Hey dear Hive Community, first of all I hope you are all well and have a great start to the weekend! In this post I would like to bring a mineral a little closer and hope you can learn something new.
You can see here a mineral from the class of sulfides and sulfo-salts which is called galena and it has a very high proportion of lead and is therefore very interesting as an ore. Galena can be found pretty much anywhere in the world and it is a metamorphic rock that is mainly caused by volcanic activities. Typically, it has a gray to black appearance and the crystals have a cube-like shape and a metal-like appearance and it was named by the German mineralogist Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749 - 1819) and the mineral was probably named in honor of the Roman scholar Pliny the elder, who already knew the mineral and appreciated its use as ore.
As an ore, it is also interesting because of the content of silver and it can also contain gold, pewter, copper or iron and it is probably one of the well-known ores of antiquity. It appears often in history and by ancient cultures it was also used to produce tools and the ancient Egyptians also used it as a color pigment for cosmetic products and the ancient Babylonians and Greeks promoted its use as ore. It was also used to produce coins or weapons and even the ancient Mayans and Aztecs also used Galena for various purposes, such as extracting colors from it.
Due to the toxic properties of lead, gelena is nowadays rather no longer used to produce cosmetic products and also as jewelry it is rather uninteresting and mainly used for industrial purposes such as for the extraction of lead. Symbolically, the mineral is also often associated with the element earth and it also has grounding properties and can be associated with the zodiac signs Capricorn and Aquarius. It can also have a positive effect on the psychic abilities and the spiritual side and help to open the third eye as well as the 7 chakras and also mythologically Galena is anchored and can be associated with the Norse god Odin.
Many thanks for stopping by and watching! I captured these pictures with my Camera Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens!
