54 crystals and stones with their planets, history and lore from Pliny to the Victorians, magical uses, care (water, salt, sunlight) and safety — with a stone of the day, your birthstone, when to charge each one, the hardness scale, and your own collection with its gaps and storage advice. The stones that belong to the Hindu navaratna say which planet they serve. Every stone is set on the Mohs scale of hardness, with a scratch test between any two, and a quartz crystal can be turned in the hand and coloured as each of the quartz family, from rock crystal to flint.
Snakestone · Fossil shell, often replaced by calcite or pyrite · hardness 3.5–4 · ♄ Saturn · Earth
Deep time, cycles and continuity; protection.
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Whitby legend says St Hilda turned the snakes of the place to stone — and local carvers obliged by adding snakes' heads to the fossils. In Nepal and India, black ammonites from the Gandaki river (shaligrams) are worshipped as forms of Vishnu.
Schorl · Tourmaline (a boron silicate) · hardness 7–7.5 · ♄ Saturn · Earth · October birthstone
A favourite modern protection stone, set by doors and windows.
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Warmed tourmaline becomes electrically charged and attracts ash; Dutch traders called it aschentrekker, “ash-puller”, and used it to clean their pipes.
Good for
Protection, Grounding
Cleanse with
incense smoke, moonlight, a rinse in running water, resting on dry salt, an hour of morning sun
Water: rinse OKSalt: OKSunlight: fine
Hag stone
Easy to handle
Adder stone, holey stone · Any stone with a natural hole · hardness Varies · ♄ Saturn · Earth
Protection of home, sleep and animals; seeing what is hidden.
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Found on beaches and riverbeds. Hung on a bedpost or stable door, it kept away witches and nightmares — horses ridden by night-hags were said to be found sweating in their stalls. Looking through the hole was said to reveal fairies.
incense smoke, moonlight, a rinse in running water, resting on dry salt, an hour of morning sun
Water: rinse OKSalt: OKSunlight: fine
Jet
Easy to handle
Whitby jet · Fossilised wood (a hard lignite) · hardness 2.5–4 · ♄ Saturn · Earth
Protection, mourning and remembering the dead; a stone for Saturn and Samhain.
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Found on the Yorkshire coast at Whitby and worked since the Bronze Age. Pliny says burning jet drove away serpents. After Prince Albert's death in 1861, Queen Victoria's mourning made Whitby jet the height of fashion.
Caution: Broken obsidian is sharper than a scalpel — handle rough pieces with care.
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Polished obsidian made the mirrors of the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca, “Smoking Mirror”. The black mirror John Dee used for scrying, now in the British Museum, is Aztec obsidian.
Good for
Protection, Grounding, Intuition & divination
Cleanse with
incense smoke, moonlight, a rinse in running water, resting on dry salt, an hour of morning sun
Water: rinse OKSalt: OKSunlight: fine
Onyx
Easy to handle
Chalcedony, black or banded black and white · hardness 6.5–7 · ♄ Saturn · Earth
Saturnine work: endurance, self-control, binding and protection.
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Its name is Greek for “fingernail”. Medieval lapidaries warned that onyx brought melancholy, quarrels and bad dreams — Saturn's stone indeed.
Good for
Protection, Grounding
Cleanse with
incense smoke, moonlight, a rinse in running water, an hour of morning sun
Grounding, protection and steady endurance; said to absorb heavy moods.
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Its smoke comes from natural radiation in the surrounding rock. In Scotland it is the cairngorm, set in the brooches and dirks of Highland dress.
Modern association · Root chakra.
Good for
Grounding, Protection, Calm
Cleanse with
incense smoke, moonlight, a rinse in running water, resting on dry salt
Water: rinse OKSalt: OKSunlight: fades
Staurolite
Easy to handle
Fairy cross · Iron aluminium silicate, in cross-shaped twin crystals · hardness 7–7.5 · ♄ Saturn · Earth
Protection and good luck.
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Its crystals naturally grow in crosses. Legends from Virginia call them “fairy stones”: the tears of fairies on hearing of Christ's death, turned to stone crosses. They are carried as charms for good luck.
Good for
Protection, Luck
Cleanse with
incense smoke, moonlight, a rinse in running water, an hour of morning sun
Water: rinse OKSalt: avoidSunlight: fine
How hard is each stone?
In 1812 Friedrich Mohs ranked minerals by which will scratch which, from talc at 1 to diamond at 10. A stone scratches anything softer than itself, which is why soft stones are kept apart from hard ones. Every stone in the library is set on the scale below.
Rest on a dot to see the stone; tap it to look it up.
THE SCRATCH TEST
Amethyst scratches Malachite, and not the other way: keep malachite in its own pouch.
Glass and a steel knife are about 5.5, so any stone softer than that can be marked by a jar, a blade or the dust of quartz. ★ marks the stones in your collection. Test only on a hidden spot, or better, don't: the scale is for keeping stones safe, not for marking them.
One mineral, many stones
Quartz is silicon dioxide, grown as a six-sided crystal with a point. Where the crystals are big enough to see, it gives rock crystal, amethyst, citrine, smoky and rose quartz; where they are too fine to see, chalcedony: agate, carnelian, jasper and flint. Turn the crystal, and choose a stone.
CRYSTALS YOU CAN SEE
TOO FINE TO SEE: CHALCEDONY
Rock crystal: pure silicon dioxide, clear as Pliny's 'eternal ice'.
SETS OF STONES IN OTHER TRADITIONS
The Hindu navaratna
Nine gems, one for each of the nine grahas.
Ruby is for the Sun, pearl the Moon, red coral Mars, emerald Mercury, yellow sapphire Jupiter, diamond Venus, blue sapphire Saturn, hessonite Rāhu and cat's eye Ketu.
They are set with the ruby in the centre. Sources give the outer order differently.
Sanskrit gem-lore is old: Varāhamihira's Bṛhat Saṃhitā, of the 6th century, has a chapter on gems. The planetary set is taught in the later astrological texts.
The stone is chosen from the birth chart, not by month.
WHERE IT DIFFERS The tool follows the planets of the West. Rāhu and Ketu, the Moon's nodes, have gems of their own.
Sources: Skyjems, “Hindu navaratna”
Safety. Stones are symbols and focuses for magic, not medicine. Never put toxic minerals — malachite, turquoise, lapis, pyrite and other metal ores — into water you will drink; keep small stones away from children and pets; and wear a mask if you ever cut or polish stone.
Lore from Pliny's Natural History (77 CE), the medieval lapidaries and G.F. Kunz's Curious Lore of Precious Stones (1913); “modern association” marks 20th-century ideas such as the chakra links. Planets follow the Correspondences tables. Learn more in Stones & Metals.
PRACTISE WITH IT
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A few things to do with this tool, from a first try to a habit. Each one you tick counts as practice for the day, towards your streak and milestones.
Kept in this browser. Notes you send to the journal are kept there as well.