====== Lapis Lazuli ======
<div #singlebox>
---- dataentry gem----
latin_names: 
folk_names: 
energy_tags: Receptive
gender_tags: 
planet_tags: Venus
element_tags: Water
deity_tags: Isis, Venus, Nuit
effect_tags: Healing, joy, love, fidelity, psychism, protection, courage
----
</div>
<ifauth @user>
===== Magical Uses =====
Lapis lazuli, a rather expensive stone, is healing and soothing. Simply touching the body with this stone improves your mental, physical, spiritual, psychic, and emotional condition.

It is used specifically to alleviate fevers and diseases of the blood. Lapis lazuli strengthens the eyesight if habitually worn. Held in the hand during any healing ritual, or placed around blue or purple candles, the stone helps the magician focus energy toward the magical outcome.

If performing a healing ritual for a friend, hold the stone and visualize the sick person as a healed, healthy, whole human being. Visualize the energy streaming into the stone and, thus magnified and specified, on to the person.

Lapis lazuli is an uplifting, spiritual stone. Its deep-blue color reflects its peaceful vibrations. It is useful for relieving depression and promoting spirituality, and it is a fine meditative stone. Lapis lazuli stimulates gentleness in its wearer.

This stone is used in rituals designed to attract spiritual love. Take an untumbled piece of lapis with a sharp edge. Empower the stone and a pink candle with your need for love. Then, using the lapis lazuli, carve a heart on to the candle. Place the stone near the candleholder and burn the candle while visualizing a love coming into your life.

Lapis lazuli is considered a potent fidelity charm and so is worn to strengthen the bonds that have grown between lovers.

Perhaps its most common use today is to strengthen psychic awareness. Lapis breaks the hold of the conscious mind on the subconscious (psychic) mind and allows intuitive impulses to become known. Wearing a necklace of lapis beads or holding a piece in your hand enhances your awareness of these often difficult-to-perceive impulses.

To generally increase your psychic awareness (i.e., your ability to tap into this information), wear lapis every day. Or use it only when scrying, gazing, consulting the stone tarot, or otherwise utilizing symbols that speak to the psychic mind. Remember, such divinatory acts and the rituals associated with them are usually "tricks" that are designed to relax the conscious mind.

Lapis lazuli is also a protective stone, especially for children. In contemporary India, lapis lazuli beads are strung on gold wire. The resulting necklace is worn by children to ensure health, growth, and protection. It was once placed around children's necks to drive away frights and disturbing fantasies.

This courage-inducing influence is also utilized by adults and is perhaps due to lapis lazuli's psychic and protective properties.

Despite its somewhat high price, lapis lazuli is one stone every stone magician should own and utilize.
===== Ritual Lore =====
Lapis lazuli has timeless associations with kings and queens.

In ancient Sumer, the stone was closely associated with the deities in general. Carrying it, its possessor bore the potent magical power of a deity, for the stone contained the force behind all divinity. Some said the stone contained the soul of the deity, who would "rejoice in its owner."

It was a popular substance for cylinder seals in Sumer. These were small, round stones deeply carved with images of deities as well as their symbols. Cylinder seals were used as "signatures" by pressing the carved stone on to wet clay documents and were also prized as amulets and talismans.

Some believe that lapis lazuli, a beautiful royal blue stone with flecks of golden pyrite, combines the influences of Venus and Mars since pyrite is ruled by Mars. This isn't too convincing as the pyrite content is minimal and, in some pieces, is virtually nonexistent.</ifauth>
===== Notes =====
==== Related Metals ====
* [[metal:gold]]