Crystals for clarity

You already know the answer. You just need to say it out loud.

This book lists 40 crystals tied to clarity, from Amethyst to Zircon. For when you already know and won't admit it. They run A to Z, not best to worst, because nobody measures that. Every entry says what the mineral really is, how to tell a real one from a dyed or baked copy, and what each of the twelve signs is told about it.

• Amethyst7 Mohs · quartz · third-eye, crownAmethyst started out as ordinary quartz. A trace of iron got caught in it, and the faint natural radiation of the rock around it worked…
• Ametrine7 Mohs · quartz · solar-plexus, third-eye, crownIt is one crystal wearing two colours. Purple at one end, gold at the other, grown that way underground. The tell is the seam. Natural…
• Aquamarine7.5-8 Mohs · silicate · throat, heartNearly every blue aquamarine in a shop window has been in an oven, at around 400 degrees, to burn the green out. It is permanent. No…
• Astrophyllite3-4 Mohs · silicate · crown, third-eye, solar-plexusAstrophyllite grows in a rare kind of igneous rock, in pockets where leftover elements like titanium end up. It fans out from a centre…
• Azurite3.5-4 Mohs · carbonate · third-eye, throatAzurite forms at the top of a copper deposit, where water and air have been rotting the ore for a very long time. It is the most…
• Bismuth2-2.5 Mohs · man-made · crown, third-eyeA person made this one. Bismuth metal gets melted at around 271 degrees, cooled slowly so it grows in stepped squares, then the liquid…
• Blue Apatite5 Mohs · phosphate · throat, third-eyeBlue apatite is the mineral your teeth are made of. Your bones too. One version grows in cooling rock, the other grows in you. The name…
• BBlue Aventurine6.5 to 7 Mohs · quartzite · throat, third-eyeBlue aventurine is a rock, not a crystal. That is the right place to start, because almost everything written about it starts somewhere…
• Blue Goldstone5-6 Mohs · man-made · third-eye, crownItalian glassmakers built this on purpose. Cobalt glass, melted with copper, cooled slow in a sealed pot so the copper had time to grow…
• Blue Kyanite4.5-7 Mohs · silicate · throat, third-eyeKyanite needs burial to exist. Clay rich rock gets pushed down and squeezed until the aluminium in it grows into blue blades. It came…
• Citrine (Natural)7 Mohs · quartz · solar-plexus, sacralThis pale thing is the real one. Natural citrine is a weak-tea yellow, quartz that took its colour from a trace of iron and the slow…
• Clear Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · crown, third-eyeHot silica water got into a crack underground and grew this, layer on layer, until the crack ran out of room. It is the most common…
• Crazy Lace Agate6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · solar-plexus, sacralHold it up and follow one band with a fingernail. It doubles back, folds over itself and starts again. That is because the rock cracked…
• DDiamond10 Mohs · native element · crownA diamond is carbon that got buried. Around a hundred and fifty kilometres down, hot enough to melt most rock and squeezed harder than…
• Emerald7.5-8 Mohs · silicate · heartNearly every emerald you will ever see has oil pressed into its cracks. Cedarwood oil usually, worked into the fissures until they stop…
• Fluorite4 Mohs · halide · third-eye, throat, heartFluorite survives almost nothing. A steel knife cuts it. One knock splits it clean along a flat plane, and long sun pulls the purple…
• GGolden Healer Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · solar-plexus, crownQuartz grows out of hot silica-rich water working through cracks in rock. Where that water is carrying iron as well, the iron comes out…
• Herkimer Diamond7 Mohs · quartz · third-eye, crownHold one up to a window. The faces throw the light straight back, and nobody cut them. They grew that way. Water full of silica crept…
• Iolite7-7.5 Mohs · silicate · third-eye, throatOld seabed mud got buried under a mountain and cooked until it came out as a different mineral. Turn it under one lamp. Violet blue from…
