Crystals for steadiness

You want the ground back under your feet.

This book lists 34 crystals tied to steadiness, from Ammonite to Zircon. For when everything is moving at once. 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.

• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• CChrome Diopside5.5 to 6 Mohs · pyroxene · heartMost of this mineral never gets anywhere near the surface. Diopside belongs to the dense rock under the crust, and it stays there. 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• Milky Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · crownThis is the cheapest thing in the case and it will outlast almost everything beside it. Milky quartz is plain quartz clouded by water…
• 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…
• Moss Agate6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · heart, rootThe moss in this is not moss. It is mineral threads that grew inside the silica before it hardened, sharp and three dimensional when…
• 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…
• Orthoceras3-4 Mohs · organic · root, third-eyeThe shape in the slab was alive. A shelled animal, drifting in a warm sea hundreds of millions of years ago. It sank into mud and the…
• Petrified Wood6.5-7 Mohs · organic · rootThis was a tree. It fell into mud or water and got buried before it could rot. Then silica in the groundwater moved in and swapped…
• Picture Jasper6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · root, third-eyeThose are not hills. They are layers of volcanic ash and fine mud that settled in still water, one on top of the next. Silica soaked…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• Unakite6-7 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · heart, third-eyeUnakite was granite. Hot water got into it and took it apart from the inside. It did not become rubble. The pink held, and green grew in…
• 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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