Aquamarine

Meaning in lithotherapy

According to The Crystal Council, aquamarine opens a clear channel between the heart and throat chakras so that one can speak from the heart and of the highest truths. It helps resolve conflicts, arguments and disagreements by “cooling” fiery emotions, and gives confidence in speaking — which is why it is recommended for teachers, managers, therapists and anyone who speaks in public. [59]

Crystal Vaults (Linda Mason) sees in it the purity of crystalline waters: a stone of truth, trust and letting go, and at the same time an old sailors’ talisman of good luck, fearlessness and protection. It is meant to calm, soothe and cleanse, help with excessive anger or fear and ease the passage through change; Crystal Vaults also calls it a stone of eternal youth and happiness. [142]

Crystal Vaults also sees aquamarine as a mirror: a stone of symmetries that reflects the sky on the surface of the water and allows hidden meanings to be discovered — which is why it is meant to be a stone of prophets, shamans and mystics. It is also a “stone of natural justice”, favouring compromise and negotiation and giving quiet courage and carefully reasoned words in confrontation. The divinatory meaning of aquamarine: “Go with what is on offer rather than waiting for the ideal opportunity.” [142]

Ways of working with the stone

The Crystal Council advises wearing or carrying aquamarine daily to find the right words, tone and ideas more easily. Crystal Vaults recommends it for meditation and describes it as an amulet for everyone who travels by, over or near water — as sailors once carried it. [59] [142]

Crystal Vaults gives practices for resolving disputes: pass aquamarine over a written complaint received or about to be sent, and carry it when visiting somewhere about a complaint or a neighbourhood dispute. As a travel stone it is meant to protect on journeys by sea, by air and on long drives, and to help when learning to swim; according to one tradition one can see one’s guardian angel through an aquamarine crystal pointing north. The Crystal Council recommends meditating with aquamarine together with “heart stones” — rhodonite, green opal, rose quartz, pink halite, chrysocolla and green calcite — and wearing it for public speaking to ease stage fright. [142] [59]

Chakras, elements and astrology

Both sources see aquamarine as a stone of water and of the throat chakra; they part in astrology. Among older traditions, Kunz notes that the virtues of the beryl were governed by the sign of Libra — though in old texts “beryl” covered more than aquamarine. [59] [142] [120]

Chakras

throat and heart (The Crystal Council); throat (Crystal Vaults) [59] [142]

Element

water (both sources; in Crystal Vaults also the north of the home in feng shui) [59] [142]

Zodiac signs

Aries, Gemini, Pisces (The Crystal Council); Scorpio (Crystal Vaults); Libra for beryl in an older tradition (Kunz) [59] [142] [120]

Planets

Neptune (The Crystal Council); the Moon (Crystal Vaults) [59] [142]

Month stone

March (Crystal Vaults; also a modern list in Kunz, alongside bloodstone) [142] [120]

Deities

Guanyin, Akna (Maya), Kupala (Crystal Vaults) [142]

Crystal type

“Seeker–Energizer” in the Crystal Vaults system [142]

Older beliefs

Kunz describes an old set of amulets, one of which bore a “transparent, brilliant beryl of a sea-green hue” — evidently, he notes, aquamarine — which banished fear; another amulet in the set protected sailors from drowning. Around 1220 Arnoldus Saxo, following older lapidaries, wrote that beryl helped against foes in battle and in litigation, made the wearer unconquerable yet amiable, quickened the intellect and cured laziness; an old German translation of Thomas of Cantimpré adds that beryl “reawakens the love of married people”. [120]

Beryl was also an old seers’ stone: polished beryl spheres were often preferred for gazing into visions, and an old belief held that beryl gave more visions than any other mineral. Kunz mentions a “consecrated beryl” kept in seventeenth-century Herefordshire and the “Stones of Power” in the Scottish regalia that Highlanders regarded as amulets. [120]

Pliny the Elder (Natural History, book 37, chapter 20) wrote that the most esteemed beryls are those resembling “the pure green of the sea”, and that lapidaries cut them in hexagonal form because the angles heighten the colour. The people of India, he said, were especially fond of elongated beryls, which they pierced and strung on elephant bristles. The translators connect this sea-green beryl with the name aquamarine. [145]

Where the sources differ

The sailing theme unites all the sources: Crystal Vaults speaks of a sailors’ talisman and “mermaids’ treasure”, and Kunz of a fear-banishing amulet in a set protecting sailors. Astrological correspondences diverge (Pisces and Neptune in The Crystal Council, Scorpio and the Moon in Crystal Vaults). Some older beliefs concern beryl in general, not only its blue variety. [142] [120] [59]

Crystal Vaults adds threads we have not checked: Roman fishermen who are said to have named the stone, a link with St Thomas the Apostle as patron of sea voyages, beads from Egyptian tombs, and a recipe from the “Magick of Kiram” (1685): engrave a crow with a crab beneath its feet on the stone to bring joy and prosperity. [142]

An Avonoria editorial suggestion

Before a difficult conversation, write down what you want to convey and one question for the other person. Hold the stone, take a few calm breaths and read your note aloud.