• Lapis Lazuli5-6 Mohs · rock (aggregate) · third-eye, throatLimestone got cooked where hot magma pushed into it, and parts of it came out deep blue. One valley in Afghanistan has been mined for it…
• Magnesite3.5-4.5 Mohs · carbonate · crown, heartSomebody dyed this. Most of the cheap turquoise in a mall case is plain white magnesite that was soaked in blue until it took. Undyed it…
• Milky Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · crownThis is the cheapest thing in the case and it will outlast almost everything beside it. Milky quartz is plain quartz clouded by water…
• MMoissanite9.25 to 9.5 Mohs · carbide · crownIn 1893 a French chemist was sorting through fragments of an iron meteorite that had punched a crater into Arizona, and he found tiny…
• Optical Calcite3 Mohs · carbonate · crown, third-eyeSet a clear piece over a line of writing and the line doubles. That is not a trick. Light splits in two on its way through the stone…
• Orthoceras3-4 Mohs · organic · root, third-eyeThe shape in the slab was alive. A shelled animal, drifting in a warm sea hundreds of millions of years ago. It sank into mud and the…
• Phantom Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · third-eye, crownLook into it and there is a smaller crystal in there, with the same shape and the same points. It grew. Then it stopped, long enough for…
• Picture Jasper6.5-7 Mohs · chalcedony · root, third-eyeThose are not hills. They are layers of volcanic ash and fine mud that settled in still water, one on top of the next. Silica soaked…
• Prasiolite7 Mohs · quartz · heartNearly every green quartz sold as green amethyst was purple amethyst until somebody put it in an oven at around 500 degrees. The iron in…
• Prehnite6-6.5 Mohs · silicate · heart, solar-plexusHold it up to a lamp. The green is cloudy rather than clear, and inside it fine fibres run outward from a centre. It grew in gas bubbles…
• Rutilated Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · solar-plexus, crownHold it up to a window. Those gold threads are titanium. They grew as needles in a hot crack in the rock, and quartz crystallised around…
• SSapphire9 Mohs · corundum · throat, third-eyeSapphire and ruby are the same mineral. Both are corundum, aluminium oxide, and what separates them is a trace of something that should…
• Satin Spar2 Mohs · sulphate · crownThat silky white tower is not selenite. It is satin spar, the fibrous form of gypsum, carved by the container load in Morocco. Same…
• Selenite2 Mohs · sulphate · crown, third-eyeYou were told to rinse your stones. Do not rinse this one. Water dissolves selenite. Salt etches it. A humid bathroom shelf pits the…
• Sodalite5.5-6 Mohs · silicate · throat, third-eyeSodalite formed in magma that ran out of silica. Where quartz would normally grow, this blue grew instead. Then it got sold as lapis…
• Tanzanite6-7 Mohs · silicate · third-eye, crown, throatTanzanite came out of one small patch of hills in northern Tanzania in 1967. There is nowhere else on earth. It does not come out blue…
• Tiger's Eye6.5-7 Mohs · quartz · solar-plexus, rootThis used to be asbestos. Blue crocidolite fibres grew in the rock first, and quartz replaced them one by one. The silk you can see is…
• TTopaz8 Mohs · nesosilicate · solar-plexus, throatTopaz grows in the last hot breath of a cooling granite, in the cavities and gas pockets where fluorine-rich vapour has nowhere left to…
• Tourmalinated Quartz7 Mohs · quartz · root, crownThe black needles grew first. Quartz came later and grew straight around them, sealing them where they stood. Nothing was broken to make…
• WWhite Sapphire9 Mohs · corundum · crown, third-eyeWhite sapphire is corundum with nothing much in it. Aluminium oxide, the same species as ruby and as blue sapphire, but the iron…
• ZZircon6 to 7.5 Mohs · nesosilicate · root, throat, third-eyeStart with the thing the shop counter will not say, because it is the whole reason this stone is treated as cheap. Zircon is not cubic…

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