Crystals for Pisces

The best crystals for Pisces are Amethyst, Ammonite and Angelite, the first of 30 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 Pisces 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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 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 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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. …
• 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…
• Seraphinite2-2.5 Mohs · silicate · heart, crownA compact chlorite from the Korshunovskoye iron skarn in Irkutsk Oblast, marketed since the 1990s under a name taken from the seraphim beca…
• 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…
• 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…
• Sugilite5.5-6.5 Mohs · silicate · third-eye, crownFirst described from Japan in 1944 as a drab yellow-brown mineral, then found in gem-quality purple at the Wessels manganese mine in South …
• 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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