LAPIS LAZULI


 

Lapis has been highly valued for many thousands of years. The most famous locality for fine quality lapis lazuli is in the same ancient deposit high in the mountains of Afghanistan where it was originally mined at least 6000 years ago. 

It was said to impart ancient knowledge, and the wisdom to use it and to enhance one's awareness, insight and intellect.

Ground lapis was the secret of the blue in ultramarine, the pigment which painters used to paint the sea and the sky until the nineteenth century.  Which means that all of the beautiful blues in paintings from the Renaissance are thanks to the blue of lapis lazuli; the blue rock loved by the ancients, from Mesopotamia, to Egypt, to Persia, to Greece and Rome. The ancient city of Ur has had a thriving trade in lapis as early as the fourth millennium B.C. The name is international, from the Latin, lapis, which means stone, and from the Arabic, aula, which means blue. When lapis was first introduced to Europe, it was called ultramarinum, which means beyond the sea. 

All cultures have used lapis to decorate the statures of the deities. It has always been greatly valued by rules, being used for magical and medicinal purposes.


Mystical Properties:
Lapis lazuli is told to enhance one's awareness, insight and intellect. It is said to impart ancient knowledge and wisdom to it's bearer, the knowledge bringing with it peacefulness, objectivity and self acceptance.  

Lapis is also connected with Jupiter and thus expands the intellect, wisdom and leadership qualities as well as helping in legal matters that arise. The stone works as a shield from psychic attack. It is used to relieve insomnia and let go of anxieties.


Healing Properties:
Lapis promotes clear understanding and intuition; it helps balance the function of the thyroid gland while strengthening the neck and vocal cords. 

Use it to soothe  throats and all inflammation of the neck and head. It makes quite a powerful elixir to align the etheric, emotional and spiritual bodies. 

Physicians for ancient Egypt, Sumer and Babylon used lapis for many medicinal purposes, including curing eye cataracts.  The connection with the eye may have come from the use of lapis to fashion carvings of a stylized, which was called the Eye of Isis or the All-Seeing Eye of the Goddess Maat.  Since Isis was said to watch over the dead on their final journey, the lapis eye was placed in the sarcophagus with the mummy.  The chief justice of Egypt wore the Eye of Maat when he rendered judgments.


Magical Properties:
Lapis has timeless associations with the kings and queens of all realms.  In ancient Summer, the stone was very closely associated with the deities in general, and in carrying it, it's possessor bore the potent magical power of a deity, for the stone contained the force behind all divinity.  Some said the stone contained the soul of the deity, who would 'rejoice in its owner". 

The energy of this stone is very high quality, and it does not lower its power to your level; rather you must raise it to match it's.  You muse raise your mental, emotional and spiritual energies to connect with the Lapis Lazuli.  It teaches you to set aside your personality and all it's quirks, so that you can clearly see what is actually occurring within another person or a given situation.  It will also help in wiping out any part of the past, in this life or others that you are still carrying but need to let go of.