166g Dragon Septarian – Ludus Helmontii

In 1644, the Flemish physician and alchemist Jan Baptist van Helmont proclaimed in his treatise De lithiasi a remedy against the feared stone disease. It was a stone of clay, which he called Ludus and which only the legendary Alkahest, the solvent of all things, could unlock. Scholars across Europe hunted after this Ludus Helmontii. In June 1675, a Antwerp apothecary sent a letter to the Royal Society in London, with a small envelope containing a sample, and through Isaac Newton another piece reached the collection of the geologist John Woodward. Only later mineralogists gave the stone its lasting name: Septarie, after the Latin saeptum, the partition wall. This skull bears this story in its face like an old, wise dragon, weathered and marked by age. Its brown lies like a thick, once dripping leather skin over the forehead and jaw, hardened and condensed through countless ages, as if it had witnessed all that it has endured and could bear. Every trace on it speaks of long-vanished ages and adventures we can hardly dare to dream. Across the skull, from crown over the brow and temples down to the jaw, runs a double-track course of honey-gold calcite, the finest crystals in faint translucence, fringed on both sides by chocolate-brown margins as if strapped with old harness. Hidden on the underside rests a small geode, a crystal chamber the dragon kept for itself. At the back of the head, finally, the red fire-storm blazes: a branched, almost fractal network of glowing veins, an eternal masterpiece that captures the dragon in its last breath. Its cradle was the bed of an ancient sea. Many septaria began as a silent capsule around a dead sea creature, a shell, an ammonite, or another inhabitant of the ooze. Bacteria gnawed at its body and transformed the surrounding water into a calcareous chemistry, so that the mud around the cadaver solidified into stone. Sometimes the creature still rests today in the heart of the nodule. Later the hardened body tore apart from within. Whether shrinkage, overpressure, or the tremors of ancient quakes opened the cracks is still debated. In these cracks, over long periods, generation after generation, crystals grew from mineral-rich water: first the brown margins, depending on the locality aragonite or iron-bearing calcite, then the honey-yellow calcite. Where the space was not completely filled, hollows remained with freely grown crystals. The fine orange-red veins owe their glow to traces of iron oxide. Under UV light, septaria from well-known localities often show a vivid response. Calcite can fluoresce yellow or blue, aragonite margins glow under long-wavelength UV yellow and often continue to glow after the light is off. This is triggered by traces of organic material and foreign ions in the crystal lattice. In this skull, the fluorescence appears in striking grass-green. Material: Septarie (Septarian concretion), calcareous-brownish base with calcite fracture fillings and brown margins from aragonite or iron-rich calcite; trade name “Dragon Septarian Stone” Origin: Madagascar Dimensions: 6.3 x 4.9 x 4.2 cm Weight: 166 g Special features: larger than standard size; fine natural hairline or crack lines in the gray-brown base around temples and cheeks as authenticity marks of a grown septarian; diagonally running, translucent honey-yellow calcite bands with dark chocolate to red-brown margins on both sides; large calcite area on the rear half of the skull; fine reddish-orange speckles on the jaw; dense, branched orange-red vein network at the back of the head; small geode or crystal cavity at the underside; hand-carved and polished

Estimate:$1.12

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