Crystals for protection

The crystals people reach for around protection are Amber, Ammonite and Apache Tears, 44 stones in all. for when it's a person, not a feeling. Every entry below states what the mineral actually is, how to tell a real one from a dyed or heated lookalike, and what each of the twelve signs is told about it.

• Amber2-2.5 Mohs · organic · solar-plexus, sacralTree resin from Eocene forests, polymerised over 30 to 90 million years, and the only gem material that regularly contains a dead animal. T…
• Ammonite3.5-4.5 Mohs · organic · root, crownA cephalopod that built its shell in a logarithmic spiral, lived in the last chamber and used the rest for buoyancy, then went extinct with…
• Apache Tears5-6 Mohs · volcanic glass · root, heartObsidian nodules that survived when the surrounding glass hydrated into crumbly perlite, mineralogists call them marekanite. The American n…
• Black Kyanite4.5-7 Mohs · silicate · root, throatIron-darkened kyanite from Brazil, growing in splayed fans that the trade decided look like a witch's besom and priced accordingly. It beha…
• Black Obsidian5-6 Mohs · volcanic glass · rootLava that cooled too fast to organise itself into crystals, a natural glass, and the sharpest edge available to any pre-metal culture. Meso…
• Black Onyx6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · rootGrey agate boiled in sugar and acid until it turns black, a treatment Pliny already knew about, which makes it one of the oldest continuous…
• Black Tourmaline7-7.5 Mohs · silicate · rootIron-rich tourmaline, common as gravel in pegmatite country, and the single most-recommended protective stone in the modern trade. It is ge…
• Bloodstone6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · root, heartDark green chalcedony spattered with hematite, and one of the very few stones whose Christian folklore is fully explicit, the red was said …
• Carnelian6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · sacral, rootIron-stained chalcedony the colour of a low fire, and one of the oldest worked gemstones on record, Egyptian, Roman and Islamic carvers all…
• Clear Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · crown, third-eyeThe default specimen of the entire trade, silicon dioxide, geometrically perfect, and so common it is nearly worthless by weight. Its appea…
• Desert Rose2-3.5 Mohs · sulfate · root, crownGypsum crystallising out of evaporating groundwater in a desert basin, growing around and through the sand until it forms a rosette. Oklaho…
• Fire Agate6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · root, sacralChalcedony that grew in stacked layers alternating with films of iron oxide only nanometres thick, so light interferes with itself and the …
• Galena2.5-2.75 Mohs · sulfide · rootLead sulfide in perfect silver cubes, the principal ore of lead, the source of Roman plumbing, Egyptian kohl and a great deal of historical…
• Garnet6.5-7.5 Mohs · silicate · root, sacralNot one mineral but a family of six-plus species sharing a cubic structure, ranging from the black-red almandine in every schist to the gre…
• Hematite5.5-6.5 Mohs · oxide · rootIron oxide, the mineral that makes Mars red and rust red, named from the Greek for blood because of the streak it leaves. Polished it looks…
• Jadeite Jade6-7 Mohs · silicate · heartThe other jade, a sodium aluminium pyroxene, rarer than nephrite and the material of the Qing imperial court and Mesoamerican Olmec and May…
• Jet2.5-4 Mohs · organic · rootFossilised driftwood from Jurassic monkey-puzzle trees, compressed in the shales below Whitby, and the definitive material of Victorian mou…
• Labradorite6-6.5 Mohs · feldspar · third-eye, throat, crownA grey plagioclase feldspar whose internal layering is spaced at exactly the wavelength of visible light, so it throws aurora colours from …
• Lapis Lazuli5-6 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · third-eye, throatA rock rather than a mineral, and one that has been mined at Sar-e-Sang in Badakhshan for over six thousand years, the same valley supplied…
• Leopardskin Jasper6.5-7 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · root, sacralAnother trade name that lies: this is orbicular rhyolite from Chihuahua, a volcanic rock in which silica crystallised into spheres as the m…
• Magnetite5-6 Mohs · oxide · rootThe mineral that taught humanity magnetism exists, lodestones are naturally magnetised magnetite, and they are how the compass was discover…
