For this day, at least, Autumn is here. It’s early, yes, but there’s no mistaking the dryness of the wind, the edge to the air, the slight shading of the leaves, the angle of the light. This is Fall, and it arrived today.
Oh, it’ll disappear again soon enough — probably about the day this weekend when it’s time to go out into the fields and stack and load and haul the hay. But for this moment, we are in our time of the year, the time when both of our spirits come fully alive.
I had already decided on the gemstone to be featured today, a decision finalized Sunday evening, if memory serves. The forecast for today was supposed to be hot and thoroughly summery, but what we’ve been given instead is weather more suited to the look and feel of this stone. Because to me, today’s gemstone has always been the physical embodiment of Taos’s own light, the light of Autumn into Winter when it its beauty is most mystical and magical, most ethereal and entirely otherworldly.
Today’s stone is a form of one we’ve covered in other variants and subvariants already, and one whose identity as held light I’ve written about before. Its name seems entirely ordinary, even workaday, its syllables harsh and utilitarian, but its look is something else entirely. It’s rutilated quartz, and it is the light Father Sun fallen to the soil, crystallized, hardened into a gift of the Earth itself.
It is, as the name implies, a form of ordinary quartz, a mineral whose identity is bound up inextricably with the notion of “crystals.” [I refer,of course, to literal crystals, a particular mineralogical formation, not to the catch-all term that refers to any stone (or synthetic stone-like substance) used in New Age practices.] Quartz comes in a variety of shapes and forms, but the classic look that most people envision when they hear the name is of wand-like terminated crystals with faceted geometric planed surfaces. As I wrote here a few months ago, of a different variety of quartz:
It is, at bottom, plain old quartz, which is reputed to be the second-most common mineral on the planet’s crust (first is feldspar).It manifests as tetrahedra (groupings of four triangle-shaped faces, three of which meet at the grouping’s apex), joined together; chemically, it’s composed of silicon and oxygen. It grows in crystal “system” form, meaning that independent crystals form and grow organically, linked in a broader matrix. The matrix may be a bed of crystals at the base from which the larger single ones emerge, usually with only one point, or terminus, free and visible. Sometimes these larger crystals will be twinned; on rare occasions, a double-terminated one will appear, with the crystal sides slanting into a point at both ends.
The word quartz comes from old Germanic (and earlier, Slavic) words for “hard”: quarz, from twarc, and allegedly earlier from twardy/tvurdy. It is a hard stone, but also a brittle one, subject to fracture — a phenomenon exacerbated by the presence, commonly, of significant inclusions in various forms. On very rare occasions, [some types of] quartz will contain inclusions that manifest as asterism — a star-like pattern with six spokes, like that found in star sapphires. It also occurs, although more rarely, in an anhedral crystal formation, giving it a rounder shape and less geometric aspect, as well as a darker, less translucent color.
Rutilated quartz is defined by its inclusions, which are of a different sort — the tiny needle-like structures that occur wholly within the body of the piece of quartz itself. We tend to speak of them in the plural, rutiles, and define them colloquially by their form and shape. If you look at the stone in the image immediately above, shown at an angle, you’ll see the fine spray of needle-like crystals embedded within the translucent stone.
However, this conceptualization of the word is technically a misnomer. The correct form of the word is actually singular, rutile. That’s because it refers to the inclusions as defined not by their shape, but by their substance: Rutile is a mineral in and of itself — specifically, a mineral consisting mostly of titanium dioxide (TiO₂, but with three rare polymorph variants, anatase, brookite, and something known asTiO₂B, which is a monoclinic form of titanium dioxide (in other words, two of the crystal’s three vectors are perpendicular to each other, while the third manifests at a wholly different angle). Because of its structure, rutile possesses unusually high refractive qualities, making it especially useful for lens applications (e.g., for glasses, particularly those that are polarized).
Rutile forms in specific types of geologic environments: in metamorphic deposits that are subject to high temperature and pressure; and in igneous rock. In the latter environment, rutile occurs most often in what is known as plutonic rock, or intrusive igneous rock, meaning that it forms below the earth’s surface. In this instance, the crystals are born over time as the magma beneath the earth’s crust slowly cools. Occasionally, however, rutile also occurs in extrusive igneous environments, where the host deposits are rooted deeply in the earth’s mantle. It is frequently found in various forms of granite and similar rocks, as well as in gneiss and schist, but it is best known for appearance in quartz.
