Pink crystals

Pink crystals get their colour from trace metals and light-scattering defects rather than from one shared mineral: 27 different stones read pink here, Aura Quartz, Bismuth and Botswana Agate among them. Colour is the least reliable way to name a stone, so every entry carries the test that settles it.

• Aura Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · crown, third-eye, throatOrdinary quartz run through a vacuum chamber and fused with vaporised metal, a 1980s lapidary trick that produced the most photogenic objec…
• Bismuth2-2.5 Mohs · man-made · crown, third-eyeElemental bismuth, grown in a saucepan and cooled slowly enough that the edges outrun the faces and produce those stepped rainbow labyrinth…
• 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…
• 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,…
• Cherry Quartz5-6 Mohs · man-made · heart, sacralColoured glass, marbled with white and cut into points and spheres, sold with a fruit name and a quartz claim. There is no natural material…
• Fluorite4 Mohs · halide · third-eye, throat, heartCalcium fluoride in cubes and octahedra, coloured every shade in the box by lattice defects and trace elements, and the mineral that gave f…
• 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…
• Green Aventurine6.5-7 Mohs · quartz · heartA quartzite glittering with chromium mica, mined chiefly in southern India and sold in more starter kits than almost anything else. The nam…
• Kunzite6.5-7 Mohs · silicate · heartPink spodumene, identified in 1902 and named for Tiffany's gemmologist George Frederick Kunz, who found it in the pegmatites of San Diego C…
• Leopardskin Jasper6.5-7 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · root, sacralAnother trade name that lies: this is orbicular rhyolite from Chihuahua, a volcanic rock in which silica crystallised into spheres as the m…
• Lepidolite2.5-3 Mohs · silicate · heart, third-eye, crownA lithium-bearing mica in lavender flakes, mined chiefly as a lithium ore and sold as a calming stone on the strength of that chemistry. Th…
• Magnesite3.5-4.5 Mohs · carbonate · crown, heartMagnesium carbonate, mostly an industrial refractory mineral, and the second great blank canvas of the crystal trade. Where howlite has bla…
• Moonstone6-6.5 Mohs · feldspar · sacral, third-eye, crownPotassium feldspar that unmixed into microscopically thin alternating layers as it cooled, scattering light into a floating blue-white glow…
• Morganite7.5-8 Mohs · silicate · heartPink beryl, named in 1911 for J.P. Morgan, who was buying minerals at a scale that got things named after him. Manganese does the colouring…
• Ocean Jasper6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · heart, throatNot really a jasper: an orbicular rhyolite from the north-west Madagascan coast in which silica-rich fluids grew spherulites and then repla…
• Rainbow Obsidian5-6 Mohs · volcanic glass · root, third-eyeBlack glass with layers of aligned nanoscale crystals inside it, spaced closely enough to interfere with light and throw a spectrum out of …
• Rhodochrosite3.5-4 Mohs · carbonate · heart, solar-plexusManganese carbonate, banded pink and white where it grew as stalactites in old Inca silver workings at Capillitas in Argentina, and blood-r…
• Rhodonite5.5-6.5 Mohs · silicate · heart, rootA manganese silicate that runs pink until oxidation writes black through it, which is most of its aesthetic and all of its symbolism. The U…
• Rose Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · heartPink from vanishingly small fibres of a dumortierite-like mineral suspended in the quartz, the colour is a structural accident, not a dye. …
• Ruby in Zoisite6-9 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · heart, rootRuby crystals grown inside green zoisite, found in 1949 in the Longido district of Tanzania and named anyolite from the Maasai word for gre…
• Satin Spar2 Mohs · sulfate · crownThe white silky towers everyone owns and everyone calls selenite. It is fibrous gypsum, same mineral, different habit, mined mostly in Moro…
• Sodalite5.5-6 Mohs · silicate · throat, third-eyeA feldspathoid, mined in quantity in Ontario after a 1901 find was used to decorate Marlborough House for Princess Margaret of Connaught, h…
• Strawberry Quartz (Glass)5-6 Mohs · man-made · heartTwo entirely different things share this name: a scarce natural quartz with red iron-oxide platelets, and an enormous volume of manufacture…
• Sugilite5.5-6.5 Mohs · silicate · third-eye, crownFirst described from Japan in 1944 as a drab yellow-brown mineral, then found in gem-quality purple at the Wessels manganese mine in South …
• 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…
• Unakite6-7 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · heart, third-eyeGranite that got hydrothermally cooked until its feldspar went salmon-pink and epidote grew through it in pistachio patches, named for the …
• Watermelon Tourmaline7-7.5 Mohs · silicate · heartA single elbaite crystal that changed its chemistry mid-growth, ending up pink inside and green outside, slice it and you get the fruit. Br…

FOR ENTERTAINMENT AND REFLECTION. NOT MEDICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL, FINANCIAL OR LEGAL ADVICE. How this works