Description
Gold sheen obsidian sphere, cut and polished, measuring 63mm across and weighing 318g. Photographed exactly as it is, so the piece in the images is the piece that arrives.
Obsidian is natural volcanic glass, formed when lava cooled too quickly for crystals to grow. In gold sheen obsidian, minute gas bubbles were trapped in that lava and stretched almost flat as it flowed.
Those flattened bubbles sit in layers just under the surface. Light reflects off them all at once and comes back gold. Nothing has been added to this stone and nothing has been coated.
The sheen is on both faces
This is the thing worth paying for and it is worth saying first.
Most sheen spheres have a front. The gold gathers on one side, the piece gets turned to its good face on the shelf, and the back is plain black. This one carries the gold on both sides. Turn it and there is still something there.
It sits densest across the upper half, granular and shifting rather than a smooth wash, thinning toward the equator on both faces. There is no wrong way round to set it down.
Sheen coverage is the main thing sellers grade on in this material, which is why the honest ones publish their grades. Coverage across both faces on a 63mm piece is not the common case.
How the sheen behaves
A gold sheen obsidian sphere needs light, and it needs the right light.
Bring one bright source in from above or from the side and the gold rolls across the surface as the sphere turns, gathering and thinning like sunlight on the skin of water. Under flat overhead lighting it will read as plain black.
That is the material behaving normally. A sheen that showed under every light would not be sheen, it would be paint.
About this piece
At 318g and 63mm across, this is the larger of the two obsidian spheres in stock and it has real presence on a shelf. It is a two handed piece to lift comfortably.
Every sphere is photographed on its own and nothing is swapped for something similar. Obsidian varies genuinely from piece to piece in sheen strength and coverage, so the images are the piece.
Traditional correspondences
Where rainbow obsidian is usually associated with the slow approach to shadow work, gold sheen obsidian is traditionally worked with for the harder look at motive. Ego, will, and what someone actually wants underneath what they say they want.
It is often linked to the solar plexus and to personal sovereignty, and the gold is not incidental to that reading. A stone that only shows itself when the light comes in at the right angle carries the idea plainly enough.
Polished obsidian has a long history as a scrying surface, and the sphere is the form usually kept for it. If you work by sound and touch rather than by picture, hold it, turn it slowly and let the change in the light do the work.
Correspondences are traditional and are offered as part of a practice, not as a substitute for medical or professional advice.
Caring for your gold sheen obsidian sphere
Obsidian sits at 5 to 5.5 on the Mohs scale, softer than quartz. Keep it away from quartz points, clusters and anything gritty, because a scratch shows immediately on a mirror polish.
It is glass and it behaves like glass. Chips at a knock, breaks on a hard floor. At 318g this one carries enough weight to do real damage to itself if it rolls off a surface, so use a stand or a ring and keep it away from shelf edges.
Avoid sudden temperature change. No hot water, no going straight from a warm room to a cold sill.
Small open pits on the surface are gas bubbles that reached the polish. They are how the sheen is made in the first place and they are not damage.
To cleanse, use sound, breath or moonlight.
What you receive
The gold sheen obsidian sphere shown in the photographs and the wooden sun disc stand it is sitting on, cut to hold this sphere at this diameter. Nothing else. Wrapped and posted by Royal Mail Tracked.
Browse the rest of the crystal spheres, or see everything currently in stock in obsidian.
For the mineralogy behind the material, Mindat holds the reference data on obsidian.
