Elfnoodles

I’ve had a renewed interest in stones and crystals lately – not that I ever stopped liking them, but I hadn’t done a lot of reading about them in a while.

Today’s revelation: more of them are man-made or altered than most merchants let on. I was aware that some were. For example, aqua aura is quartz treated with gold vapor, which fuses to it in a thin layer and results in the blue color. Some mineralogists deem this a scam, although every time I have seen it for sale, the seller was clear on what it was. It’s not misrepresented as having been taken out of the ground that way. I also have a nice little polished piece of “oro verde,” which is quartz that has been irradiated to give it a pale greenish color. The process also has the effect of highlighting any phantoms or interesting textures in the crystal. When I asked what it was in the shop, I was told precisely that – that it was irradiated quartz.

What most of us don’t know is that 99% of the citrine on the market is amethyst that has been heat-treated to change the color. This particular alteration is so pervasive that it is universally accepted and I think most people, even many sellers who dabble in crystals, honestly have no idea. We think this stuff is citrine, since it is all we have ever seen. Having spent the morning looking at a bunch of pictures of natural citrine (carefully…) I’ve gotten the hang of spotting the difference and can say that I have never handled a piece of natural citrine in my life. Real citrine is a very pale, solid yellow. Here is a site with representative photos of both types, although most of the natural citrine I have seen in other pictures is somewhere between the very bright and very pale specimens they show. Here is an example of a merchant who most certainly knows better doggedly pretending that the cooked citrine is “natural.”

From a metaphysical standpoint, most writers seem to believe that the baked (or “common”) citrine is not worthless, it’s just that it’s not quite the same as real citrine.

To return to the oro verde quartz, here’s one of the dozens and dozens of sites that don’t mention it as being manmade. The other thing that is representative about this site is that the vast majority of oro verde seems to be sold as overpriced cut stones and in expensive jewelry. Hilarious. Truly, the point I bought at The Crystal Fox as a sort of “cool-looking irradiated quartz” must be worth a fortune.

I’ve also noticed that it is frequently called… wait for it… “oro verde citrine.”