- Fuchsite Meaning - At Energy Muse, our crystals and stones such as the Fuchsite have the ability to release mental, physical, and spiritual blockages. Learn more about the Fuchsite meaning here!
- Chakras - Base Chakra Vibration - Number 3. Black Obsidian is a very powerful and creative stone. It increases self-control. It forces facing up to one’s true self. Releases imbalances and negative energies. Black Obsidian is protective and provides support during change. It repels negativity and disperses unloving thoughts.
Black and gold are a timeless pairing-and golden sheen obsidian proves their elegance, too. The golden shimmer over black means this obsidian variant pairs beautifully with a range of yellow or golden gemstone beads, as well as golden findings and settings. A subtle stone, golden sheen obsidian can be overwhelmed by bold color combinations.
Cleanses Negative Psychic Smog From Aura
Written By Liz Oakes
Black Obsidian Stone is a powerful cleanser of psychic smog created within your aura, and is a strong psychic protection stone.
This stone has powerful metaphysical properties that will help to shield you against negativity.
The energy of these stones may stimulate the gift of prophesy and may boost precognition.
Pieces of these stones that had a shiny surface were used in the past as a tool for scrying.
It has a good action to cut or sever ties, to break negative attachments to people with whom you have been close.
It an excellent crystal to use when you have been doing spiritual or healing work, as it has a strong action to ground you to Mother Gaia.
This black stone is excellent to assist you to release disharmony that has built up in your day to day life and during work on yourself, including resentment of others, fear and anger.
What Is Obsidian Stone?
Obsidian rock forms from molten lava that cooled very quickly and had no time to form into glass.
It is said to be a type of volcanic glass, and is found in a number of places worldwide.
There are a number of different variations of this mineral, and it comes in a range of types and colors. This includes the gorgeous rainbow obsidian crystals, that are quite beautiful.
Obsidian rock may also be green and purple, brown, blue and green, but the black crystals are what I am concentrating on in this article, as they have some powerful metaphysical properties.
Snowflake Obsidian is the black and white stone, and you can see photos of these at bottom of page.
Apache Tears are also in this stone group or family, and they are closely related with some excellent qualities.
While the different types of this crystal have different metaphysical properties, all sorts or colors have excellent healing attributes.
The black stones have an excellent spiritual grounding vibration and also have a strong psychic protection energy.
Why Would You Use It?
There are a number of reasons why you might choose to use Black Obsidian including:
Green Glass Obsidian Meaning
- The vibration of the stone may aid you to contact your spirit guide, as they have a powerful action to aid spiritual communication.
- They are excellent grounding stones, and their energy works by helping you to move any excess energy down via the earth star chakra to Mother Gaia for grounding.
- Their resonance within the base or root chakra is very strong, and they have a powerful vibration that aids you to ground yourself.
- For many centuries they have been used successfully by crystals gazers and shamans to make contact with the spirit world.
Black Obsidian Properties
It may be used by looking into a shiny piece of the stone in the right light.
Usually using it in low light is best, when you may see the images of loved ones in spirit.
For this purpose, shiny pieces of black Obsidian stone with a mirror finish make excellent scrying tools.
The properties of Black Obsidian stone makes them very helpful to have in your collection.
They are a strong psychic protection stone, and will benefit you by shielding you from all negativity. This makes them very helpful stones to keep within your auric field.
They are especially beneficial if you are doing any type of work involving contact with the spirit world as they are highly protective.
How To Use It
The vibration of this stone may resonate within thethird eyechakra and has a strong vibration to aid the receiving of answers to questions.
This may be particularly related to healing your ancestral line. Their energy may aid you to deal with issues relating to past misuse of power.
It may be helpful to have in your collection for many reasons, and is an excellent crystal to aid past life healing.
These black stones are one of the premier crystals to assist you to communicate with spirit and may bring through the power of prophesy or boost precognitive ability.
If you believe you may have come back to this life in order to resolve a past life issue, place a piece of the stone on the third eye and ask about this.
This may help you to discover the purpose for being here in this life at this time.
By asking questions aloud and listening, you may hear the answer whispered back to you.
Their energy encourages you to ask questions about specific questions around relationships, finances, career choices or health issues.
These answers from the Spirit realm may help you to make better choices when making decisions about future actions.
Helps To Release Built Up Negativity From Aura
Black Obsidian Stone is also an excellent aid to help you to release any negativity that living your day to day life may have caused.
This negativity may be present within your auric field and needs to be removed, to aid your ongoing physical, emotional and spiritual health.
It is easy to buy Black Obsidian Stone, and it is highly benefical stone to utilize every day.
