Like charoite, seraphinite is a decorative mineral that’s only found in a single place in Russia. The key feature of seraphinite is that the way it crystallizes makes it look like pieces of the mineral have feathers inside them, like the wings of angels. As with the mineral cat’s eye, the feather shapes can seem to move inside the stone when you turn it back and forth. What does the name mean? In what some people call “angelology” (the study of angels), one of the higher level types of angels are the “seraphim” angels. Add “ite” to seraphim, and you’ve got a mineral name! (Yes, you have to change the ‘m’ to an ‘n’ for some reason.) Meanwhile, back in reality land, seraphinite is a variety of the silicate mineral clinochlore that can be as soft as your fingernails (when they’re dry, not when you’ve washed the dishes), so it’s pretty easy to carve into decorative objects. Like talc and serpentine, it’s found in metamorphic rock that has a lot of magnesium in it, along with plenty of iron, which is said to be the main source of its green color.