Compendium

Iron is the chemical element Fe, atomic number 26: by mass the commonest element on the planet, making up much of its core, and the fourth most abundant in its crust. Bare metallic iron is rare at the surface because it rusts, and the first iron people worked came from meteorites; beads of meteoric iron from Gerzeh in Egypt date to 3500 BC or earlier. Smelting it from ore took hotter furnaces than copper needed and spread from the second millennium BC, opening the Iron Age. Clean iron is a silvery grey, and the symbol of Mars has stood for it since antiquity. Cunningham gives iron to Mars, fire and the goddess Selene and calls its energy projective. Many peoples kept it out of sacred work, from Greek temples to herbs cut with knives of other metals, yet it was also thought to frighten demons, ghosts and fairies: pieces were set in every room or buried at the corners of a property for protection, and iron was worn for strength, healing and grounding. In Hoodoo, reverence for iron goes back to the Yoruba orisha Ogun, and horseshoes, metal tools and bundles holding iron were used to protect people and keep spirits out.