It is powerful to use as it acts to remove any built up negativity caused by your own or others anger, fear, resentment and even stress.
It may also aid you to remove any negative attachments, and may be used to cut karmic ties or cords, and to help you to seal your aura against future problems.
These stones are on the zodiac birthstone list, so they make this crystal into lovely necklaces in a variety of styles and types of obsidian.
It is common to find Obsidian beads used in combination with other stones. Beautiful Black Obsidian Stone is easy to buy, including pieces of Obsidian jewelry.
They are a birthstone for Sagittarian's, but of course they can be used by those born under other star-signs as well.
Other colors of Obsidian such as Mahogany or Snowflake Obsidian is made into jewelry, as all colors of this stone are very popular.
They are excellent healing crystals for you to utilize to protect you from negativity.
They also have strong metaphysical properties that are very useful to help you to let go of disharmony that has accumulated from your day to day life.
Obsidian pendants and rings are easy to buy, and you may find interesting pieces like the Black Obsidian spear pendant shown in the picture above.
A build-up of psychic smog may occur within your auric field, and it may be released by the use of this crystal, as it is a powerful spiritual cleanser.
How Will It Help You? Boosting Precognition
The energy of this stone may stimulate the gift of prophesy and precognition.
They are powerful crystals toboost precognition and have been used in the past to stimulate the gift of prophecy.
If you wish to boost the ability to receive precognitive messages it may be beneficial to use them in meditation.
Meditating with them is quite powerful as they are strong psychic protection stones so this may help you to feel reassured when you venture deep into the spiritual realms in meditation.
They may also aid you to contact spirit guides or teachers.
Your spirit guides may be asked for help if you receive messages or visions about future events and need clarity on what the message means.
Using a shiny piece of this stone may be beneficial if you have clairvoyant gifts and are using this gift to receive psychic visions.
A shiny surface on the stone may enable you to see scenes of future events reflected in the stone, although messages may be received using any of your psychic senses.
Ideas may be communicated to you in a range of ways, including hearing a precognitive message (clairaudience) or intuitively feeling the meaning of what is coming through to you.
If you find that you receive messages or visions while dreaming, you may encourage precognitive dreaming using the energy of this stone.
For this purpose it could be beneficial to place it in the bedroom close to where you sleep.
Obsidian Stone is known to stimulate the gift of prophecy as well as precognition. Using a shiny piece may allow you to see future scenes reflected within the stone.
Healing Properties Black Obsidian Stone
They are potent healing crystals for you to add to your collection for a number of reasons especially when you take a look at their excellent healing properties.
These stones have a strong healing energy, and are known to aid the release of addictions, eating disorders, negative behaviors and emotional blockages.
They are an excellent healing stone on many levels and may particularly aid health issues based in past lives, that may be holding you back in your current life.
They are known to be used by healers to aid hardening of the arteries, joint pain, including arthritis and cramps, and circulation problems.
Another way they help you is to aid grounding.
Are you aware that being ungrounded can make you sick? If you haven't heard about the symptoms of being ungrounded, check them out here.
If you are a healer and are aiding your clients to release disharmonious energy, it is possible to take this negativity into your auric field.
Using this stone may aid both you and your client, as it is a strong cleanser of psychic smog created within the aura.
It may also aid you to clear energy you may have picked up from the vibration of your clients thoughts, which you may have attracted via your feelings, related to your empathy for their hurt and feelings around their health issues.
This is similar to the vibration of clairsentience, also known as the psychic gift of clear feeling, and you can use this stones vibration to clear energy you may have inadvertently brought into yourself.
Who Should Use It? Aids You To Sever Ties
This stone may aid you unfetter yourself from any negative attachments that you may have unintentionally taken into your aura.
These negative attachments are often related to karmic ties that connect you to people with whom you have been close, especially those who you have been in a relationship with.
It may be advantageous to use a piece of obsidian stone like the one shown above, as it has an obvious cutting edge, that allows you to more easily visualize the severing of these unwanted ties.
Use a sweeping motion to remove the ties one by one, and ask Spirit that all ties or connections to anyone else be removed.
You may wish to ask for the help of angels or guides if you find this difficult. Start by cutting the karmic ties at your solar plexus and heart chakra then sever all of the other ties.
Some people find it hard to use, so take care when using it for this purpose, as the process of cutting cords can be a little emotionally overwhelming.
You may use these crystals to sever karmic ties in meditation.
You could visualize cutting the cords linking into your chakras one by one, aiding you to break any unwanted or undesirable attachments.
My Final Thoughts: Black Obsidian Meaning
This is a stone that has no limitations.
