Protection
Protection is the oldest job a stone was ever given, and the tradition is more modest about it than modern writing suggests. A bracelet is not armour. What it is, in the older practice, is a boundary you can feel: a reminder of where you end and the mood of the room begins. Black obsidian carries that in the Chinese reading, where it is filed under Water, because a deep pool settles when less is thrown into it.
These are the stones people traditionally wear:
- After a day of other people's urgency arriving as your own.
- When you have said yes too often and cannot find the sentence that says no.
- Travelling, moving, or any week where the ground shifts.
We wrote the long version as a piece on black obsidian.
How to choose
- Grounding or guarding. Obsidian for the boundary, clear quartz and white stones for the days you mainly need to be less scattered.
- Bead size. 12 mm reads properly black in obsidian, and 10 mm is the everyday middle. See the size guide.
- On the right wrist if you keep the rule that the right hand expresses outward.
Obsidian's phase, and why a black stone belongs to Water, is on the Five Elements guide.
To be clear: no stone here diagnoses, treats or cures anything, and nothing here is a safety device.
