Description
Hemimorphite sphere, carved and polished, 60mm across and 281g, in soft seafoam green banded with white.
The colour across this hemimorphite sphere sits between mint and pale aqua, deeper in some bands and almost white in others, and it shifts as the light moves. The bands sweep rather than run straight, curving across the surface in wide arcs, and in places they break into small fan shapes where the crystal grew outward in rounded clusters before the next layer covered it over.
This hemimorphite sphere has a sugary texture under the polish. The surface is smooth but the stone underneath is crystalline and slightly granular, so it reads as soft and chalky rather than glassy, closer to sea glass than to quartz.
What this hemimorphite sphere looks like in person
There are small pits and open pockets scattered across this hemimorphite sphere where the crystal never filled in completely. They are natural to the way this stone forms and they are part of what tells you it is not a manufactured material.
Hemimorphite is a zinc silicate, and it is one of the stones people most often mistake for something else. It gets confused with Caribbean calcite, with blue aragonite and with larimar, all of which share the same pale blue green colouring. The banding on this piece is the tell, because hemimorphite lays down in those curved botryoidal fans rather than in straight layers.
Every piece is photographed on its own, and what you see in the images is what is sent.
Traditional correspondences
Hemimorphite is worked with for the throat and the heart together rather than either on its own. Traditional practice puts it with saying the true thing kindly, which is the harder half of honesty, and with the kind of conversation that has been put off.
It also carries a reputation for self compassion, the sort that has to be practised rather than felt. Where rose quartz is reached for to soften, hemimorphite is usually reached for when something needs saying out loud.
A sphere sends in all directions rather than pointing, which is why spheres tend to be kept in shared rooms rather than on a working altar.
Correspondences are traditional and are offered as part of a practice, not as a substitute for medical or professional advice.
Caring for your hemimorphite sphere
This is a soft stone and it needs treating as one. Hemimorphite sits at 4.5 to 5 on the Mohs scale, and banded material like this runs softer still where the carbonate shows. It will scratch against quartz, against a keyring, against most things in a drawer. Give it its own space.
Keep it dry. Do not soak it, do not leave it in a bathroom, and keep it away from vinegar, lemon and household cleaners. Anything acidic will dull the surface and the damage does not polish out.
Dust it with a dry soft cloth. If it needs more than that, a barely damp cloth and then dry it straight away.
Spheres roll, and this one will mark if it lands on anything, including a wooden table. Keep the hemimorphite sphere in its stand when it is not being handled, and lift it with two hands.
To cleanse, use sound, breath or moonlight. Not water.
What you receive
The hemimorphite sphere shown in the photographs and the wooden sphere stand it is sitting on. The sphere lifts out of the stand, so it can be held and put back.
Browse the rest of the crystal spheres, or see everything in crystals.
