Crystals
Pyrite is iron sulfide, Mohs 6 to 6.5, used for money, nerve, shielding. 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. Pyrite is iron sulfide. On colour: Not a colour so much as a metal. Pyrite is metallic brass-yellow because it is a sulfide of iron.
Where it comes from: Navajún in Spain for the famous natural cubes, plus Peru and Illinois.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Mineral species | Iron sulfide |
| Chemical formula | FeS2 |
| Mohs hardness | 6 to 6.5 |
| Crystal system | Cubic |
| Chakra | Solar Plexus |
| Usually linked to | Leo, and to Mars |
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 6 to 6.5, pyrite is hard enough to handle daily wear without much trouble, though it will still scratch a softer stone it is stored against.
The abundance stone, usually kept in a workspace or a till rather than carried. It forms in perfect natural cubes, with flat faces and sharp corners that look machined and are not, which is most of its appeal.
In the shorthand most shops and books use, it is a Solar Plexus stone, and the three words attached to it most often are money, nerve, shielding.
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 pyrite 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. |
Pyrite is the original fool's gold. The honest distinction from gold is simple: pyrite is brittle and will shatter under a pin, gold is soft and will dent. Pyrite also leaves a greenish-black streak on unglazed porcelain while gold leaves gold.
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.
Pyrite is usually linked to Leo, and to Mars. 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 Leo sets out what that sign actually describes, and it is calculated from a date rather than assigned by a writer.
Every piece of pyrite 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. Pyrite decays in damp air.
No. Sunlight does not damage it.
Money, nerve, shielding. It is associated with the Solar Plexus chakra.
Mohs 6 to 6.5. That is hard enough for daily handling.
Pyrite is the original fool's gold.
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