by Sarah Lyn
Stone has a beautiful language. Anyone who has ever had a rock jump out at them has heard it. Pick me! Pick me! Before you know it, you have either slipped it into a pocket, or you find yourself holding it in your hand, uncertain of how long it has been there.
Deep stone sleeps but the closer to the surface it gets, the more connected it is to us and our life cycles. Some rocks just want to introduce themselves and have a conversation. Some rocks will bite and want to be left alone. And some rocks have been looking for you to take them on a quest to some unknown corner of the world they have only heard about in the whispers of the deepest bedrock (even if that’s just your front yard).
[ALWAYS respect places that ask you NOT to take their rocks.]
The Trio
Different stones I encounter have different energies to them. Each sabbat, I put together a trio of stones to focus on for the following six weeks. It’s divination to me. I reach out into the web and see where we are in the world, creating a recipe of stone allies, and then I send that energy back out into the web.
I don’t usually use the same grouping of stones every year, but a couple of times I have. I will work with the stones I choose in my night meditations until the next sabbat, sometimes individually and sometimes as a group.
Lughnassadh, spelled many different ways, is a Celtic festival but is most familiar to people in the form of the county fairs and local harvest festivals we grew up with during August and September.
We are reaping the rewards of the plants we have tended and nurtured. It’s a good time of year to put energy into finishing projects. To that end, I chose stones this year that spoke to me of growth and abundance, with the idea of reward for work done.
Now, at the harvest, do you see the seeds you planted? Are they the seeds you intended to sow?
My stones for Lughnassadh are a bit of a green dream team: Aventurine, Rhyolite, and Silverleaf Jasper.
The first stone I picked, Aventurine, is a favorite. It is a commonly-found stone, a kind of quartzite in various colors like blue, green, peach, and others I haven’t encountered. For me, the best Aventurine contains veins of mica flakes, and these are the only pieces I use for my magic. I chose one of my green pieces, for the earth energy.
They are a favorite stone of mine to work with as they are accessible to anyone, at any level of magic and their main energy is abundance and support. Intuitively, when I need to represent a person, I almost always pick out an Aventurine to represent humans, as they are connected to the Earth. It’s like the stone wants to connect to people. So that is my association with the stone, and a foundation stone I always use for the harvest season.
You are my cousin and I support your endeavors, aventurine says.
If you don’t know Rhyolite by one name, you may recognize it as Rainforest Jasper. Jaspers are the silent workhorses of the stone kingdom. You can find a kind of jasper compatible to be used in substitution for any other gemstone in spellwork. Think of them as understudies, ready to step in at the last minute. Maybe not as shiny, but just as powerful. I use Rainforest Jasper a lot in substitution for Garden Quartz, so I associate it with growing vegetation and bountiful harvest, whether literal or figurative.
Stretch out and root, stretch up and thicken, rhyolite chants.
The third stone is one I always pick up when I see it, even if I don’t always purchase it. Green Silverleaf Jasper is the artistic cousin in the jasper family. Its growth is a little gentler and comes with a flourish. So, this is a good stone to round out the trio. It acts as a bit of a muffler for people who aren’t quite ready to handle their growth, and also, as an aid to people who need some outside-of-the-box movement.
It is what it is and it will be okay, silverleaf jasper says.
Together these stones harken abundance and growth, in however you need to take in that energy.
For Advanced Work
Chrysoprase is a bright apple green chalcedony. I would use this stone to do some deeper growth work as it works similarly to black tourmaline, in absorbing and then transmuting negative energies, but Chrysoprase does this only for the emotional body.
Let’s face it, right now we’re all a bit burnt out. We could all use a little extra armor for our poor stretched and beleaguered hearts. If you are a highly-sensitive person, I recommend pairing black tourmaline and chrysoprase together for yourself.
[Notes from Sarah Lyn: I never purchase rocks from people who do not know where they are sourced from. It’s important to know where your rocks come from so you can make informed decisions about where to put your money. For those of us buying tumbled stones at rock shows, we’re picking up the chips of what has already been cut from the earth, we are not part of the demand that influences the mining world. But know where your stones come from.]