Lepidolite Tumbled Gemstone

Safe to handle. Raw lepidolite is soft and sheds fine mica flakes, so wash your hands after handling rough pieces and keep loose flakes away from small children and pets. Do not soak it or place it directly in drinking water; use the indirect method for elixirs.

Lepidolite takes its name from the Greek lepidos, scale, a nod to the thin glittering flakes it forms as a mica. Martin Heinrich Klaproth named it in 1792 from specimens found in the Rožná pegmatite of Moravia, in today's Czech Republic. It grows in lithium-rich granite pegmatites beside pink tourmaline, spodumene and quartz, and it is the most abundant lithium-bearing mineral. That natural lithium content shaped its modern reputation in crystal tradition as a steadying, settling stone.

Lepidolite is a lithium-bearing mica, a sheet silicate in the mica group with the general formula K(Li,Al)3(Al,Si)4O10(F,OH)2. Mineralogists now treat it as a series name for micas between polylithionite and trilithionite rather than a single species. It crystallizes in the monoclinic system as flaky books or fine granular masses in granite pegmatites, and its pink to purple color comes from trace manganese. It is mined as a secondary source of lithium and rubidium.

• Lepidolite was named in 1792 by the German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth, from the Greek lepidos, meaning scale, for the glittering scale-like flakes of the specimens he studied from the Rožná pegmatite in Moravia.
• In 1861 Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff processed about 150 kilograms of lepidolite and found a new element in it, rubidium, named from the Latin rubidus, deep red, for the red lines it showed in their spectroscope.
• In crystal healing tradition lepidolite is known as a stone of transition, kept close through endings and new beginnings and tucked under the pillow to settle a busy mind before sleep.