Book Reviews, Thoughts, and Random Interesting Ideas

In the middle grades/young adult fantasy adventure series The Gemstone Chronicles, one of the most important stones is the bloodstone. The stone isn’t one of the gemstones from the Elven Bow or the Elven Sword, but it gets used often. Why, you might ask? Well, the bloodstone is a healing stone and, as readers know, the heroes of the stories need a lot of healing!!

What is a bloodstone?

What is a bloodstone? According to Wikipedia, heliotrope is the more common name for the stone. Bloodstone is a form of chalcedony (which is a form of quartz). The most common version is green with red inclusions of iron oxide or red jasper. A stone with yellow inclusions is called plasma. Below is the “classic” bloodstone with the red inclusions.

Throughout history, many believed bloodstones had magical properties. Chief among those beliefs was the ability to heal a bleeding wound simply by touching the injury. In The Gemstone Chronicles, Nana learned to use the gemstone from the elf Alatariel. She healed Beebop’s ankle when Aidan injured him while playing with levitation. Beebop was also able to use the stone quite well as the bloodstone (along with the aquamarine) is the traditional March birthstone. in the books, simply touching the injury didn’t heal it, but they had to draw power from the stone to use it. Although it wasn’t part of the books, another very common belief is that the bloodstone could defeat enemies magically.

I discovered that bloodstone is also known the “Martyr’s Stone.” Legend says that drops of Jesus’ blood fell during the crucifixion. The blood stained jasper at the foot of the cross, and imbued it with magical powers. Many scenes of martyrdom were carved from the stone because of that legend.

I loved using the bloodstone in the books. A beautiful, glossy, and magical stone, it ranks right up there as one of my favorite gems. It can be awesome as a faceted stone, a cabochon, and a tumbled gem. Now, if I can just find one…

Do you have bloodstone jewelry? If so, leave me a comment and let me know about it. If not, what are you waiting for?

Connect with me:

If you use social media, find me on Twitter, Facebook, or Goodreads and let’s connect. I enjoy meeting new friends! We can discuss, book, reviews, bloodstones, or just about anything else!

Hematite!

Hematite is an enigma to me. When you find the stone in its natural form, it’s a dark gray color and can have lots of sharp edges. When you polish it, it turns a lustrous silver color, but, if you rub it across dark sandpaper, it leaves a red streak behind. See what I mean about an enigma? Below the one of my hematite pieces in its raw form.

What exactly is hematite? Our friends over at Wikipedia say that it is an iron(III) oxide (Fe2O3). The colors vary from black to silver-gray to brown to reddish-brown, to red. Hematite is from the Greek word for blood and has been used as a pigment for centuries. Enough of the dry mineralogical stuff. Now to the cool stuff that was found in The Gemstone Chronicles books!

When I was researching gemstones to be used as stones in the books, I wanted to find unusual mystical or magical properties associated with the various rocks. I hit upon hematite as a stone used by Native Americans to make war paint. The warriors believed the war paint made from the stone made them invincible in battle. In Book Three: The Emerald, our heroes add hematite to their gemstone collection to help them in battle. They also stop the dwarves from mining the mineral for Naesse’s army so that the Drow wouldn’t have the same battle advantage.

Other magical and mystical properties include scrying in the reflective polished surface, curing blood disorders, and protecting the wearer from negativity or others.

As I mentioned above, the polished stone becomes a very lustrous silvery color and has an almost mirror-like quality. See how the lights reflects off the polished surface?

The Red Streak:

Finally, I have a picture of the rough stone and some black sandpaper. I rubbed the stone across the sandpaper and left the red streaks behind. The Egyptians called it a bloodstone since the water used to clean the stone would turn red like blood. As you can see from the sandpaper, it wasn’t such a stretch!

If you want to be invincible in battle (maybe), or just want a cool looking silvery stone, find yourself some polished hematite! And, if you happen to see some dwarves digging for it, STOP THEM! We can’t have the Dark Elves becoming unstoppable!!

What are your thoughts on hematite? Do you think it is as cool as I do? Leave me a comment and let me know!

If you recall, I wrote a post a few weeks ago about how I was ready to go gemstone hunting again after a long wait. Despite an iffy weather forecast, brother John and I made it to our favorite spot today! Yep, gemstone hunting – back in the creek again!

We were very fortunate today as the hunting was good! The dirt piles we filled our buckets from was fairly fresh, and were lots of nice stones. Emeralds, rubies, sapphires, topaz, amethysts, and many more were dug out during our visit.

Readers of The Gemstone Chronicles will recognize many of the stones listed above, since they played such a big part in the series. The only stone I didn’t find today was a carnelian (the stone from the first book).

The second book has an amethyst as a key component. Here are some of the amethysts I found today!

Not a bad haul for four hours of work! Below are the pictures of my two favorite amethysts of the day.

Although it may not show up very well in the picture, the purple tip is very dark and has some great faces!

I love this little stone. The color is only a spot and if you rotate the stone, you can see exactly where the purple begins, Very cool!

To celebrate Book Three: The Emerald, I found a few emeralds today. I don’t think any of them are faceting quality, so I will either try to make cabochons with them, or tumble them in my rock tumblers.

It was not a great day for rubies, but I did find a couple. Rough rubies aren’t faceted like the one in Book Four: The Ruby that we all love, but I like the way the look when I find them.

Finally, my absolute favorite stone of the day is a double-terminated quartz! Aidan used that type of stone often in the books to enhance the powers he drew from the gemstones. I often find pencil quartz, but this is my first double-terminated stone. Simply awesome!!

I did find a lot of other stones today and John found a large sapphire among his many gemstones. We will be going back to the creek again soon, so stay tuned for more! I also am going to be trying my hand at making cabochons, so I will post about that, too.

Of all the stones I showed today, what is your favorite? Leave me a comment and let me know. If you haven’t read The Gemstone Chronicles, why not pick up the first one and give it a try. I would love to know what you think!!