Crystals for Libra

The best crystals for Libra are Amazonite, Ametrine and Black Tourmaline, the first of 33 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 Libra 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 …
• Ametrine7 Mohs · quartz · solar-plexus, third-eye, crownA single quartz crystal that grew through a temperature gradient, ending up amethyst at one end and citrine at the other, with a boundary y…
• 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…
• Bloodstone6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · root, heartDark green chalcedony spattered with hematite, and one of the very few stones whose Christian folklore is fully explicit, the red was said …
• Blue Apatite5 Mohs · phosphate · throat, third-eyeThe mineral your teeth and bones are made of, and the Mohs scale's definition of hardness 5. Its name comes from the Greek for 'to deceive'…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• Chrysoprase6-7 Mohs · chalcedony · heartThe only chalcedony coloured green by nickel rather than by iron or chromium, which is why the tone is unmistakably apple rather than fores…
• Citrine (Natural)7 Mohs · quartz · solar-plexus, sacralActual citrine is a quiet, weak-tea yellow and it is genuinely uncommon, most of what the trade calls citrine has been in an oven. The natu…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• Peridot6.5-7 Mohs · silicate · heart, solar-plexusOlivine from the earth's mantle, brought up in basalt, and occasionally arriving from space inside pallasite meteorites. The Egyptians mine…
• Prasiolite7 Mohs · quartz · heartAmethyst that went into the furnace and came out green instead of orange, a quirk of which iron sites survive the heat. It is marketed as '…
• 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…
• 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 …
• 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. …
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…

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