Stone, maybe more than any other material, has been known forever to be magical, to have powers to heal, guide, house divinity, and mark places of burial. Altars are usually of stone, as are temples, oratories, and sometimes houses. Rock gardens invite meditation. . . .
We need stones around us to echo the substance of our own lives — hard, solid, heavy, timeless, and subtly hued. People go to therapists to find answers to their problems and strategies for working out difficulties, but their real work might be to discover the heavy, solid nature that lies like stone in the very deepest pit of their heart, and the knowledge that is carved into that stone self at the quick of their being. Lives of the 20th century sometimes seem to be too soft, impermanent, light, and unrelated to the earth. For all these symptoms, stone is an obvious tonic . . .
— Thomas Moore, The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life