Tourmaline

Tourmaline is not a single mineral but a group of silicate minerals built around boron, joined with metals that vary from one member to the next, among them aluminium, iron, magnesium, lithium and sodium. Its crystals are long three-sided prisms, often scored with grooves along their length, and one crystal can carry two or three colours. Black is the commonest shade, from schorl, the iron-rich member that makes up most of the tourmaline in nature; others run through brown, yellow, green, blue, pink and red, and a few stones are colourless. It forms in granite, granite pegmatite, schist and marble, and most gem material comes from Brazil and from many parts of Africa. The name goes back to a Sinhalese word, and the Dutch East India Company shipped Ceylon stones to Europe, where its knack of drawing in and then pushing away hot ashes earned it the name Ceylonese Magnet. Cunningham notes that heating or rubbing a crystal charges its two ends oppositely, that ancient magicians did not know the stone, and that each colour has its own planet and element; for the stone as a whole he names love and friendship, money and business, peace, health, courage, energy and astral projection. Hall treats it as a cleansing, purifying and grounding stone that shields the body, and credits it with bringing self-confidence, inspiration and prosperity, and with helping the garden.