Herkimer Diamond, Black Tourmaline & Job’s Tears Mala Necklace

There is so much to say about this mala...

This is a one-of-a-kind, hand-knotted meditation mala, created with luminous Herkimer diamond quartz, which I was fortunate to find at an accessible price, black tourmaline, a natural Job’s tears seed meru, and a heart-shaped pyrite pendant.

This mala brings together mineral and plant matter, light and darkness, transparency and grounding.

Despite its name, a Herkimer diamond is not a diamond. It is a naturally double-terminated quartz crystal, known for its clarity, brilliance, and distinctive pointed formation at both ends. It takes its name from Herkimer County in New York State, where especially transparent specimens became well known.

Inclusions, small internal fractures, and variations in luminosity are not flaws, but part of the crystal’s natural structure.

The Herkimer quartz is paired with the deep black of tourmaline, traditionally associated with protection.

The meru is made from a Job’s tears seed, the natural seed of the plant Coix lacryma-jobi. These hard seeds, naturally suited to being strung, have been used in different cultures to create rosaries, prayer beads, and devotional objects.

The Western name evokes Job as a figure of suffering and perseverance. In the Bible, Job was a righteous and prosperous man. In the story, he is struck by a series of tragedies: he loses his children, his possessions, his security, and finally his health. He cannot understand why this is happening, because he recognizes no fault in himself that could justify such profound suffering. He grieves, protests, questions God, and rejects the simplistic explanations offered by his friends, who try to convince him that his suffering must necessarily be a punishment.

The strength of his story does not lie in enduring silently. Job remains in dialogue: he moves through pain, expresses anger and despair, asks radical questions, yet never abandons his search for meaning. For this reason, in Western culture, he has become a symbol of the person who continues to engage with life and with the divine even when no immediate answers are given. This is why I find his symbolism especially meaningful for this mala.

In Japan, the plant is known as juzudama, a name connected to the juzu, the Japanese Buddhist rosary. Before gemstone malas became widely available, seeds offered one of the most direct ways to transform a natural plant material into an instrument for counting, repetition, and prayer.

In this sense, the Job’s tears seed can be symbolically compared to the rudrākṣa. They are not the same botanical material and belong to different traditions, but they share an ancient principle: a natural seed becomes a tactile companion to practice, helping the hand to count and the mind to return.

The name “Job’s tears” comes from the seed’s teardrop-like shape and from its botanical name, lacryma-jobi. Symbolically, the seed evokes perseverance, prayer, and the ability to maintain an inner direction even through difficulty.

Placed at the meru, it marks arrival and return: the point where one round is completed, the direction is reversed, and the practice begins again.

The pendant is a heart made of pyrite. The shape of the heart recalls what remains alive despite hardship: what continues to feel and to choose. It becomes an image of solidity, concreteness, and value. The love represented by the heart is not a fragility to be protected, but a strength—a presence to be preserved and carried into the world. It is a heart that has passed through darkness without losing its light, and that can transform experience into direction, discernment, and grounded strength.

This mala is an unrepeatable piece. Only one exists with this exact arrangement of stones, meru, and pendant.

Details

• Handmade meditation mala

• One-of-a-kind piece

• 108 beads

• 8 mm natural gemstones

• Herkimer diamond quartz

• Black tourmaline

• Natural Job’s tears seed meru

• Botanical name: Coix lacryma-jobi

• Heart-shaped pyrite pendant

• Individually hand knotted

• Total circumference: approximately 42 inches / 106.7 cm

• Handmade by Samdea

Natural stones and seeds are never perfectly identical. Variations in transparency, inclusions, shape, color, and surface belong to their natural origin and make this mala completely unique.