Crystals for Virgo

The best crystals for Virgo are Amazonite, Amber and Amethyst, 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 Virgo 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…
• 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…
• Carnelian6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · sacral, rootIron-stained chalcedony the colour of a low fire, and one of the oldest worked gemstones on record, Egyptian, Roman and Islamic carvers all…
• 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…
• Chrysocolla2.5-7 Mohs · silicate · throat, heartA hydrated copper silicate with no fixed hardness, ranging from chalk to gem depending on how much silica got into it. The Greeks named 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• Magnetite5-6 Mohs · oxide · rootThe mineral that taught humanity magnetism exists, lodestones are naturally magnetised magnetite, and they are how the compass was discover…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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 …
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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 …
• Unakite6-7 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · heart, third-eyeGranite that got hydrothermally cooked until its feldspar went salmon-pink and epidote grew through it in pistachio patches, named for the …
• 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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