Meteorite

A meteorite is a rock from outer space that has survived its fall to the surface of a planet or moon; on its way down it heats up and glows as a meteor, the brightest of which are called fireballs. Its formal name is unsettled because the word covers several different materials: Wikipedia divides meteorites into stony ones made mostly of silicate minerals, iron ones made largely of iron-nickel metal, and stony-iron ones holding plenty of both, while Cunningham treats them as one stone. Cunningham gives meteorites to fire and calls them projective, belonging to no planet but to the universe. He notes that people have long held them to be gifts of the gods, that some, such as a stone revered in Phrygia as the Great Mother, were worshipped, and that the Babylonians thought them powerful protectors able to remove all evils. He mentions peridot crystals packed inside a cut meteorite he once held, and tiny diamonds found in meteorites that fell in Mexico in 1969. In his practice they serve protection, laid on the altar beside white candles or held in the hand, and a small fragment beneath the pillow is used to encourage conscious astral projection.