The vibrant blue color of lapis lazuli (or lapis) is a strikingly beautiful. Often having gold veins running through it, or a sparkly finish, lapis is a rock that has been admired and cherished for thousands of years.
Lapis Lazuli Information
* Water may remove the protective coating that is on lapis and therefore should not be soaked in water any period of time. Lapis jewelry is best removed while swimming. Lapis is best if cleaned with a soft dry clothe. If water is necessary then dry the stone immediately after application.
* Lapis lazuli gemstone cabochon represents celebration for the 7th and 9th year of marriage.
* The main sources for Lapis Lazuli are Afghanistan, Egypt, Canada, Chile, the US, and South America.
* Lapis lazuli is a rock that is composed of a mixture of a few different mineral types that include lazurite, huaynite, sodalite, noselite, calcite and pyrite.
* Lapis was also used in acnient Egypt during many religious ceremonies, and most often as an inscription stone for various passages from the Book of the Dead.
Lapis Poem
Lapis, known as the philosopher’s stone, is a legendary mineral used by alchemists to turn base metals to gold. Robert Kelly’s 50-year pursuit of its poetic equivalent words that transform the common things of life into art yields the 127 new texts collected. In these richly varied poems and prose poems some occasioned by reading Dickinson and Yeats, visiting churches and art museums, traveling through Austria, France, Italy, and Ireland, and reliving the wounds of childhood and adolescence Kelly describes personal experience and, by touching it with memory and imagination, makes it stranger than life itself. He is the diarist as dreamer, and the dreamer as alchemist.
Lapis Lazuli in the Bible
The name Lapis Lazuli also is known from the Persian word lazhward meaning blue, in allusion to its color. In ancient times, lapis lazuli was also well known as sapphirus, which is the name that we use today for this blue corundum variety of sapphire. Therefore the sapphire mentioned in the Bible is most likely lapis lazuli.
Lapis Lazuli on Wikipedia
Lapis lazuli (sometimes abbreviated to lapis) is a semi-precious stone prized since antiquity for its intense blue color.
Lapis lazuli has been mined in the Badakhshan province of Afghanistan for 6,500 years, and trade in the stone is ancient enough for lapis jewelry to have been found at Predynastic Egyptian sites, and lapis beads at neolithic burials in Mehrgarh, the Caucasus, and even as far from Afghanistan as Mauritania.
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Nancy Woods 01.14.09 at 4:00 pm
hello,
Thanks for the information and picture of the lapis, what a striking blue it is.
Are they becoming more rare, do you think? I know several ladies who really love the cobalt, dark blue like that in their kitchen decor too. I normally prefer the earth tones in the stones and gems as well as my decor at home. But I like the larimar in the blue and some opals that I have seen.
looking good all the time….south sea pearls