Topaz
Aluminium fluorosilicate, the mineral that defines 8 on the Mohs scale
Topaz grows in the last hot breath of a cooling granite, in the cavities and gas pockets where fluorine-rich vapour has nowhere left to go. It builds long prismatic crystals with fine grooves running down their length. It comes out an eight on the hardness scale, above quartz, above anything in a normal jewellery box. It also carries one perfect plane of weakness straight across it, so a stone that will scratch steel can be split in two by a knock at the right angle on a tiled floor.
In the ground most of it is colourless. Some is golden brown. The sherry and orange-red crystals out of Ouro Preto in Brazil are the ones the trade calls imperial, and those are genuinely uncommon. Natural blue topaz exists too, and it is rare, and it is so pale that you would reach for the word grey before you reached for blue.
Now go and look at a shop window. Almost every blue topaz on earth started life as a colourless stone. It was irradiated, in a reactor or a linear accelerator, then heated to clear the brownish cast the radiation leaves behind. Sky blue, Swiss blue and London blue are all the same process at different doses, and the trade has run it since the 1970s.
The stones are safe by the time they reach you. They are held back after treatment until residual activity drops under the legal limit, and in the United States a distributor needs a licence to import them at all. What nobody can do is prove it. There is no gemmological test that separates an irradiated blue topaz from a natural one, so anybody selling you a strong blue as untreated is making a claim rather than reporting a finding.
Mystic topaz is a different move again. A film of metal oxide a few microns thick is laid onto the surface of a colourless stone so it throws an oil-slick rainbow. The topaz under it is real topaz. The colour is a skin, and it is the softest thing on the stone, so it goes first at the facet junctions and anywhere the ring meets the world.
You have been the colourless one. Somewhere back there you picked up the idea that as you came you were not quite enough to hold a room, so you learned to arrive with something added. A joke, a job, a usefulness. It worked, which is the trouble. Nobody has asked to see the plain version in years, and you stopped offering it around the same time.
The stone was an eight before anyone put a colour on it. That part was never the treatment.
People carry it for abundance, clarity and communication. Tradition attaches it to the element fire, the solar-plexus, throat chakra, Jupiter. It is most often given to Sagittarius, Scorpio, Leo. It measures 8 on the Mohs scale.
Seen · you don't have this one yet
Common·Uncommon·Rare·Arcane
Topaz has been the most borrowed word in the gem trade for two hundred years, and most of the borrowing has nothing to do with topaz. Smoky topaz is smoky quartz. Madeira topaz, golden topaz and topaz quartz are citrine. Those names exist because quartz was cheap and topaz sounded expensive, and the modern trade guides class them as misleading. Precious topaz and imperial topaz do describe real topaz, the golden to reddish-orange material, although imperial gets stretched over ordinary pale yellows by sellers who want the premium. Mystic topaz is genuine topaz wearing a coating, so the mineral is honest and the colour is not.
What it is confused with
Aquamarine, citrine natural, citrine heat treated, smoky quartz, zircon, blue glass
It is heavy for its size, noticeably heavier in the palm than an aquamarine or a quartz cut to the same width, and that weight is one of the quickest reads you get. Rough crystals are long and prismatic with fine grooves running down the length and a flat top where the cleavage plane is. Inside a cut stone that same plane sometimes shows as a single flat mirror-like flash that no other angle repeats. Treated blue is very even and slightly electric, with none of the patchy zoning you see in natural pale blue material.
Commonly faked · check before you buy
How to tell
Put a loupe on the girdle and on the points where facets meet, especially on a ring that has been worn for a year or more. A coated stone gives itself up there first, as dull patches or fine scratches where the rainbow film has worn through to plain colourless topaz underneath, and the film reads as a skin sitting on the surface rather than colour living inside the stone. Turn it over and check the pavilion too, since some coatings are applied only to the back. An uncoated topaz looks the same colour from every angle and through every facet. What no home test can do, and no laboratory test reliably does either, is separate irradiated blue from natural blue, so assume any strong blue is treated and pay accordingly.
Three things get done to topaz and only one of them is routinely explained. First, blue. Nearly all blue topaz began as colourless topaz, was irradiated in a reactor or a linear accelerator, and was then heated to remove the brownish cast the radiation leaves. Sky blue, Swiss blue and London blue are the same process at different doses. This has been standard since the 1970s. Treated stones are quarantined until residual activity falls below the legal release limit, which is often weeks for accelerator material and months for reactor material, and rare stones from certain Nigerian and Chinese localities have taken far longer. In the United States a distributor needs a Nuclear Regulatory Commission licence to import and sell them, and by the time a stone reaches a counter it is safe. On current gemmological science the treatment is undetectable, so no report can honestly certify a blue topaz as natural. Second, pink and red, some of which is produced by heating golden brown Brazilian material, particularly from Ouro Preto. Third, coating. Mystic topaz, azotic topaz and the rainbow varieties are colourless topaz carrying a metal oxide film a few microns thick. That film is the weakest part of the finished stone. It wears through at the facet junctions, it comes off in an ultrasonic or steam cleaner, and it cannot be replaced at a jeweller's bench.
