Quartz crystals can be effective tools in clearing energetic blockages and supporting emotional and spiritual healing, but their configuration has an influence over their metaphysical properties.
Clear Quartz is widely considered an exceptional healer, providing clarity and protection while simultaneously increasing intuition, communication and manifestation processes.
What is quartz?
Quartz is one of the world’s most abundant minerals. It can be found in a wide variety of rock types, most often granite but also sedimentary and metamorphic rock. Quartz has exceptional electrical properties and durability; therefore it is often used in glassmaking processes.
Pure quartz is colorless, but impurities in nature create the vibrant colors found in amethyst, citrine, rose quartz and many other gems. Quartz is unique among natural crystals for having such a variety of hues; synthetic varieties have also been manufactured for use in communications devices and electronic sensors.
Quartz displays six clear cleavage planes and breaks with an almost conchoidal fracture when in crystalline form, making it one of the hardest minerals available. Quartz can resist acids, corrosion, high temperatures, impact and wear and is used extensively in glass manufacturing processes; naturally occurring quartz is found almost worldwide with large reserves being mined in Brazil, United States (Herkimer ‘diamond’), Russia and China.
Quartz crystals are sandstone
Quartz crystals are an integral component of sandstone, and due to their resistance to heat and chemicals they’re often used as the material for making glass and bulletproof windows.
Quartz’ crystalline structure consists of silicon and oxygen atoms arranged in hexagonal prisms. This gives quartz its hardness and clarity, as well as giving rise to its hardness and lack of cleavage. Although quartz may resemble other translucent minerals like calcite, its hardness sets it apart easily from these translucent crystalline minerals.
Drusy crystals of various hues ranging from clear to bluish with bands of gray-brown and sometimes agate rinds can be found in vugs in Prairie du Chien Group dolostones near the township line east of Sheboygan and in a quarry 4 miles northwest of Waverly (WGNHS field notes). Chalcedony geodes measuring up to 12 cm across and featuring chatoyancy have also been reported from quarries west of Cream NW Sec 23 as well as one near Maiden Rock NW Sec 14 (Cordua 1989b).
Quartz crystals are agate
Agate is the banded form of chalcedony, a cryptocrystalline variety of quartz with a dull to waxy luster and conchoidal fracture. A dense stone, it may appear clear or colored depending on whether impurities and foreign materials have altered its chemical makeup, creating bands or veins in its surface.
Agate formation begins when silica-rich water seeps into and dries out in rocks, eventually depositing on walls within cavities to form layers that eventually grow into its familiar round form.
Some forms of agate feature striking concentric bands of color while others feature more subdued variations; Crazy Lace Agate is notable for having delicate lacy markings resembling those seen on fern leaves; dendritic and moss agate don’t show any distinctive banding patterns at all.
Like jasper, agate is a microcrystalline variety of quartz that can either be transparent or opaque in appearance depending on how much impurities or foreign material is present to turn it opaque. However, unlike its jasper counterpart, agate lacks sufficient impurities that would render it opaque.
Quartz crystals are feldspar
Feldspar shares many similarities with quartz in terms of chemical makeup; it contains silicon dioxide (SiO2). However, their chemical arrangement differs significantly. Feldspar minerals are framework silicates which vary in transparency or opaqueness depending on their silicon atom configurations; geologists can differentiate plagioclase and alkali feldspars from each other by using thin sections under microscope and looking for reflection, rotation, and inversion twins within crystals as well as density to differentiate albite from bytownite and anorthite based on density analysis alone.
Ancient cultures attributed these crystals with magical properties, and modern-day healers continue to utilize them today. Some people believe that quartz crystals vibrate at a frequency which balances body and mind to help heal ailments while others believe they emit positive energy that helps clear negative energies from the environment. Quartz crystals are widely used in electronic equipment manufacturing such as radios, TVs, clocks and watches as well as being embedded into them for purposes such as clocks and watches.