Metals and Minerals — Side Notes
Metals and minerals don’t charm their way into practice the way crystals do. They arrive heavier. Older. Less interested in being liked. These are the materials of tools, coins, weapons, wires, bones of buildings—things shaped by pressure, heat, and time rather than aesthetics. You don’t browse metals so much as stumble into their influence once you start paying attention.
The Side Notes here lean into that weight without turning it into dogma. This is where iron folklore collides with modern anxiety, where mercury gets its reputation examined, where salt stops being “just salt,” and where people start asking why certain materials feel protective, grounding, dangerous, or charged long before they ever learn the chemistry. These pieces favor usefulness, caution, and cultural memory over sparkle.
If crystals are what people pick up first, metals and minerals are what they notice later—once they realize magic has always been embedded in infrastructure, tools, and everyday survival. These articles meet that realization halfway, with curiosity intact and gloves on where necessary.
Featured Side Notes
You can also find these articles—and many more—within the main Grimoire Blog.
Deep-Sea Mining: Beneath the Surface of Policy, Profit, and Planetary Mystery — Beneath the ocean’s shadowed depths lie minerals vital for our green future—but greed, politics, and unknown ecosystems collide. Deep-sea mining could unlock riches or unleash irreversible ecological damage. Explore the abyssal clash of profit, policy, and planetary mystery.
Metals and minerals have never been neutral. They’ve shaped economies, religions, borders, and bodies—often quietly, sometimes violently. The Side Notes don’t pretend otherwise. Instead, they explore how these substances continue to carry symbolic, magical, and psychological weight into modern practice, superstition, and storytelling.
Some entries here may feel practical. Others may feel unsettling. That’s appropriate. This is not a category built for comfort—it’s built for awareness. Whether you’re looking for portable protection, historical context, or a better understanding of why certain materials come with warnings attached, these notes are meant to sharpen attention, not soften it.
Read lightly. Handle thoughtfully. Metals remember pressure—and so do people who work with them.
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