Journal – Black Tourmaline

I added a couple really nice pieces of Black Tourmaline to my rock collection. They are shiny black opaque in color with striated lines running down the length of the crystal somewhat like a Selenite wand. The surface feels smooth and waxy. The crystal is harder than glass at a 7 to 7.5 on the Mohs hardness scale.

I’ve always loved rocks even as a kid and would pester my parents to stop at every rock shop we saw on family vacations. As I was riding my bike I saw a new rock shop that had just opened so I wandered in. The shop owner was very friendly, he helped me look around at a few things. There were some nice quartz crystals that I was tempted to buy and a lot of polished rocks. (I’m not a big fan of polished rocks usually)

Not seeing anything too interesting off hand I asked him causally if he had any calcite crystals. He said, “They are not displayed yet, but I can show you what I have in back.”

“Oooh, hidden treasures!”, I thought to myself as he brought some bags of rock out.

The calcite was a bit disappointing. The pieces were about the size of my son’s baby teeth. I thought to myself, “I wonder if I can grind some of that up and flavor my tofu with it… nah.” ;)

I said, “I used to have a pretty nice size piece but I dropped it as a kid and it split in half.”

He could see I wasn’t particularly interested in the calcite and started showing me these other rocks he had. As soon as I saw the Black Tourmaline and picked it up, I really liked it.

Metaphysical Qualities

The crystal is said to be good for all kinds of things. I read some interesting things about Black Tourmaline and gosh if I ever run across any earth demons... well it is always best to be prepared I suppose. (I guess that was a problem historically, but shouldn’t be a current issue)

It does seem to be a very nice stone to carry around, meditate with, and gaze on.

If you rub it or heat it up it is supposed to become electrically charged and attract dust. I tried rubbing it on my wool and cotton sweaters to see if I could get it charged up. Nothing happened. Either I rubbed it the wrong way or maybe not long enough… (laughing). Oh, well.

Photography

These pictures were taken with the macro focus setting on my Panasonic Lumix FZ35. The last one was under natural sunlight with an additional florescent light as a fill light. The first two were using yellowish flood lights and the blueish florescent fill light.

I did a white balance adjustment and used an unsharp mask filter in processing with GIMP. I also removed the shadow cast on the white paper with processing.

If you want, please fell free to use these images under the terms of the Steemit4free here.

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