The full mineral facts
Hardness, formula, and how the rock is put together.
Hardness
8 Mohs
Crystal system
orthorhombic
Formula
Al2SiO4(F,OH)2
Family
nesosilicate
How it forms
It crystallises from fluorine-rich vapour in the final stages of cooling granite, filling cavities in pegmatites and gas pockets in rhyolite.
Where it comes from
Minas Gerais in Brazil including Ouro Preto, the Ural Mountains in Russia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Utah
What it means
The moon is in Sagittarius today, so this is the Sagittarius read.
The name has been wrong for two thousand years. The stone has not changed.
The Greeks used the word topazos for a stone from an island in the Red Sea, and mineralogists now think that stone was peridot. So the name arrived attached to the wrong mineral two thousand years ago and has never got itself back.
Sagittarius, you were named early by people working from poor information, and you have been travelling away from that description ever since. That is the cause of the restlessness. Not a love of the road. A very specific wish not to be found where they left you.
A wrong name has ridden this mineral for two millennia and has not altered one property of the stone.
That is today's sky, not your chart. Add your birth details and this stone gets read against your own.
Read it for my chart →You know what this one would do for you. You just don't have it.
Topaz for every sign
AriesHard in every direction except one.
Topaz grows in the last hot breath of a cooling granite, where fluorine vapour has nowhere left to go. It comes out an eight on the hardness scale, above quartz, above steel. And it carries one perfect plane of weakness straight across it.
Aries, you are not fragile and you are not invincible either, and everyone around you keeps picking one of the two. Somewhere early you got praised for taking a hit, so you started volunteering for hits. Nobody was ever told where the plane runs, because you have never once said.
Hard in every direction except one. That is a fact about the mineral, not a fault in it.
TaurusThe topaz under the treatment is still topaz.
Nearly all the blue topaz in the world started out colourless. It was irradiated, then heated to take the brown cast off, and it came out sky, Swiss or London depending on the dose it got. The stone is safe. The blue is not its own.
Taurus, you have worn colours that were applied to you. A family decided early what you were going to be steady about, and you took the job because refusing it would have cost more than doing it did. Decades on, most people could not tell you which parts of you were chosen.
The topaz under the treatment is still topaz. That has not gone anywhere.
GeminiEverything you like about it sits on the outside.
Mystic topaz is a film of metal oxide a few microns thick, laid on a colourless stone so it throws an oil-slick rainbow. Everything you like about it sits on the outside, and it wears through at the facet junctions first, where the ring meets the world.
Gemini, you are excellent company and you know precisely how the finish reads in a room. That skill came from somewhere specific. Somebody made attention conditional on being entertaining, and you got very good at the surface long before anyone asked about the stone.
The coating comes off with heat and time. What is under it has always been an eight.
CancerThe ring is the same ring. Only the telling changed.
A woman finds out her ring was irradiated in a reactor and then baked in an oven, and something in her drops. She had a story about that stone. Nobody had mentioned that the story was optional.
Cancer, that drop is familiar to you. You attach fast and find out later there was a fact you were not handed, and the not being told always lands harder than the fact does. Somebody managed you with omissions when you were small, for your own good, and you have not fully trusted a smooth account since.
The ring is the same ring it was this morning. Only the telling changed.
LeoIt did not lose an atom while its name was used elsewhere.
Topaz has been the most borrowed word in the gem trade for two hundred years. Smoky topaz is quartz. Madeira topaz is citrine. Golden topaz is citrine. The name got taken because it sounded expensive and the mineral had no say.
Leo, people use your name for their own purposes and it stings more than you let anybody see. That is not vanity. At some point being known was the only reliable currency in your house, and everything since has been priced against it.
The mineral did not lose a single atom while its name was being used elsewhere. Neither did you.
VirgoMost likely, and then stopping, is more accurate than certainty.
There is no test that proves a blue topaz was treated. None at all. The colour sits in the crystal structure exactly as a natural one would, so any strong blue should be read as treated, and a certificate that says natural is a claim rather than a finding.
Virgo, you want the answer to be knowable and sometimes it simply is not, and that gap is where most of your energy goes. Someone taught you that not knowing was the same as not having done the work properly. It was not the same then and it is not now.
Saying most likely, and then stopping, is more accurate than a confident answer. It is also allowed.
LibraThe colourless crystal is the same mineral as the imperial one.
In the ground topaz is usually colourless. The sherry and orange-red crystals from Ouro Preto in Brazil are the uncommon ones. Natural blue exists as well, and it is so pale that you would reach for grey before you reached for blue.
Libra, plain has been a difficult word for you since childhood. Somebody made a comparison out loud in front of you once, and after that you started arriving with something added on, so that plain would never be anybody's verdict.
The colourless crystal is the same mineral as the imperial one. Same hardness, same structure, same everything except the trace it happened to catch.
