Red crystals
You know the colour you want. The hard part is knowing which stone actually owns it.
Red crystals are not one stone. 37 different minerals show up red here, Alexandrite, Amber and Amethyst among them. Colour is the easiest thing to fake, so it is the worst way to name a stone. Every entry below gives you the test that settles it.
Hold one in your hand?
Point your camera at it. You will get a name, a real-or-fake verdict and what it means for your chart, in seconds.
Scan a stone, freeNo account · No card
- Alexandrite8.5 Mohs · chrysoberyl · heart, crownAlexandrite should not exist. Beryllium collects in granite pegmatites, near the top of the crust. Chromium belongs to ultramafic rock…
Amber2-2.5 Mohs · organic · solar-plexus, sacralPick it up. Four seconds in your palm and it is warm. Glass and plastic never manage that. It is not a stone. It is tree resin that ran…
Amethyst7 Mohs · quartz · third-eye, crownAmethyst started out as ordinary quartz. A trace of iron got caught in it, and the faint natural radiation of the rock around it worked…
Ammonite3.5-4.5 Mohs · organic · root, crownThis was an animal. It swam, it died out with the dinosaurs, and it sank into seabed mud. The mud turned to rock and swapped the shell…
Bloodstone6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · root, heartBloodstone set inside old lava. Hot water full of silica filled the gas pockets and stiffened, catching green flecks and rust red iron…
Carnelian6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · sacral, rootMost carnelian was helped. Grey agate gets iron stained and baked until the orange comes up, and people have done that since before…
Cherry Quartz5-6 Mohs · man-made · heart, sacralSomebody melted silica in a factory, stirred in gold or copper for the red, and pulled the whole thing into a rod. The white swirls are…
Citrine (Heat-Treated Amethyst)7 Mohs · quartz · solar-plexus, sacralIt was amethyst. Purple, out of a geode in Brazil, until it went into an oven at around 450 degrees and came out brandy orange for good…
Crazy Lace Agate6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · solar-plexus, sacralHold it up and follow one band with a fingernail. It doubles back, folds over itself and starts again. That is because the rock cracked…
Fire Agate6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · root, sacralTilt it under a lamp. Red and gold slide across the domes, then vanish when you hold still. That fire is not pigment. It is films of…
Garnet6.5-7.5 Mohs · silicate · root, sacralGarnet grew inside rock that was being crushed. Heat and pressure squeezed the root of a mountain, and the garnet crystallised in the…
Goldstone5-6 Mohs · man-made · sacral, solar-plexusIn Venice, four hundred years ago, a glassmaker melted sand with copper and shut the air out of the pot. As it cooled, small copper…
Green Aventurine6.5-7 Mohs · quartz · heartIt began as plain sand on a seabed. Buried, pressed and cooked, the grains welded into one hard rock, and flecks of green mica got…
Hematite5.5-6.5 Mohs · oxide · rootIt looks like machined steel. It is rust. Iron and oxygen joined in an old sea and settled in layers on the floor. Burial pressed those…
Leopardskin Jasper6.5-7 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · root, sacralThe name lies twice. It is not jasper, and those are not animal markings. It is old lava that cooled with crystals growing outward from…
Mahogany Obsidian5-6 Mohs · volcanic glass · root, sacralThis was lava moving too fast to become a crystal. It cooled into glass instead, and the red-brown clouds are iron that froze the second…
Mookaite6-7 Mohs · chalcedony · root, sacral, solar-plexusMookaite is made of animals. Sea plankton with glass shells died in their billions on an old seafloor, and the silica of those shells…
Moss Agate6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · heart, rootThe moss in this is not moss. It is mineral threads that grew inside the silica before it hardened, sharp and three dimensional when…
Petrified Wood6.5-7 Mohs · organic · rootThis was a tree. It fell into mud or water and got buried before it could rot. Then silica in the groundwater moved in and swapped…
Phantom Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · third-eye, crownLook into it and there is a smaller crystal in there, with the same shape and the same points. It grew. Then it stopped, long enough for…
Pietersite6.5-7 Mohs · quartz · third-eye, solar-plexusThis was tiger's eye first. Fine blue fibres in rock, slowly replaced by quartz, all lying parallel. Then the ground moved and tore it…- Pink Tourmaline7 to 7.5 Mohs · tourmaline · heartPink tourmaline grows in pegmatite, the last wet pocket of a granite as it cools and gives up whatever the rest of the rock would not…
Red Jasper6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · rootRed jasper is quartz too fine to see, stained through with iron oxide. Rust, basically. The same red as old brick and old blood. It…- Red Tiger's Eye6.5 to 7 Mohs · quartz · root, sacralThis one began as asbestos. Crocidolite, the blue fibrous amphibole, grew in seams inside ancient ironstone, and silica moved through…
Rhodochrosite3.5-4 Mohs · carbonate · heart, solar-plexusThe pink and white bands are not a pattern anybody chose. Water carrying manganese ran through the same opening for a very long time…- Ruby9 Mohs · corundum · root, heartRuby is aluminium oxide that got contaminated. Corundum grows colourless. Then a few chromium atoms take the place of aluminium in the…
Ruby in Zoisite6-9 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · heart, rootDeep underground, heat and pressure grew two things at once in one rock. Green zoisite. Red corundum, which is the mineral we call ruby…
Rutilated Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · solar-plexus, crownHold it up to a window. Those gold threads are titanium. They grew as needles in a hot crack in the rock, and quartz crystallised around…
Sardonyx6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · root, sacralRoman cutters wanted a stone they could carve a face into. Sardonyx gave them one, because its bands lie flat and level instead of…
Shiva Lingam6-7 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · root, sacral, crownThis stone carries living religious meaning, so that comes first. Shiva lingam are gathered from one stretch of the Narmada river in…
Spectrolite6-6.5 Mohs · feldspar · third-eye, crownSpectrolite is labradorite. A Finnish quarry found the darkest material anyone had seen. They gave it a name of its own. The name is the…- Strawberry Quartz (Glass)5-6 Mohs · man-made · heartThis is glass. It was melted in a factory, mostly in China, with copper stirred through it. The red threads are real metal flakes. They…
Sunstone6-6.5 Mohs · feldspar · sacral, solar-plexusTilt it under a lamp. The glitter runs across the whole face at once, then vanishes when you tilt it back. That is metal. Tiny flakes of…
Tanzanite6-7 Mohs · silicate · third-eye, crown, throatTanzanite came out of one small patch of hills in northern Tanzania in 1967. There is nowhere else on earth. It does not come out blue…
Tiger's Eye6.5-7 Mohs · quartz · solar-plexus, rootThis used to be asbestos. Blue crocidolite fibres grew in the rock first, and quartz replaced them one by one. The silk you can see is…- Topaz8 Mohs · nesosilicate · solar-plexus, throatTopaz grows in the last hot breath of a cooling granite, in the cavities and gas pockets where fluorine-rich vapour has nowhere left to…
- Zircon6 to 7.5 Mohs · nesosilicate · root, throat, third-eyeStart with the thing the shop counter will not say, because it is the whole reason this stone is treated as cheap. Zircon is not cubic…
Cut it another way
From the Grimoire
Not sure what you're holding
Want the safety list when it is ready?
Everything on this page is already free to read, nothing is held back. Leave your email and we will send the printable version once it exists.
By checking this you agree to receive recurring automated marketing texts from Oraclite. Msg and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to opt out.
By sending, you agree to receive this result and occasional crystal tips by email. Unsubscribe any time.
FOR ENTERTAINMENT AND REFLECTION. NOT MEDICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL, FINANCIAL OR LEGAL ADVICE. How this works