Crystals for cutting ties

You are ready to close a door that keeps opening itself.

This book lists 39 crystals tied to cutting ties, from Amazonite to White Sapphire. For ending something that won't end itself. 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.

• Amazonite6-6.5 Mohs · feldspar · heart, throatAmazonite grew in cooling granite, in the last pockets of melt to harden. The green comes from a trace of lead locked in it. Nobody dyed…
• Aragonite3.5-4 Mohs · carbonate · root, sacral, solar-plexusAragonite builds itself out of mineral water in caves, in rust orange spikes that all shoot from one centre. It is on borrowed time…
• Black Kyanite4.5-7 Mohs · silicate · root, throatAfter certain people leave, you go around opening windows. Black kyanite gets sold for exactly that feeling. It grows in splayed blades…
• Black Obsidian5-6 Mohs · volcanic glass · rootObsidian never got to be a crystal. Lava met air and cooled so fast the atoms stopped where they stood. What you hold is glass, made in…
• Black Onyx6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · rootSomebody soaked this in sugar water for weeks. Then they cooked it in acid until the sugar turned to carbon inside the pores. That is…
• Black Tourmaline7-7.5 Mohs · silicate · rootIt sits by the door, or you meant to put it there. Black, heavy, fine ridges running the length of it. Squeeze it or warm it and it…
• Blue Kyanite4.5-7 Mohs · silicate · throat, third-eyeKyanite needs burial to exist. Clay rich rock gets pushed down and squeezed until the aluminium in it grows into blue blades. It came…
• Blue Lace Agate6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · throatThe message is typed. You have read it four times and it is still sitting there. Blue lace agate built up in a lava cavity the same way…
• Botswana Agate6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · crown, sacralBotswana agate built itself inside bubbles in old lava. Water came in, left a layer, dried, came back. Every grey and pink line is one…
• 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…
• CChalcedony6 to 7 Mohs · quartz · throatChalcedony is quartz that never grew up into crystals. Instead of one clear six sided prism, it is billions of quartz fibres, each…
• Chrysocolla2.5-7 Mohs · silicate · throat, heartRain got into a copper deposit and worked on it for ages. It broke the ore apart and left this blue-green crust in the cracks. It is the…
• Dalmatian Stone6-7 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · root, sacralThose black spots are not tourmaline. The trade has said so for forty years and the trade is wrong. They are arfvedsonite, a softer dark…
• Desert Rose2-3.5 Mohs · sulphate · root, crownA shallow desert pool dried out. As the water left, gypsum crystallised in the wet sand and stacked into petals, closing around the…
• 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…
• Fluorite4 Mohs · halide · third-eye, throat, heartFluorite survives almost nothing. A steel knife cuts it. One knock splits it clean along a flat plane, and long sun pulls the purple…
• Galena2.5-2.75 Mohs · sulphide · rootIt is lead. The same lead that ran through Roman pipes and the same lead they took back out of petrol. Galena is soft, so it sheds fine…
• 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…
• Howlite3.5 Mohs · silicate · crown, third-eyeSomeone dyed it blue and sold it as turquoise. That is not gossip. It is the trade's default move. Howlite formed in old salt flats…
• Jadeite Jade6-7 Mohs · silicate · heartIn China, jade has stood for virtue for thousands of years. Not luck. Virtue. Mesoamerican carvers valued it above gold. Most fine…
• Jet2.5-4 Mohs · organic · rootA branch fell in the water a hundred and eighty million years ago and sank into the mud. Pressure did the rest. Jet is fossil driftwood…
• 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…
• Mahogany Obsidian5-6 Mohs · volcanic glass · root, sacralThis was lava moving too fast to become a crystal. It cooled into glass instead, and the red-brown clouds are iron that froze the second…
• Malachite3.5-4 Mohs · carbonate · heart, solar-plexusMalachite is rust. Copper ore sat in wet ground and the water rebuilt it into a green carbonate, band by band. So it is a copper salt…
• Nephrite Jade6-6.5 Mohs · silicate · heartIn Aotearoa New Zealand, pounamu is nephrite. Māori tradition holds it as taonga, treasure that carries everyone who held it before you…
• PPink Tourmaline7 to 7.5 Mohs · tourmaline · heartPink tourmaline grows in pegmatite, the last wet pocket of a granite as it cools and gives up whatever the rest of the rock would not…
• 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…
• SSapphire9 Mohs · corundum · throat, third-eyeSapphire and ruby are the same mineral. Both are corundum, aluminium oxide, and what separates them is a trace of something that should…
• 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…
• Septarian3-4 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · root, solar-plexusIt started as a lump of mud on an ancient seafloor. The mud hardened into a nodule, then cracked from the inside as it dried out. Then…
• Shungite3.5-4 Mohs · organic · rootShungite is carbon that settled in a shallow sea about two billion years ago. It got buried and cooked until it became rock. It is older…
• Smoky Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · rootSomebody worked out you can do this in an afternoon. Much of the very dark, evenly black smoky quartz on sale was clear quartz until a…
• Snowflake Obsidian5-6 Mohs · volcanic glass · root, crownBacklight a thin edge and it glows brown. That is glass. Lava cooled too fast to make crystals and froze the way it was. The white…
• Sodalite5.5-6 Mohs · silicate · throat, third-eyeSodalite formed in magma that ran out of silica. Where quartz would normally grow, this blue grew instead. Then it got sold as lapis…
• 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…
• Tourmalinated Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · root, crownThe black needles grew first. Quartz came later and grew straight around them, sealing them where they stood. Nothing was broken to make…
• WWhite Sapphire9 Mohs · corundum · crown, third-eyeWhite sapphire is corundum with nothing much in it. Aluminium oxide, the same species as ruby and as blue sapphire, but the iron…

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