Also called schorl, aschentrekker, turmali
Black tourmaline is schorl, the most common tourmaline, a glossy black striated crystal. Modern crystal users treat it as the chief protection and grounding stone, set by doors or carried in a pocket; that is belief, though the stone's real electrical properties are fascinating in their own right.
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Take care: Schorl is hard and safe to handle, but it can contain small amounts of other elements, so do not use it to make drinking water. Keep stones off floors where people could trip or pets could swallow small pieces.
Miners near the village then called Schorl, now Zschorlau in Saxony, found black tourmaline alongside tin ore, and the name stuck to the mineral before 1400. Johannes Mathesius described it as schürl in 1562.
Dutch traders brought Sri Lankan tourmalines to Europe and noticed that a warmed crystal picks up ash, so they called it aschentrekker, ash drawer, and reportedly used it to clean pipes. The effect is pyroelectricity: tourmaline gains an electric charge when heated, and also when squeezed.
Uses: tourmaline crystal, warm ash
Many sellers say black tourmaline blocks electromagnetic radiation from phones and wifi and advise placing it by routers. There is no evidence that a stone does this; the stone's real electrical behaviour, pyroelectricity, does not shield anything.
Uses: black tourmaline
Tourmaline is a family of boron silicate minerals, and schorl, the iron-rich black member, makes up most of it in nature. The family name is usually traced to the Sinhalese turamali, a word applied to mixed gem gravels in Sri Lanka. Schorl is older in Europe: it takes its name from a Saxon mining village and was described by Johannes Mathesius in 1562. In the 1700s Dutch traders named tourmaline aschentrekker, ash puller, after its habit of attracting ash when warmed.
That habit is pyroelectricity, a real charge that builds up when the crystal is heated, and tourmaline is also piezoelectric. The modern belief that black tourmaline absorbs negative energy and protects a home grew in late 20th-century crystal books, possibly helped by these electrical quirks. Crystal healing has no scientific support: in a 1999 Goldsmiths experiment by Christopher French and colleagues, volunteers holding fake crystals reported the same sensations as those holding real quartz. Buyers should know that cheap black stones are sometimes dyed or are other minerals; real schorl shows lengthwise grooves on its crystal faces.
A modern protective mix of ordinary salt darkened with ash, charcoal or black pepper, sprinkled across doorways and windowsills to keep unwanted influences out. It is not the same thing as kala namak, the edible Indian black salt.
A sealed jar of salt, iron nails, rosemary and other protective herbs kept by the door or buried near the house, the most popular modern protection spell and a direct descendant of the English witch bottle.
A ring of salt poured on the floor around a person or a working space to mark a protected area that harmful influences cannot cross, drawing on the much older magic circle of ritual magic.
Tell us what you need and we will craft a custom spell, charm or reading for it. Or call to book a reading or a road blessing in person.
