Orange crystals

Orange crystals get their colour from trace metals and light-scattering defects rather than from one shared mineral: 26 different stones read orange here, Amber, Ametrine and Aragonite among them. Colour is the least reliable way to name a stone, so every entry carries the test that settles it.

• Amber2-2.5 Mohs · organic · solar-plexus, sacralTree resin from Eocene forests, polymerised over 30 to 90 million years, and the only gem material that regularly contains a dead animal. T…
• Ametrine7 Mohs · quartz · solar-plexus, third-eye, crownA single quartz crystal that grew through a temperature gradient, ending up amethyst at one end and citrine at the other, with a boundary y…
• Aragonite3.5-4 Mohs · carbonate · root, sacral, solar-plexusCalcium carbonate crystallised in the orthorhombic system instead of the trigonal one, which is the only difference between it and calcite …
• Botswana Agate6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · crown, sacralGrey and dusty-pink banded agate from the Bobonong district, famous for band-per-millimetre fineness that makes cut slabs look like topogra…
• Bumblebee Jasper3-5 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · solar-plexus, sacralNot a jasper at all: banded calcite and anhydrite laced with native sulfur and arsenic sulfides, deposited in a fumarole near Papandayan vo…
• Calcite (Coloured Varieties)3 Mohs · carbonate · sacral, solar-plexus, heartThe most abundant carbonate on earth in its decorative dress, orange and honey from Mexico, mint green from Pakistan, blue from Madagascar,…
• Carnelian6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · sacral, rootIron-stained chalcedony the colour of a low fire, and one of the oldest worked gemstones on record, Egyptian, Roman and Islamic carvers all…
• Citrine (Heat-Treated Amethyst)7 Mohs · quartz · solar-plexus, sacralAmethyst that has been through a furnace and come out the colour of cheap brandy. Nothing dishonest has happened to the mineral, it is stil…
• Dalmatian Stone6-7 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · root, sacralNot a jasper and not tourmaline-spotted: a peralkaline microgranite from Chihuahua whose black flecks are arfvedsonite, an amphibole. The e…
• Desert Rose2-3.5 Mohs · sulfate · root, crownGypsum crystallising out of evaporating groundwater in a desert basin, growing around and through the sand until it forms a rosette. Oklaho…
• Garnet6.5-7.5 Mohs · silicate · root, sacralNot one mineral but a family of six-plus species sharing a cubic structure, ranging from the black-red almandine in every schist to the gre…
• Goldstone5-6 Mohs · man-made · sacral, solar-plexusSeventeenth-century Venetian glass in which metallic copper is crystallised out of the melt under controlled oxygen starvation, a genuinely…
• Herkimer Diamond7 Mohs · quartz · third-eye, crownNot diamonds, exceptionally clear double-terminated quartz that grew free-floating in 500-million-year-old dolostone pockets in upstate New…
• Jadeite Jade6-7 Mohs · silicate · heartThe other jade, a sodium aluminium pyroxene, rarer than nephrite and the material of the Qing imperial court and Mesoamerican Olmec and May…
• Labradorite6-6.5 Mohs · feldspar · third-eye, throat, crownA grey plagioclase feldspar whose internal layering is spaced at exactly the wavelength of visible light, so it throws aurora colours from …
• Mahogany Obsidian5-6 Mohs · volcanic glass · root, sacralObsidian stained red-brown by iron oxide, giving the least severe of the volcanic glasses, the swirls are a frozen record of how the lava w…
• Optical Calcite3 Mohs · carbonate · crown, third-eyeClear calcite that splits light into two rays, so text read through it appears twice, the mineral that let nineteenth-century physicists pr…
• Phantom Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · third-eye, crownA crystal that stopped growing, got dusted with chlorite or iron, and then resumed, leaving its own younger outline sealed inside like a fo…
• Red Jasper6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · rootSilica clouded opaque with iron oxide, the plainest, oldest, most universally available amulet material on earth, worked from the Nile to t…
• Sardonyx6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · root, sacralStraight-layered agate in red-brown and white, and the standard material for Roman cameos and signet stones because the layers can be under…
• Selenite2 Mohs · sulfate · crown, third-eyeTransparent gypsum, soft enough to mark with a fingernail and soluble enough to ruin in a rainstorm, the mineral kingdom's tissue paper. Me…
• Shiva Lingam6-7 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · root, sacral, crownCryptocrystalline quartz cobbles from one stretch of the Narmada river in Madhya Pradesh, collected annually under ancestral rights by spec…
• Smoky Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · rootOrdinary quartz darkened over geological time by natural radiation acting on trace aluminium, a stone that is literally a record of the rad…
• Spectrolite6-6.5 Mohs · feldspar · third-eye, crownLabradorite that shows the whole spectrum rather than just the blue end, found in quantity at Ylämaa in south-eastern Finland after quarryi…
• Spirit Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · crown, third-eyeA quartz prism that grew a second, finer coat of crystals over every face, from a small handful of pipes near Boekenhoutshoek in Mpumalanga…
• Sunstone6-6.5 Mohs · feldspar · sacral, solar-plexusFeldspar that trapped sheets of copper or hematite platelets while crystallising, so it flashes metallic orange when the light finds the ri…

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