Sunstones!

[Polymath257]

There is a Viking legend of sunstones used for navigation and to determine the direction of the sun even on cloudy days.

Evidently, this is possible using calcite or other birefringent minerals:

Mysterious sunstones in medieval Viking texts could really have worked

@Sunstone

My bet is that many other 'magical' tools are ordinary things with unusual properties. Comments?

 

[Shiranui117]

So this is his family tree? Rock on.

 

[Valjean]

I always suspected our friend was birefringent.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

Well how about that! Learn something new every day! I can't wait to use my new word, birefringent!

 

[Aldrnari]

Absolutely. You especially see things like this in regards to minerals.

Fluorites can glow under black light. Icelandic spar can cause all kinds of strange visual effects (and also acts as a sunstone). Quartz crystals have some strange properties in regards to electrical currents (they can even produce tiny amounts of electricity if squeezed). Hell, even sugar has some strange properties; if you are in a pitch black room, you can take some sugar cubes and a solid glass object, smash the cubes, and you will see the sugar glow a feint blue color.

Pretty cool stuff.

 

[Sunstone]

So this is his family tree? Rock on.

Great grand pappy was always rumored within the family to have been a calcite mineral due to his conservative politics.

 

[Jumi]

My bet is that many other 'magical' tools are ordinary things with unusual properties. Comments?

Many of the things the ancient people did were practical applications of what they considered knowledge. Rituals were no exception, until the people doing them had no idea what the items were.

 

[Sunstone]

Many of the things the ancient people did were practical applications of what they considered knowledge. Rituals were no exception, until the people doing them had no idea what the items were.

That reminds me of something Joseph Campbell once reported. There is a group in India that apparently migrated into the subcontinent from ancient Sumer. In some of their rituals they use words no one today understands -- no one but scholars of the Sumerian language. Without preserving the meaning, the group has retained the words of ancient Sumerian rites for thousands of years.

 

[Valjean]

Great grand pappy was always rumored within the family to have been a calcite mineral due to his conservative politics.

Ah -- so your progenitors were politically calcified.

 

[Patience]

I recently learned about sunstones from someone and thought it was so cool!!! I love optical calcite! I have one in my collection and it is so fun putting it over words and seeing the doubled text. ^_^