The meaning of Black Obsidian strongly relates to how its energy is inclined to bring out attributes that you may have been wanting to ignore.
Once you perceive these issues, the energy of this stone pushes you to make changes. These stones have a particularly strong and often confronting vibration of truth, and work very fast.
In summary: please note that Black Obsidian Stone may not always be comfortable to work with, and if you have difficulty with it maybe you may prefer to use Apache Tears.
This is a type of black obsidian which has a less challenging, more friendly and easier to use vibration, see picture above.
One of the Obsidian meanings that you need to remember is that if you are using this black crystal to do spiritual work on yourself, you may release past problems.
This includes emotions such as fear, anger, stress and resentment of others.
Once you have released these negative emotions you can bring spiritual healing and be enabled to move forward.
As they may also aid you to discover the spiritual aspects of unconditional love, you can use this energy to make your life better in many ways.
Using It With Other Stones
Black Obsidian Stone is excellent used in combination with a number of different stones.
To boost the psychic protection aspect of other stones, you may choose to use them with other strongly protective stones to elevate the level of protection, such asFire Agate, Dalmatian Jasper, Astrophyllite or Black Tourmaline.
If you have a particular interest in increasing your ability to receive prophetic messages of any sort, use them in combination with some of the other stones that bring through these gifts.
Black Obsidian Rock Healing Properties
There are a number of crystals to use for this purpose, and it is of value to use your intuition when choosing the right ones for your personal use.
Stones you could use for this purpose includes Mariposite, Shungite, Celestite, Dream Quartz or Prehnite.
This is a powerful stone to use to remove karmic ties.
Green Obsidian Stone Meaning
But if you need more assistance to help you to remove or cut these ties, that can be ties from this life or karmic in nature and related to past lives, there are a number of other strong crystals that can also help with this.
Specific stones to use for cutting karmic ties includes Novaculite, Black Kyanite or Amblygonite used alone or in combination with Tunellite which has a good action to sever ties.
You may use Black Obsidian stone with other grounding stones, to boost the grounding energy of both stones.
Many of the protection stones also carry this same energy, so many may benefit you in both areas.
Some grounding stones that will benefit by this combination are Magnetite, Black Andradite Garnet also called Melanite Garnet, Unakite, Black Diopside, Bloodstone, Zircon, Hematite and Sphalerite.
To raise the vibration of Black Obsidian stone you may use it with high crystal energy stones.
This combination will stimulate the higher chakras and may aid the development of psychic abilities and help your overall spiritual growth. Use stones such as Phenacite, Nirvana Quartz, Rhodizite or Natrolite with this crystal.
To aid the release of addictions, use them with other stones that aid you to let go of addictive substances and behaviors.
Use it with stones such as Hematite Crystals, Astrophyllite, Smithsonite, Datolite, Purple Amethyst, Unakite, Tantalite, Dumortierite and Staurolite.
In-Depth Pages About Stones in The B Alphabetic Group
- Black Jade
- Black Moonstone
- Black Onyx
- Blue Barite
- Blue Calcite
- Blue Kyanite
- Blue Topaz
- Blue Tourmaline
- Boli Stone
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Electrum is a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver,[1] with trace amounts of copper and other metals. The ancient Greeks called it 'gold' or 'white gold', as opposed to 'refined gold'. Its colour ranges from pale to bright yellow, depending on the proportions of gold and silver. It has been produced artificially, and is also known as 'green gold'.[2]
The gold content of naturally occurring electrum in modern Western Anatolia ranges from 70% to 90%, in contrast to the 45–55% of gold in electrum used in ancient Lydian coinage of the same geographical area. This suggests that one reason for the invention of coinage in that area was to increase the profits from seigniorage by issuing currency with a lower gold content than the commonly circulating metal. (See also debasement.)
Electrum was used as early as the third millennium BC in Old Kingdom of Egypt, sometimes as an exterior coating to the pyramidions atop ancient Egyptianpyramids and obelisks. It was also used in the making of ancient drinking vessels. The first metal coins ever made were of electrum and date back to the end of the 7th century or the beginning of the 6th century BC. For several decades, the medals awarded with the Nobel Prize have been made of gold-plated green gold.
Etymology[edit]
The name 'electrum' is the Latinized form of the Greek word ἤλεκτρον (ḗlektron), mentioned in the Odyssey referring to a metallic substance consisting of gold alloyed with silver. The same word was also used for the substance amber, likely because of the pale yellow colour of certain varieties.[1] It is from electrum’s electrostatic properties that the modern English words 'electron' and 'electricity' are derived. Electrum was often referred to as 'white gold' in ancient times, but could be more accurately described as 'pale gold', as it is usually pale yellow or yellowish-white in colour. The modern use of the term white gold usually concerns gold alloyed with any one or a combination of nickel, silver, platinum and palladium to produce a silver-coloured gold.
