Ruby
Ruby is one of the most honored of the ancient stones. Yet many rubies you buy in jewelry stores are lab-grown synthetics. Yes, I realize they have the same chemical structure, and that's why it's legal to sell them to people in mall jewelry stores everywhere. But I wonder how many people who get them as gifts are really all that happy in the great if and when they find out they have a synthetic.
To be sure I have a genuine ruby grown in the earth, I find it's often most practical to go with ruby crystals that aren't considered gem-grade. Nobody's going to fake rubies of the quality in that photo. There's no money in it. They're a few dollars a gram instead of many hundreds or even many thousands of dollars a carat:
The hexagonal crystal at the top is a typical non-gemgrade Ruby. I particularly like that stone because it does show the hexagonal form so well.
The other two stones are non-gem Ruby growing in a green matrix called Zoisite. They don't show the hexagonal crystal structure very well. But they do have some nice red color.
I really like Ruby in Zoisite for prosperity meditations, crystal grids, and medicine bags. Try it for drawing unexpected gifts -- not just of goodies but of cash too. Red and green. Reminds you of Christmas, right?
This is a large unpolished specimen of Ruby in Zoisite with lots of red Ruby crystals growing in the green matrix. You can also buy carvings made of this material, which is found in Tanzania.
In my book Crystal Cash: Fast Easy Money Magick Using Popular Stones I mention a low grade Ruby in matrix material from North Carolina sometime in the late 1960s. Here's a piece of that material:
It's extremely porous and won't really take much of a polish. But it's another possibility for the mineral cabinet or the metaphysical grid.
