Sodalite

Sodalite is opaque blue, often a strong royal or a slightly gray blue, mottled with white or pale gray veins and sometimes with pinkish nepheline. It does not flash like labradorite and it does not glitter like pyrite. Color that looks airbrushed, or that concentrates in pits, may be dye.

What it actually is

Trade names and mix-ups

Princess blue and Canadian lapis are trade nicknames for sodalite, and the second one exists specifically to borrow lapis lazuli's fame. Sodalite usually shows white veins and rarely the brassy pyrite of lapis. Dyed blue quartz and dyed howlite also crowd the same bin; a royal blue with gold metal flecks is more likely lapis, or a lapis imitation, than classic sodalite.

Care

Softer than quartz, so it scratches in a pocket of keys and can crack from a knock or from thermal shock. Avoid acids, salt soaks, ultrasonics, and long sun on a hot sill. Wipe with a damp cloth and dry. If the blue comes off on the cloth, you own dye, and you should stop washing it. Dust is ordinary; do not scrub the veins out.

Provenance

Sodalite was named in the early nineteenth century from Greenland material and is now cut mostly from Brazilian and a few other commercial deposits, including famous Canadian localities. It is not a conflict gem in the usual headlines, and it is also not lapis, so the ethical ask is accurate naming rather than a war story; do not pay lapis prices for a princess-blue alias.

Symbolism

• the quieter sentence
• a second draft
• listening before the reply
• blue that is not lapis

Folklore, only where it exists

Because sodalite was only sorted out as its own mineral in 1811, it does not have an ancient magical dossier under its own name. Older people certainly used blue stones; they did not mean this species when they said sapphire or lapis. The contemporary lists give it logic, truth, and a calmed throat, which is a recent assignment and often a consolation prize for customers who did not buy lapis. The Wilde Altar can use a blue stone as a paperweight on a sentence you are willing to make less grand. That is an editing practice. It will not make you honest, and it will not make a quarrel reasonable. If a friend has just told you a new name, the quieter sentence is the one that uses it without a speech.

Cautions

An original practice

The Quieter Sentence

• A piece of sodalite
• A printout or a notecard of the sentence you want to send
• A pen
• A wastebasket

1. 1Write the sentence as you first wanted to send it. Let it be too much, once, on paper.
2. 2Set the sodalite on that line. Under it, write a second version a friend could hear without armoring up.
3. 3If the sentence involves someone's name, use the name they asked for, spelled as they asked, with no nickname you miss and they do not.
4. 4Read only the second version aloud. Cross out the first so thoroughly that you cannot cheat back to it.
5. 5Send the second, or put it in the wastebasket if even the quieter one did not need to exist. Return the stone to a dry dish.

I can say the smaller thing. Truth does not need the louder adjective. Blue is not a license to lecture.

Wipe the stone if the paper was inky, dry it, and leave the first draft dead. No soak to purify the wording.

A practical action. Send the revised sentence, or delete the draft in the actual app you were going to use.

Substitutions

• A blue index card with the sentence written on it, no stone
• A piece of blue tailor's chalk, kept off water, as a reminder that marks can be revised

Beginner questions

• Is sodalite a kind of lapis? No. Lapis is a rock rich in lazurite and often pyrite. Sodalite is its own mineral. Canadian lapis is a sales name.
• Does it make me more logical or truthful? No. You can edit a sentence. The mineral does not supply the honesty.
• Can I soak it overnight in water? No. Skip soaks and skip elixirs. A damp cloth is already plenty.

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