ScorpioIt is safe by the time you hold it. That is not the whole account.
Irradiated topaz is quarantined after treatment until the residual activity falls under the legal limit. Weeks for accelerator material. Months for reactor material. Longer for a few awkward localities. Then it goes on the shelf and none of that gets mentioned again.
Scorpio, you want to know what happened during the waiting period, and that instinct has a source. Somebody once handed you a tidy account with the middle removed, and you found the middle later on your own, and it changed how you read people.
The stone is genuinely safe by the time you hold it. That is true, and it is still not the whole account.
SagittariusThe name has been wrong for two thousand years. The stone has not changed.
The Greeks used the word topazos for a stone from an island in the Red Sea, and mineralogists now think that stone was peridot. So the name arrived attached to the wrong mineral two thousand years ago and has never got itself back.
Sagittarius, you were named early by people working from poor information, and you have been travelling away from that description ever since. That is the cause of the restlessness. Not a love of the road. A very specific wish not to be found where they left you.
A wrong name has ridden this mineral for two millennia and has not altered one property of the stone.
CapricornThe cutters do not pretend the plane is absent.
You are holding a stone that will scratch steel and will also split along one flat plane if it hits a tiled floor. Both facts, one object. Cutters know it and orient the stone to work around the cleavage on purpose.
Capricorn, you present the hardness and keep the plane to yourself, and you have done that since you were young enough for it to be survival rather than a decision. Someone above you treated need as a defect. So you filed need under private and carried on with the work.
The cutters do not pretend the plane is absent. They work with it, and the stone lasts.
AquariusKnowing how the colour got there does not stop it being blue.
You have been sold a colour and left to assume it was nature. Sky blue, Swiss blue, London blue, every one of them came out of a reactor or an accelerator and then an oven, and the trade has run it that way since the 1970s with very little comment.
Aquarius, you notice the unspoken arrangement in a room before you notice the people in it, and that started as protection. Somebody once ran a system on you and assumed you would not work it out. You worked it out. Now you check every room for the same shape.
Knowing how the colour got there does not stop it being blue.
PiscesThe patch is where the stone touched something. That is contact.
A coating wears through where two facets meet, because that is the part of the ring that touches the world. The stone looks perfect for a year. Then there is a dull patch, small, and the owner sees it long before anybody else does.
Pisces, you spot your own dull patch well ahead of the room and you spend real energy covering it over. That habit has a source. Somebody once loved the easy version of you very warmly and went quiet when the hard version turned up in the doorway.
The patch is where the stone actually touched something. That is not damage. That is contact.
Correspondences
What tradition attaches to this stone. Folklore, not chemistry.
Element
fire
Planet
Jupiter
Chakra
solar-plexus, throat
Signs
sagittarius, scorpio, leo, taurus
What tradition says
Greek and Roman writers used the word topazos for a stone from an island in the Red Sea, and mineralogists now think that stone was almost certainly peridot, so the name arrived attached to the wrong mineral and never got itself back. In European lapidary tradition topaz was worn for a clear head and against night fears, and was said to cool a temper. It is the modern November birthstone, with blue topaz added later as a December alternative. Present-day crystal writers keep the golden stones for confidence and the blue ones for saying the difficult thing out loud.
Care
- Water is fine. Dry it afterwards.
- Keep it out of direct sun. The colour goes and does not come back.
- Warm water, mild soap, soft brush, nothing else. Keep it away from ultrasonic and steam cleaners, because the perfect cleavage plane can open under hard shaking and heat, and because heat and sudden temperature change can alter the colour. If the stone is a coated one such as mystic topaz, an ultrasonic will strip the film and no jeweller can put it back. Natural yellow and brown topaz fades in long sunlight, so do not leave it on a windowsill. Water and salt do not harm it, but a knock on a hard floor can split it clean along that plane.
Common questions
What does topaz mean?
Topaz is carried for abundance, clarity and communication. Topaz grows in the last hot breath of a cooling granite, in the cavities and gas pockets where fluorine-rich vapour has nowhere left to go. Tradition links it to the solar-plexus, throat chakra.
Is topaz real or fake?
Topaz has been the most borrowed word in the gem trade for two hundred years, and most of the borrowing has nothing to do with topaz. Smoky topaz is smoky quartz. Put a loupe on the girdle and on the points where facets meet, especially on a ring that has been worn for a year or more. A coated stone gives itself up there first, as dull patches or fine scratches where the rainbow film has worn through to plain colourless topaz underneath, and the film reads as a skin sitting on the surface rather than colour living inside the stone. Three things get done to topaz and only one of them is routinely explained.
Can topaz go in water?
A short rinse is fine for topaz, then dry it. Keep it out of direct sun, because the colour fades and does not come back.
Common · colourless, blue, yellow, golden brown, sherry, orange, pink, red, pale green
Where this leads
This stone belongs to
FOR ENTERTAINMENT AND REFLECTION. NOT MEDICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL, FINANCIAL OR LEGAL ADVICE. How this works