The Compendium

What the craft is made of

Stones, herbs, colours and hours — what practitioners have taken them to mean, and how widely that reading is shared.

All 115 Crystals & stones 41 Herbs 40 Candles & colours 10 Materials 8 Sabbats & moon phases 16

41 entries

Agate Crystal Curved bands laid down in a cavity over an unimaginable stretch of time — named for a river in Sicily. Appears in 0 workings Amazonite Crystal The peacemaker's stone — cool as river water, and quietly, kindly honest. Appears in 0 workings Amber Crystal Tree resin from a forest forty million years gone — warm to the touch, and the origin of the word electricity. Appears in 0 workings Amethyst Crystal Purple quartz, once as costly as ruby — and the stone the Greeks hoped would keep them sober. Appears in 0 workings Apatite Crystal Named for deceiving mineralogists — and the same mineral your bones and teeth are built from. Appears in 0 workings Aquamarine Crystal Sea-water held still in a hexagon — the stone sailors carried and nervous speakers still do. Appears in 0 workings Aventurine Crystal Green quartz shot through with mica — and named, backwards, after a glass made by accident in Murano. Appears in 0 workings Black tourmaline Crystal Schorl — a ridged black column that really does develop a charge when you warm it. Appears in 0 workings Bloodstone Crystal Dark green chalcedony spotted with red — heliotrope to the Greeks, and the subject of one of Pliny's better sneers. Appears in 0 workings Carnelian Crystal Warm orange chalcedony — the seal-stone of the ancient world, because hot wax will not stick to it. Appears in 0 workings Celestite Crystal Pale blue strontium sulfate — soft, fragile, and the reason distress flares burn red. Appears in 0 workings Chrysocolla Crystal Blue-green copper silicate, soft as chalk on its own — and named for gluing gold. Appears in 0 workings Citrine Crystal Yellow quartz — mostly amethyst that has been through an oven, and none the worse for saying so. Appears in 0 workings Clear quartz Crystal The plain one. Silicon dioxide, water-clear, and the stone every other stone is measured against. Appears in 1 working Fluorite Crystal The stone that gave fluorescence its name — banded purple and green, and soft enough to be handled carefully. Appears in 0 workings Garnet Crystal A family, not a stone — and the deep red that lit the Anglo-Saxon hoards. Appears in 0 workings Hematite Crystal Iron oxide with a mirror polish and a blood-red streak — heavy in the hand, and named for it. Appears in 0 workings Howlite Crystal A chalky white borate with grey webbing — and the stone most often dyed to impersonate something else. Appears in 0 workings Jade Crystal Two different minerals under one word, tougher than steel to break, and central to more than one civilisation. Appears in 0 workings Jasper Crystal Opaque, patterned, everywhere — the stone that gets picked up off a beach and kept for forty years. Appears in 0 workings Jet Crystal Fossil driftwood from a Jurassic sea — light as a feather, black as anything, and the whole of Victorian mourning. Appears in 0 workings Kyanite Crystal A blue blade with two different hardnesses in the same crystal, depending on which way you scratch it. Appears in 0 workings Labradorite Crystal A dull grey slab that catches the light and turns peacock — all of it a trick of internal layers. Appears in 0 workings Lapis lazuli Crystal One valley in Afghanistan supplied the whole ancient world with this blue, and did so for six thousand years. Appears in 0 workings Malachite Crystal Banded green copper carbonate — a pigment, an ore, and a stone that has to be handled with some respect. Appears in 0 workings Moonstone Crystal A blue light that seems to float below the surface and moves when you do. Appears in 0 workings Moss agate Crystal Not moss and not really agate — mineral ferns grown inside clear chalcedony, and the gardener's stone. Appears in 0 workings Obsidian Crystal Volcanic glass with an edge sharper than a scalpel — a stone that has never been gentle and does not pretend to be. Appears in 0 workings Onyx Crystal Chalcedony in straight parallel bands — the cameo carver's stone, and mostly dyed when it is black. Appears in 0 workings Opal Crystal Hydrated silica spheres stacked in a lattice, throwing colour by diffraction — and famously unlucky, on no good grounds. Appears in 0 workings Peridot Crystal Olivine from the mantle, from a Red Sea island, and occasionally from a meteorite. Appears in 0 workings Pyrite Crystal Fool's gold, in cubes so perfect they look machined — and named for the sparks it throws. Appears in 0 workings Rhodonite Crystal Rose-pink manganese silicate laced with black — the pink is the mineral, the black is what the air did to it. Appears in 0 workings Rose quartz Crystal Cloudy pink, almost never in points — the stone people give each other rather than buy for themselves. Appears in 0 workings Selenite Crystal Gypsum so soft you can scratch it with a fingernail, and so clear the Romans glazed windows with it. Appears in 0 workings Serpentine Crystal Green and mottled like a snake's back — a whole mineral group, and one to know something about before you cut it. Appears in 0 workings Smoky quartz Crystal Quartz darkened by the ground it grew in — Scotland's cairngorm, and the gentlest of the grounding stones. Appears in 0 workings Sodalite Crystal Deep blue with white running through it — the thinking stone, sober and unglamorous. Appears in 0 workings Sunstone Crystal Feldspar full of tiny metallic platelets that throw back the light in flecks — schiller, not colour. Appears in 0 workings Tiger's eye Crystal Golden bands that slide as the stone turns — asbestos fibres replaced, one for one, by quartz. Appears in 0 workings Turquoise Crystal A copper phosphate the colour of a clear sky, carried across more cultures than almost any other stone. Appears in 0 workings