White crystals

White crystals get their colour from trace metals and light-scattering defects rather than from one shared mineral: 59 different stones read white here, Amazonite, Amber and Ammonite among them. Colour is the least reliable way to name a stone, so every entry carries the test that settles it.

• Amazonite6-6.5 Mohs · feldspar · heart, throatGreen microcline, coloured by trace lead and structural water, and named after a river it has never actually been found in. The Pikes Peak …
• 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…
• Ammonite3.5-4.5 Mohs · organic · root, crownA cephalopod that built its shell in a logarithmic spiral, lived in the last chamber and used the rest for buoyancy, then went extinct with…
• Angelite3.5 Mohs · sulfate · throat, third-eye, crownAnhydrite, calcium sulfate with the water taken out, in a soft periwinkle from Peru, given a marketing name in the 1980s and now permanentl…
• Apache Tears5-6 Mohs · volcanic glass · root, heartObsidian nodules that survived when the surrounding glass hydrated into crumbly perlite, mineralogists call them marekanite. The American n…
• 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 …
• Astrophyllite3-4 Mohs · silicate · crown, third-eye, solar-plexusGreek for 'star leaf', and correctly so: a rare titanium silicate that grows in bronze blades radiating from a point, found in alkaline ign…
• 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…
• Black Onyx6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · rootGrey agate boiled in sugar and acid until it turns black, a treatment Pliny already knew about, which makes it one of the oldest continuous…
• Black Tourmaline7-7.5 Mohs · silicate · rootIron-rich tourmaline, common as gravel in pegmatite country, and the single most-recommended protective stone in the modern trade. It is ge…
• Blue Kyanite4.5-7 Mohs · silicate · throat, third-eyeAn aluminium silicate that forms only at high pressure deep in the crust, so its presence in a rock tells a geologist how far down it has b…
• Blue Lace Agate6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · throatChalcedony banded in pale blue and white, essentially all of it from one region of Namibia, which is why the supply is finite and the price…
• 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,…
• Celestite3-3.5 Mohs · sulfate · throat, third-eye, crownStrontium sulfate, the mineral that makes fireworks red, growing as pale blue crystal-lined cavities in Madagascan and Ohioan sedimentary r…
• Charoite5-6 Mohs · silicate · third-eye, crownFound in exactly one place on earth, a small area of the Murun massif on the Chara River in Siberia, and formed by a syenite intrusion cook…
• 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…
• Clear Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · crown, third-eyeThe default specimen of the entire trade, silicon dioxide, geometrically perfect, and so common it is nearly worthless by weight. Its appea…
• Crazy Lace Agate6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · solar-plexus, sacralChihuahuan agate that formed in a rock that kept breaking and re-healing, producing banding with no discipline whatsoever. Dealers call it …
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• Howlite3.5 Mohs · silicate · crown, third-eyeA calcium borosilicate from Nova Scotia that would be an obscure collector's mineral if it were not the perfect blank canvas, porous, white…
• Iolite7-7.5 Mohs · silicate · third-eye, throatCordierite, transparent and violet-blue, and famous for a story that may well be true: thin slices act as a polarising filter, and there is…
• 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…
• 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…
• Larimar4.5-5 Mohs · silicate · throat, heartBlue pectolite from a single volcanic outcrop in Barahona Province, Dominican Republic, one mountainside, one country, no substitutes. It w…
• 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…
• 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…
• Milky Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · crownThe plain white filler of a thousand mineral veins, quartz clouded to opacity by trapped water and gas. It is the most abundant gemmy rock …
• Mookaite6-7 Mohs · chalcedony · root, sacral, solar-plexusThe silicified skeletons of Cretaceous radiolaria, single-celled plankton with glass shells, from the Windalia Radiolarite in Western Austr…
• 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…
• Moss Agate6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · heart, rootChalcedony that trapped mineral filaments as it formed, producing something that looks convincingly like vegetation and is entirely inorgan…
• Nephrite Jade6-6.5 Mohs · silicate · heartThe jade of ancient China, Māori Aotearoa and neolithic Europe, an amphibole so tough that stone-age cultures made axes of it before anyone…
• 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…
• Opalite5.5-6 Mohs · man-made · crown, third-eyeGlass. Not opal, not moonstone, not a mineral of any kind, an opalescent art glass produced in quantity and sold under a name engineered to…
• 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…
• Orthoceras3-4 Mohs · organic · root, third-eyeStraight-shelled nautiloids from Devonian and Ordovician seas, quarried by the tonne in the Erfoud region of Morocco and cut into slabs, sp…
• 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…
• Picture Jasper6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · root, third-eyeVolcanic ash and mud laid down in still water, compressed, silicified, and then sliced, so the desert scene you are looking at is an actual…
• Prehnite6-6.5 Mohs · silicate · heart, solar-plexusThe first mineral ever named after a person, Colonel Hendrik von Prehn, who brought it back from the Cape in the 1780s. It grows as pale gr…
• Rainbow Moonstone6-6.5 Mohs · feldspar · third-eye, crown, sacralThe best-selling moonstone in the world is not moonstone: it is white labradorite from India and Madagascar, flashing blue by a different o…
• 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…
• 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…
• Rutilated Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · solar-plexus, crownQuartz that trapped needles of titanium dioxide as it grew, producing what looks like gold wire frozen mid-flight. Renaissance Europeans ca…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• Septarian3-4 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · root, solar-plexusA mud concretion that formed around decaying organic matter on a Cretaceous seafloor, dried, cracked from the inside out, and then had ever…
• Serpentine2.5-6 Mohs · silicate · heart, rootThe rock that forms when seawater cooks peridotite deep in the crust, California's state rock, the world's asbestos problem, and the crysta…
• 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…
• Snowflake Obsidian5-6 Mohs · volcanic glass · root, crownObsidian caught in the act of devitrifying, the white flowers are cristobalite crystals nucleating in glass that is slowly, over geological…
• 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…
• 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…
• Synthetic Opal4.5-6.5 Mohs · man-made · crown, heartReal opal chemistry assembled by people, silica microspheres stacked into the same diffraction lattice nature builds, then consolidated, of…
• Tourmalinated Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · root, crownQuartz shot through with black schorl needles, so the two most common protective stones in the trade end up in the same piece. Collectors l…
• 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…

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