Composition[edit]
Electrum consists primarily of gold and silver but is sometimes found with traces of platinum, copper, and other metals. The name is mostly applied informally to compositions between about 20–80% gold and 20–80% silver atoms, but these are strictly called gold or silver depending on the dominant element. Analysis of the composition of electrum in ancient Greek coinage dating from about 600 BC shows that the gold content was about 55.5% in the coinage issued by Phocaea. In the early classical period, the gold content of electrum ranged from 46% in Phokaia to 43% in Mytilene. In later coinage from these areas, dating to 326 BC, the gold content averaged 40% to 41%. In the Hellenistic period, electrum coins with a regularly decreasing proportion of gold were issued by the Carthaginians. In the later Eastern Roman Empire controlled from Constantinople, the purity of the gold coinage was reduced, and an alloy that can be called electrum began to be used.
History[edit]
Electrum is mentioned in an account of an expedition sent by Pharaoh Sahure of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt. It is also discussed by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia. Electrum is also mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures, whose prophet Ezekiel is said to have had a vision of Jehovah on a celestial chariot (Ezekiel 1:4).
Early coinage[edit]
The earliest known electrum coins, Lydian and East Greek coins found under the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, are currently dated to the last quarter of the 7th century BC (625–600 BC).[3] Electrum is believed to have been used in coins c. 600 BC in Lydia during the reign of Alyattes.[4]
Electrum was much better for coinage than gold, mostly because it was harder and more durable, but also because techniques for refining gold were not widespread at the time. The discrepancy between gold content of electrum from modern Western Anatolia (70–90%) and ancient Lydian coinage (45–55%) suggests that the Lydians had already solved the refining technology for silver and were adding refined silver to the local native electrum some decades before introducing the pure silver coins cited below.[5]
In Lydia, electrum was minted into coins weighing 4.7 grams (0.17 oz), each valued at 1⁄3stater (meaning 'standard'). Three of these coins—with a weight of about 14.1 grams (0.50 oz)—totaled one stater, about one month's pay for a soldier. To complement the stater, fractions were made: the trite (third), the hekte (sixth), and so forth, including 1⁄24 of a stater, and even down to 1⁄48 and 1⁄96 of a stater. The 1⁄96 stater was only about 0.14 grams (0.0049 oz) to 0.15 grams (0.0053 oz). Larger denominations, such as a one stater coin, were minted as well.
Because of variation in the composition of electrum, it was difficult to determine the exact worth of each coin. Widespread trading was hampered by this problem, as the intrinsic value of each electrum coin could not be easily determined.[4]
These difficulties were eliminated circa 570 BC when the Croeseids, coins of pure gold and silver, were introduced.[4] However, electrum currency remained common until approximately 350 BC. The simplest reason for this was that, because of the gold content, one 14.1 gram stater was worth as much as ten 14.1 gram silver pieces.
Electrum coin from Ephesus, 620–600 BC
Electrum trite of Alyattes of Lydia, 610–560 BC
Electrum coin from Cyzicus, Mysia, early–mid 4th century BC
Electrum stater, Carthage, c. 300 BC
See also[edit]
- Corinthian bronze – a highly prized alloy in antiquity, which may have contained electrum
- Orichalcum – another distinct metal or alloy mentioned in texts from classical antiquity, later used to refer to brass
- Shakudō – a Japanese billon of gold and copper with a dark blue-purple patina
- Shibuichi – another Japanese alloy known for its patina
- Thokcha – an alloy of meteoric iron or 'thunderbolt iron' commonly used in Tibet
- Tumbaga – a similar material, originating in Pre-Columbian America
References[edit]
- ^ abChisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). 'Electrum, Electron' . Encyclopædia Britannica. 9 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 252.
- ^Emsley, John (2003) Nature's building blocks: an A–Z guide to the elements. Oxford University Press. ISBN0198503407. p. 168
- ^Kurke, Leslie (1999). Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold: The Politics of Meaning in Archaic Greece. Princeton University Press. pp. 6–7. ISBN0691007365.
- ^ abcKonuk, Koray (2012). Metcalf, William E. (ed.). Asia Minor to the Ionian Revolt. The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Coinage. Oxford University Press. pp. 49–50. ISBN9780199372188.
- ^Cahill, Nick; Kroll, John H. New archaic coin finds at Sardis, AJA 109 (2005). pp. 609–614.
External links[edit]
| Wikimedia Commons has media related to Electrum. |