Yellow Tiger Eye Crystal Chips

Some courage is quiet. It walks into the difficult meeting, says the true thing calmly and holds its ground without raising its voice, and yellow tiger eye is the stone we carry on those days. Polished, it is striped in honey gold and a brown so dark it is nearly black, and as you turn it a ribbon of light glides across, narrowing and widening like the eye of a watchful cat. The shimmer comes from fine fibres lying side by side within the quartz. Tiger eye was once a rarity: in London in the 1870s a single carat cost the equivalent of well over £100 today. Then rich seams were found in South Africa, the price tumbled, and by 1900 almost anyone could own one. We rather like that: it was never meant to be a stone for the few.

It is a Solar Plexus Chakra stone, the centre Hindu and Vedic tradition gives to our will, and a Sacral Chakra stone too, where new ideas and fresh starts take root.

We keep yellow tiger eye close when a decision has to be made and fear is doing the talking. It is a steadying companion for seeing a situation clearly, for backing ourselves in work and with money, and for the first step of something new. Crystal healers place it at the solar plexus for digestion, and link it with the eyes. Whatever your day asks of you, yellow tiger eye is there for the quiet kind of brave.

Hold a tumble of yellow tiger eye near a window and roll it between your fingers: the gold bands seem to slide beneath the surface, bright one moment and shadowed the next, and you see at once where the name comes from. Our tumbles run dark, a deep treacle brown streaked with gold, while the rough chunks are earthier, a rusty gold with a soft, silky grain and none of the gloss. When someone tells us about a hard conversation ahead, or a business about to open, this is often the stone we put in their hand.

A tumbled piece goes into pockets for job interviews, exam weeks and the days around a big decision. Worn as a bracelet or pendant, yellow tiger eye is there to glance at through work that asks a lot of you, a small reminder of your own resolve. Customers starting something new, a course or a creative project, often keep a rough chunk where the work happens, solid and unpolished beside the keyboard.

Yellow tiger eye is quartz (Mohs 7), hard and easy to live with. Rinse it under running water, or cleanse it with sound, smoke or moonlight, and wipe a polished piece with a soft cloth to keep its shine. Its shimmer is stable in normal light.