Crystals for protection

You want to stop bracing every time the world gets loud.

This book lists 49 crystals tied to protection, from Amber to Zircon. For when it's a person, not a feeling. 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.

• Amber2-2.5 Mohs · organic · solar-plexus, sacralPick it up. Four seconds in your palm and it is warm. Glass and plastic never manage that. It is not a stone. It is tree resin that ran…
• Ammonite3.5-4.5 Mohs · organic · root, crownThis was an animal. It swam, it died out with the dinosaurs, and it sank into seabed mud. The mud turned to rock and swapped the shell…
• Apache Tears5-6 Mohs · volcanic glass · root, heartIt is not a stone. It is glass, lava that cooled too fast to become anything else. Hold one up to a lamp. The whole pebble glows smoky…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• Clear Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · crown, third-eyeHot silica water got into a crack underground and grew this, layer on layer, until the crack ran out of room. It is the most common…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• Labradorite6-6.5 Mohs · feldspar · third-eye, throat, crownGrey and dull, like something off a driveway. Then you tilt it under a lamp and a sheet of blue switches on inside it. That flash is…
• Lapis Lazuli5-6 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · third-eye, throatLimestone got cooked where hot magma pushed into it, and parts of it came out deep blue. One valley in Afghanistan has been mined for it…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• Nuummite5.5-6 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · root, third-eyeIt looks like a plain black pebble until you turn it. Then gold and bronze streaks flash across it in hard straight lines and disappear…
• Peridot6.5-7 Mohs · silicate · heart, solar-plexusPeridot is olivine. It is one of the main minerals of the mantle, the hot layer under the crust, and it rode up here inside magma. So…
• 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…
• Rainbow Moonstone6-6.5 Mohs · feldspar · third-eye, crown, sacralThis is white labradorite, a feldspar. It is not moonstone at all. Moonstone is a different feldspar. Somebody in the trade renamed it…
• Rainbow Obsidian5-6 Mohs · volcanic glass · root, third-eyeIt is glass. The lava cooled too fast for crystals to form, so nothing inside got to finish growing. Almost nothing. Tiny rods of…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• Satin Spar2 Mohs · sulphate · crownThat silky white tower is not selenite. It is satin spar, the fibrous form of gypsum, carved by the container load in Morocco. Same…
• Selenite2 Mohs · sulphate · crown, third-eyeYou were told to rinse your stones. Do not rinse this one. Water dissolves selenite. Salt etches it. A humid bathroom shelf pits the…
• Serpentine2.5-6 Mohs · silicate · heart, rootSerpentine is what happens when seawater soaks into rock from far below the ocean floor and turns it into something slick and green…
• 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…
• 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…
• Spectrolite6-6.5 Mohs · feldspar · third-eye, crownSpectrolite is labradorite. A Finnish quarry found the darkest material anyone had seen. They gave it a name of its own. The name is the…
• Spirit Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · crown, third-eyeHold it up. Hundreds of small crystals stand off one big one, pointing every way at once. That is a second life. The first crystal…
• Sugilite5.5-6.5 Mohs · silicate · third-eye, crownSugilite grew slowly in rock deep underground. Nearly every purple piece in the world came out of one South African mine. There is not…
• 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…
• Turquoise5-6 Mohs · phosphate · throat, third-eyeTurquoise is central to Navajo, Zuni and Puebloan life. It is worn, inherited and made into work by living artists right now. The stone…
• ZZircon6 to 7.5 Mohs · nesosilicate · root, throat, third-eyeStart with the thing the shop counter will not say, because it is the whole reason this stone is treated as cheap. Zircon is not cubic…

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