Crystals for Aquarius

The best crystals for Aquarius are Amazonite, Amber and Amethyst, the first of 29 stones tradition ties to the sign. Each entry names the mineral it actually is, the physical test that separates a real one from a treated lookalike, and what the stone means for a Aquarius chart.

• 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…
• Amethyst7 Mohs · quartz · third-eye, crownQuartz stained violet by iron and buried radiation, quarried in geodes the size of coffins from Brazilian and Uruguayan basalt. It was a ca…
• 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…
• Aquamarine7.5-8 Mohs · silicate · throat, heartBlue beryl, the same species as emerald with iron instead of chromium, and the traditional talisman of sailors, the Romans considered it Ne…
• 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…
• Azurite3.5-4 Mohs · carbonate · third-eye, throatThe blue copper carbonate, ground for centuries into the pigment that turned green in Renaissance paintings because azurite slowly becomes …
• 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…
• Blue Goldstone5-6 Mohs · man-made · third-eye, crownCobalt glass with copper crystals suspended in it, sold under a truly excellent name and a truly bad one, 'galaxy stone' is honest poetry, …
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• Hematite5.5-6.5 Mohs · oxide · rootIron oxide, the mineral that makes Mars red and rust red, named from the Greek for blood because of the streak it leaves. Polished it looks…
• 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…
• 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 …
• 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…
• 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…
• Moldavite5.5-7 Mohs · volcanic glass · heart, third-eye, crownGlass formed roughly 14.7 million years ago when an asteroid hit what is now Nördlingen in Bavaria, throwing molten terrestrial rock 400 ki…
• 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…
• Pietersite6.5-7 Mohs · quartz · third-eye, solar-plexusTiger's eye that was shattered by tectonics and healed back together at every angle at once, so the light in it looks like weather. Found i…
• 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…
• 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…
• Turquoise5-6 Mohs · phosphate · throat, third-eyeA hydrated copper aluminium phosphate that has been mined in Sinai and Iran for over six thousand years and in the American Southwest for a…

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