Crystals for Capricorn

The best crystals for Capricorn are Amethyst, Ammonite and Apache Tears, the first of 38 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 Capricorn chart.

• 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…
• 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…
• 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 …
• 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 …
• Black Kyanite4.5-7 Mohs · silicate · root, throatIron-darkened kyanite from Brazil, growing in splayed fans that the trade decided look like a witch's besom and priced accordingly. It beha…
• Black Obsidian5-6 Mohs · volcanic glass · rootLava that cooled too fast to organise itself into crystals, a natural glass, and the sharpest edge available to any pre-metal culture. Meso…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• Galena2.5-2.75 Mohs · sulfide · rootLead sulfide in perfect silver cubes, the principal ore of lead, the source of Roman plumbing, Egyptian kohl and a great deal of historical…
• 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…
• Jet2.5-4 Mohs · organic · rootFossilised driftwood from Jurassic monkey-puzzle trees, compressed in the shales below Whitby, and the definitive material of Victorian mou…
• Lapis Lazuli5-6 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · third-eye, throatA rock rather than a mineral, and one that has been mined at Sar-e-Sang in Badakhshan for over six thousand years, the same valley supplied…
• 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…
• Magnetite5-6 Mohs · oxide · rootThe mineral that taught humanity magnetism exists, lodestones are naturally magnetised magnetite, and they are how the compass was discover…
• 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…
• Malachite3.5-4 Mohs · carbonate · heart, solar-plexusCopper carbonate in concentric green bands, ground into eyeshadow by the Egyptians and into pigment by everyone since. The Russian tsars pa…
• 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…
• Nuummite5.5-6 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · root, third-eyeAn amphibole rock from Nuuk, Greenland, first collected in 1810 and roughly three billion years old, among the oldest material anyone sells…
• 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…
• Petrified Wood6.5-7 Mohs · organic · rootWood in which every cell wall was templated and then replaced by silica, molecule by molecule, so the structure survives while none of the …
• 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…
• 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…
• Shungite3.5-4 Mohs · organic · rootA roughly two-billion-year-old carbon rock from the Lake Onega region of Karelia, containing genuine fullerenes, the only significant natur…
• 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…
• 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…
• Tanzanite6-7 Mohs · silicate · third-eye, crown, throatFound in 1967 in a strip of ground about seven kilometres long in the Merelani Hills of Tanzania, and nowhere else on earth. Tiffany rename…
• Tiger's Eye6.5-7 Mohs · quartz · solar-plexus, rootBlue asbestos fibres replaced molecule by molecule with silica, keeping the fibrous alignment and gaining a hard glassy body, the sheen is …
• 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…

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