Jet

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Jet

A velvet-black coal that is a variety of lignite. Its occult virtues are thus described by Pliny (Historia naturalis, translated by Philemon Holland, 1601):

"In burning, the perfume thereof chaseth away serpents, and bringeth women again that lie in a trance by the suffocation or rising of the mother; the said smoke discovereth the falling sickness and bewraieth whether a young damsel be a maiden or no; the same being boiled in wine helpeth the tooth-ache, and tempered with wax cureth the swelling glandules named the king's evil. They say that the magicians use this jeat stone much in their sorceries, which they practice by the means of red hot axes, which they call axinomancia, for they affirm that being cast thereupon it will burne and consume, if that ewe desire and wish shall happen accordingly."

Jet was known in Prussia as black amber.

(See also Electrum ; Gagates )

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