The necklace shown immediately above gives a clear view of rutile inside a clear crystal cabochon of golden (or yellow) quartz. At first glance, the inclusions might be mistaken for scratches on the surface of the stone, but they are embedded wholly within the body of the cabochon. Rutile occurs in quartz of various colors, most often along a specific spectrum: completely clear and colorless; clear with hints of gold or brown or red in the host crystal that is provided by the inclusions themselves; from pale yellow to the honey-bronze color shown here; golden and coppery browns; and deep, reds ranging from warm pinkish tones to crimson and scarlet to deep brick and wine reds.
Rutile’s colors are not surprising, given its name: It derives, after all, from the Latin word rutilus, meaning “red.” The variation in color is due to the presence of additional minerals besides the titanium dioxide, including iron, niobium, and tantalum. Rutile’s needles often appear to be merely translucent, lacking in additional color, but sometimes they will take on a silvery or blue-gray appearance, a product of the presence of niobium or tantalum. The greater the presence of iron in rutile, on the other hand, the more red it will appear. The rutile in the two pieces featured here more likely to contain one of the former two than the third; its inclusions appeared to be the color as the quartz itself, but were actually largely clear. Wings also owns a prism, a small faceted light-catching paperweight, made of rutilated quartz; held directly to the light, it appears clear, but in the shade of ordinary natural light, it appears very slightly honey-colored, a result of the iron in the rutile inside.
He bought the cabochons in the cuff and necklace shown here seven or eight years ago or so, as a matched pair. We found them at a supplier he regularly uses, two large ovals off to the side in a case full of other unrelated gems. They were so unusual, such a seeming capturing of the light itself, that he bought them on the spot. As with so many precious stones in is inventory, they sat on his workbench for a while, awaiting the right inspiration. When it came, it came as a similarly matched pair, although the pieces wound up finding separate homes.
The stones’ unique refractory quality convinced him that they should go into pieces that would highlight that aspect of their identity. They seemed particularly to be intended for wearers who needed to be able to touch those qualities in a literally tangible way. And so he set about fashioning a cuff and pendant that would permit the wearer to display the stone on the surface, for visual consumption, and yet to feel it against the skin — a means by which to touch the light.
In each bezel, he created an ajouré symbol that merged the appearance of a Morning Star with an Eye of Spirit — a stylized diamond-like shape whose points curved gently outward like the spokes of a four-pointed star. Both symbols are powerful on the own, but combined, they evoke notions of guidance and direction, wisdom and medicine. He cut each of them freehand with a tiny jeweler’s saw, so that the stone could be felt against the wearer’s skin — and so that, when held to the light, the viewer would be able to see the light reflected and refracted and ushered through the stone itself.
It made for two extraordinarily powerful pieces. The cuff sold almost immediately, lasting in inventory only a matter of weeks. The necklace was another matter entirely. It attracted people consistently and powerfully, but every single time someone picked it up, she or he wound up putting it back. Wings believes strongly (as do I, having seen the dynamic in action for many years now) that every piece he makes has exactly one person for whom Spirit intends it, and each piece will always find its way to the person who most needs whatever beauty, symbolism, and other qualities it possesses. The necklace was one such; it finally went home at the end of the year, to a friend who was facing an extraordinary number of challenges in her life, challenges that were being complicated greatly by winter’s bitter cold and waning light in the area where she lives. Thanks to the help of another friend, we were able to send her a little of our own light here.
At the moment, Wings has only one rutilated quartz cabochon in his inventory of stones. It is not large size or the crystal-clear golden color of the two shown above; this one is a much smaller oval, and milkier in color, a product of the anhedral crystal formation detailed above. That slight misty opacity makes it resemble the Montana moss agate that we featured here last week, but it’s not. Held to the light, the translucence comes clear, so to speak, and the tiny dark brown dots show themselves as the terminii of the needles of rutile within. The wispy peach-colored lines throughout the stone are the tiny wands of the rutile itself; the iron in them gives them the warm fiery color shown here.
It is a stone that, in contemporary New Age “crystal traditions,” is said to be able to heal all manner of ills: a boost to creativity and one’s other finer qualities, a way to deepen understanding, an aid to sleep, a balm for loneliness or depression, an all-healer, even a way to slow the aging process.
To us, it’s none of those things, of course; it has no assigned spiritual significance, no sacred symbolism, beyond its status as a gift of the Earth. For us, it’s merely a way to capture and hold our own otherworldly Taos light.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
