissanite9.25 to 9.5 Mohs · carbide · crownIn 1893 a French chemist was sorting through fragments of an iron meteorite that had punched a crater into Arizona, and he found tiny…
• Moldavite5.5-7 Mohs · volcanic glass · heart, third-eye, crownAbout fifteen million years ago an asteroid hit what is now Bavaria. The ground melted and was thrown far enough to cool into glass…
• Mookaite6-7 Mohs · chalcedony · root, sacral, solar-plexusMookaite is made of animals. Sea plankton with glass shells died in their billions on an old seafloor, and the silica of those shells…
• Pietersite6.5-7 Mohs · quartz · third-eye, solar-plexusThis was tiger's eye first. Fine blue fibres in rock, slowly replaced by quartz, all lying parallel. Then the ground moved and tore it…
• Pyrite6-6.5 Mohs · sulphide · solar-plexus, rootPyrite is iron and sulphur. The name comes from the Greek word for fire, because struck against steel it throws a spark. It is not gold…
• Red Jasper6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · rootRed jasper is quartz too fine to see, stained through with iron oxide. Rust, basically. The same red as old brick and old blood. It…
• RRed Tiger's Eye6.5 to 7 Mohs · quartz · root, sacralThis one began as asbestos. Crocidolite, the blue fibrous amphibole, grew in seams inside ancient ironstone, and silica moved through…
• Rhodonite5.5-6.5 Mohs · silicate · heart, rootRhodonite began as manganese-rich mud on a seafloor. Heat and pressure buried it and cooked it pink over an age you cannot picture. The…
• RRuby9 Mohs · corundum · root, heartRuby is aluminium oxide that got contaminated. Corundum grows colourless. Then a few chromium atoms take the place of aluminium in the…
• Ruby in Zoisite6-9 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · heart, rootDeep underground, heat and pressure grew two things at once in one rock. Green zoisite. Red corundum, which is the mineral we call ruby…
• Rutilated Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · solar-plexus, crownHold it up to a window. Those gold threads are titanium. They grew as needles in a hot crack in the rock, and quartz crystallised around…
• Sardonyx6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · root, sacralRoman cutters wanted a stone they could carve a face into. Sardonyx gave them one, because its bands lie flat and level instead of…
• Shiva Lingam6-7 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · root, sacral, crownThis stone carries living religious meaning, so that comes first. Shiva lingam are gathered from one stretch of the Narmada river in…
• Sunstone6-6.5 Mohs · feldspar · sacral, solar-plexusTilt it under a lamp. The glitter runs across the whole face at once, then vanishes when you tilt it back. That is metal. Tiny flakes of…
• Tiger's Eye6.5-7 Mohs · quartz · solar-plexus, rootThis used to be asbestos. Blue crocidolite fibres grew in the rock first, and quartz replaced them one by one. The silk you can see is…
• TTopaz8 Mohs · nesosilicate · solar-plexus, throatTopaz grows in the last hot breath of a cooling granite, in the cavities and gas pockets where fluorine-rich vapour has nowhere left to…

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