Black Tourmaline and Hematite Natural | Large

Pick one up before you buy it. The weight is the point.

Hematite is iron oxide, and it's dense — a small piece feels wrong in the hand, heavier than the eye expects. Polished it's mirror-black with a metallic sheen, but grind it and the powder is blood red. That's where the name comes from: haima, Greek for blood.

It has been used as red pigment for at least 40,000 years — the ochre in Aboriginal rock art and in the caves at Lascaux is hematite. NASA's spectrometers found it across the surface of Mars, which is why the planet is red.

Hematite is worked with for grounding and for holding your own edges when you're around a lot of other people. It sits with the root.

Sheri chooses every piece by hand, cleanses it, and charges it before it's packed here on the Gold Coast.

Keep it dry — it's iron, and iron rusts.

For the doorway, the desk, or the day you know will ask a lot.

Black tourmaline forms in long striated columns, and it's one of the few minerals that generates an electrical charge under pressure or heat — Dutch traders in the 1700s used heated tourmaline to pull ash out of their meerschaum pipes, and called it aschentrekker, ash-puller.

That property is part of why it became the classic protective stone. Where other crystals open, amplify or invite, tourmaline holds a boundary. It's worked with for grounding and for shielding — placed by an entrance, kept on a desk, or carried when the day is going to be demanding.

It sits with the root, the centre associated with safety and belonging. People who own one crystal for protection usually own this one.

Sheri chooses every piece by hand, cleanses it, and charges it before it's packed here on the Gold Coast.

Practical note: this is the stone most often recommended near a workspace or a screen.