• Mahogany Obsidian5-6 Mohs · volcanic glass · root, sacralObsidian stained red-brown by iron oxide, giving the least severe of the volcanic glasses, the swirls are a frozen record of how the lava w…
• Malachite3.5-4 Mohs · carbonate · heart, solar-plexusCopper carbonate in concentric green bands, ground into eyeshadow by the Egyptians and into pigment by everyone since. The Russian tsars pa…
• Mookaite6-7 Mohs · chalcedony · root, sacral, solar-plexusThe silicified skeletons of Cretaceous radiolaria, single-celled plankton with glass shells, from the Windalia Radiolarite in Western Austr…
• Nephrite Jade6-6.5 Mohs · silicate · heartThe jade of ancient China, Māori Aotearoa and neolithic Europe, an amphibole so tough that stone-age cultures made axes of it before anyone…
• Nuummite5.5-6 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · root, third-eyeAn amphibole rock from Nuuk, Greenland, first collected in 1810 and roughly three billion years old, among the oldest material anyone sells…
• Peridot6.5-7 Mohs · silicate · heart, solar-plexusOlivine from the earth's mantle, brought up in basalt, and occasionally arriving from space inside pallasite meteorites. The Egyptians mine…
• Pyrite6-6.5 Mohs · sulfide · solar-plexus, rootIron sulfide that grows in perfect cubes with striated faces, and has been fooling prospectors so reliably that its nickname is older than …
• Rainbow Moonstone6-6.5 Mohs · feldspar · third-eye, crown, sacralThe best-selling moonstone in the world is not moonstone: it is white labradorite from India and Madagascar, flashing blue by a different o…
• Rainbow Obsidian5-6 Mohs · volcanic glass · root, third-eyeBlack glass with layers of aligned nanoscale crystals inside it, spaced closely enough to interfere with light and throw a spectrum out of …
• Red Jasper6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · rootSilica clouded opaque with iron oxide, the plainest, oldest, most universally available amulet material on earth, worked from the Nile to t…
• Sardonyx6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · root, sacralStraight-layered agate in red-brown and white, and the standard material for Roman cameos and signet stones because the layers can be under…
• Satin Spar2 Mohs · sulfate · crownThe white silky towers everyone owns and everyone calls selenite. It is fibrous gypsum, same mineral, different habit, mined mostly in Moro…
• Selenite2 Mohs · sulfate · crown, third-eyeTransparent gypsum, soft enough to mark with a fingernail and soluble enough to ruin in a rainstorm, the mineral kingdom's tissue paper. Me…
• Serpentine2.5-6 Mohs · silicate · heart, rootThe rock that forms when seawater cooks peridotite deep in the crust, California's state rock, the world's asbestos problem, and the crysta…
• Shiva Lingam6-7 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · root, sacral, crownCryptocrystalline quartz cobbles from one stretch of the Narmada river in Madhya Pradesh, collected annually under ancestral rights by spec…
• Shungite3.5-4 Mohs · organic · rootA roughly two-billion-year-old carbon rock from the Lake Onega region of Karelia, containing genuine fullerenes, the only significant natur…
• Smoky Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · rootOrdinary quartz darkened over geological time by natural radiation acting on trace aluminium, a stone that is literally a record of the rad…
• Spectrolite6-6.5 Mohs · feldspar · third-eye, crownLabradorite that shows the whole spectrum rather than just the blue end, found in quantity at Ylämaa in south-eastern Finland after quarryi…
• Spirit Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · crown, third-eyeA quartz prism that grew a second, finer coat of crystals over every face, from a small handful of pipes near Boekenhoutshoek in Mpumalanga…
• Sugilite5.5-6.5 Mohs · silicate · third-eye, crownFirst described from Japan in 1944 as a drab yellow-brown mineral, then found in gem-quality purple at the Wessels manganese mine in South …
• Tiger's Eye6.5-7 Mohs · quartz · solar-plexus, rootBlue asbestos fibres replaced molecule by molecule with silica, keeping the fibrous alignment and gaining a hard glassy body, the sheen is …
• Tourmalinated Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · root, crownQuartz shot through with black schorl needles, so the two most common protective stones in the trade end up in the same piece. Collectors l…
• Turquoise5-6 Mohs · phosphate · throat, third-eyeA hydrated copper aluminium phosphate that has been mined in Sinai and Iran for over six thousand years and in the American Southwest for a…

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