Crystals
Lapis Lazuli is a rock, not a single mineral: lazurite with calcite and pyrite, Mohs 5 to 6, used for truth, voice, study. The mineralogy, whether it is safe in water and sunlight, what gets substituted for it, and what a stone can honestly do.
Start with the mineralogy, because most of the bad advice about this stone follows from not knowing it. Lapis Lazuli is a rock, not a single mineral: lazurite with calcite and pyrite. On colour: A sulfur radical trapped in the lazurite structure. Almost nothing else in nature is blue for that reason.
Where it comes from: The Sar-e-Sang mines in Badakhshan, Afghanistan, which have been worked continuously for about six thousand years and are still the best source.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Mineral species | A rock, not a single mineral: lazurite with calcite and pyrite |
| Chemical formula | Lazurite is (Na,Ca)8(AlSiO4)6(SO4,S,Cl)2 |
| Mohs hardness | 5 to 6 |
| Crystal system | Cubic, for the lazurite component |
| Chakra | Throat |
| Usually linked to | Sagittarius, and to Jupiter |
Hardness matters more than it sounds. The Mohs scale runs from talc at 1 to diamond at 10, and anything below about 5.5 can be scratched by ordinary window glass or by the quartz dust in everyday grit. At 5 to 6, lapis lazuli is soft enough to damage in a pocket with keys or in a bowl with other stones. Keep it separate.
The throat stone: used for saying the hard thing, for teaching, and for study. It was ground into ultramarine, the most expensive pigment in medieval Europe, which is why blue is reserved for the Virgin's robe in so many paintings. The pigment cost more than gold.
In the shorthand most shops and books use, it is a Throat stone, and the three words attached to it most often are truth, voice, study.
This is the section that matters, and the one most pages get wrong. Cleansing advice is handed around as though every stone were the same mineral, and it is not. Here is what lapis lazuli will actually survive.
| Method | Safe? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Water | No | Never in water. |
| Direct sunlight | Yes | Direct sunlight does no damage. |
| Salt or salt water | No | No salt, dry or dissolved. It is abrasive and it attacks softer and porous stones. |
| Moonlight | Yes | Harmless to every stone on this list, which is most of why it is the method that suits everything. |
| Smoke, sound or breath | Yes | Nothing physical touches the stone, so nothing can be damaged by it. |
Lapis is porous and frequently dyed to deepen the blue, and the dye comes off on a cotton bud with acetone. Look for small brassy flecks of pyrite and a little white calcite: those are signs of the real thing. Flawless, uniform, very cheap blue is usually dyed jasper or reconstituted powder.
Two general rules that hold across the whole shop. If the price is far below everything else on the shelf of that size, something has been substituted or treated. And a stone sold with no locality at all is usually one the seller cannot trace, which in this trade often means tumbled, dyed and bagged somewhere a long way from where it came out of the ground.
Lapis Lazuli is usually linked to Sagittarius, and to Jupiter. Worth being straight about this: crystal and zodiac pairings are modern, they are not consistent between sources, and two reputable books will give you two different signs for the same stone. They are a useful organising idea rather than a tradition with a single lineage behind it.
If you want the part of this that does have a fixed method behind it, the Sun in Sagittarius sets out what that sign actually describes, and it is calculated from a date rather than assigned by a writer.
Every piece of lapis lazuli in the shop is the same stone with the same associations, which is both the appeal and the limit of it. A birth chart is the opposite: it is calculated from your date, time and place and it describes one person. If you do not know your birth time, this covers how to find it.
No. It is damaged by water and should be cleaned dry.
No. Sunlight does not damage it.
Truth, voice, study. It is associated with the Throat chakra.
Mohs 5 to 6. That is soft, so keep it away from keys, grit and harder stones.
Lapis is porous and frequently dyed to deepen the blue, and the dye comes off on a cotton bud with acetone.
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