The blue ray

Where the association came from

Blue in nature is rare, and blue minerals are rarer still, which is most of the reason the ray carries what it carries. Plants are green, blood is red, earth is brown; the sky and deep water are the two large blue things, and neither can be held. A stone that is genuinely blue was therefore always slightly anomalous, and anomalies attract meaning.

Turquoise is the ancient anchor. Egypt worked the Sinai mines at Serabit el-Khadim under state control from the Old Kingdom, with expeditions recorded on stelae at the temple of Hathor, who was called the lady of turquoise. Persia mined it at Nishapur for millennia and the English name records its route: turquoise means Turkish, because it reached Europe through Turkish traders.

The traveller's association is the most consistent across cultures. Turquoise on a horse's bridle in Persia and Turkey to prevent falls, turquoise on riders in the American Southwest, aquamarine thrown into the sea by Roman sailors for calm water. It is the one meaning you find in Asia, Europe and the Americas independently.

What the traditions claimed

The evil eye tradition runs from Mesopotamia through the Mediterranean and Islamic world to the present, and it is overwhelmingly blue. The nazar bead is glass rather than stone, but the colour logic is the same and it is the largest surviving folk use of blue in the world.

In Navajo, Zuni and Pueblo practice turquoise carries a significance that is still live rather than historical, tied to water, sky and ceremony, and it should be described as ongoing rather than as ancient lore. Cerrillos turquoise from New Mexico travelled as a trade good over a thousand miles into Mesoamerica.

Medieval Europe read sapphire as the bishop's stone, set in the episcopal ring, associated with heaven, chastity and truthful judgement. Marbode gives it the power to cool internal heat and to reconcile enemies.

In Jyotish, blue sapphire answers to Saturn and carries the strongest warnings of the nine gems: it is held to act fastest, for good or ill, and traditional practice tests it by wearing it briefly before committing.

The modern throat-centre reading, connecting blue to speech, honesty and expression, is a twentieth-century addition and now the most commonly cited meaning of all.

The stones of this ray

• Blue lace agate (Chalcedony & jasper, Mohs 7). Found in Namibia in the twentieth century, so it has no ancient lore at all. A useful test case for how quickly a modern meaning gets written.
• Aquamarine (Beryl, Mohs 7.5). The sailor's stone since Rome, thrown to Neptune for calm water. Nearly all of it is heated to move the colour from green towards blue.
• Sapphire (Corundum, Mohs 9). Every colour of corundum except red. Medieval bishops wore it, Ceylon supplied it for two thousand years, and Jyotish treats blue sapphire as the fastest and riskiest of the nine gems.
• Kyanite (Tourmaline & the layered silicates, Mohs 4.5 / 7). Two hardnesses in one crystal, soft along the blade and hard across it. Used as a compass needle in early Europe, and the mineralogist's favourite oddity.
• Azurite (The carbonates, Mohs 3.5). Deep blue copper carbonate that slowly turns green as it converts to malachite, which is why medieval skies have gone the wrong colour in many paintings.
• Celestite (Evaporites & halides, Mohs 3.5). Pale blue strontium sulfate, usually sold as hollow geodes from Madagascar. Fragile, light-sensitive and one of the few genuinely blue minerals in nature.
• Turquoise (Greenstones & copper minerals, Mohs 5.5). Mined in Sinai before 3000 BCE and in the American Southwest for two thousand years. Porous, easily discoloured by oils, and among the most faked stones on the market.
• Apatite (Greenstones & copper minerals, Mohs 5). The mineral your own teeth and bones are made of, which is a better fact than most of its modern lore. Soft, and easily confused with better stones.
• Larimar (Greenstones & copper minerals, Mohs 6). Found in one small area of the Dominican Republic and nowhere else, brought to market in 1974. Its lore is fifty years old and openly so.

Working with the ray

Use the ray for two things the traditions actually used it for: journeys and speech. A blue stone before travel is one of the best-attested folk practices in the world, and a blue stone before a conversation you have been avoiding fits the modern reading well enough to be worth trying.

Turquoise is the ray's difficult member in daily use. It is porous, soft at 5.5, and it absorbs skin oils, cosmetics and perfume, which is why old turquoise turns green. That change was traditionally read as the stone taking on the wearer's life, which is a graceful way to describe a chemical reaction. If you want it to stay blue, keep it away from oils.

Aquamarine, sapphire and kyanite are all hard enough for daily wear. Celestite is not: it is fragile, and it fades in sunlight.

Colour you can trust

The turquoise market is the most compromised in the whole subject. A large majority of what is sold as turquoise is either dyed howlite, dyed magnesite, reconstituted turquoise powder in resin, or plastic. Genuine turquoise is also commonly stabilised, meaning impregnated with resin to make soft material workable, which is honest when declared and is not the same as fake.

Tests: dyed howlite shows grey rather than brown veining and the dye lifts with acetone. Reconstituted material looks uniformly grainy under a loupe. Price is the strongest signal, since natural untreated high-grade turquoise is expensive and always has been.

Blue topaz and much blue quartz are irradiated or dyed. Aquamarine is nearly always heated to shift green towards blue, which is stable and standard. Lab-created blue spinel and synthetic sapphire are sold honestly by good dealers and dishonestly by others.

Blue howlite, blue agate and bright blue quartz at low prices are dyed unless proven otherwise.