Amethyst: Meaning, Properties and How to Use It
Amethyst is the stone tradition gives to an overheated mind. It is linked with sleep, with quieting anxious loops and with the kind of clear inner listening people call intuition. Its Greek name means not drunken, which is why sobriety and restraint have followed it for two thousand years.
What tradition says
What is Amethyst known for?
Greeks cut amethyst into drinking cups believing the colour would keep a guest sober; the Church later set it in bishops' rings for the same reason, read as restraint rather than magic. Until Brazilian deposits opened in the nineteenth century it was priced alongside emerald and ruby. Modern practice keeps the old job and adds sleep. Nearly every writer on stones puts amethyst on the bedside table, and it is usually the first stone a beginner is handed.
The practice
How do you use Amethyst?
Put a cluster on the bedside table, an arm's length from your head rather than under the pillow where it digs in.
Hold a tumbled stone through the last ten minutes before sleep, then leave it.
For anxious hours in the day, keep one in a pocket and press it with your thumb while you breathe out slowly.
Read here as a language of symbols. Medical, legal and financial questions belong with a professional.
Two more
What does Amethyst pair with?
Stones are kept in small sets rather than alone, and these two are the usual company for this one.
What it is kept for
What do people reach for Amethyst for?
The same stone, read through the thing you came here with.
Questions
What else do people ask about Amethyst?
Where should I put amethyst?
Bedside table for sleep, desk for a mind that will not settle, bag for days out. Keep it out of direct sun wherever you choose. One cluster in the room where you actually spend your evenings beats a stone in every corner of a flat you only pass through.
Is dark amethyst better than pale?
Price says yes, practice says no. Deep Uruguayan purple costs more because colour is what the gem trade pays for. Nothing in the tradition ranks stones by saturation, and pale Brazilian amethyst is the same mineral. Buy the piece you like holding.
Next in the library
The stones beside this one.
Two ways on
One stone is a reminder, a library is a map.
A hundred and four stones and sixty four everyday uses, sorted the way a week arrives. If you came here through the body rather than the mineral, the seven chakras are the other way in.
- 104
- stones, each with what tradition says
- 64
- everyday uses, six stones under each
- 7
- centres, the same set read through the body