By: D.Rhadika

While quartz is the most plentiful mineral on earth, it also provides endless fascination and beauty for experts and casual observers alike. It is found in nearly every geological environment and is at least a component of almost every rock type. It is also the most varied in terms of varieties, colors and forms. This variety comes about because of the abundance and widespread distribution of quartz. A collector could easily have hundreds of quartz specimens and not have two that are the same due to the many broad categories.
Quartz is usually clear, but in granite it is also cloudy white or grayish in color. It can also be dark (as in smoky quartz). Many gemstones are actually less common colored varieties of quartz. Examples include purple amethyst, yellow citrine, and pink rose quartz. Because quartz is so resistant to weathering due to its chemical composition and atomic bonds, it accumulates as the other minerals in a rock erode. Light colored beach, Aeolian and alluvial sand is composed of mainly quartz grains.
The use of Crystals for crystal healing or gem healing, has been linked to mental, physical, spiritual health, charkas’ energy, whose Healing Power followers of the New Age, Psychic Healing and Atlantis and Crystal Healers have long revered for relieving pain, stress, depression, anxiety in the mind, body and spirit. Spiritual Healers believe this approach to alternative medicine is essential for ensuring health.
For Spiritual Healers, no stone is as essential to their craft as quartz. Embodying all the qualities they seek, it is the quintessential healing crystal. Part of this faith they place in Quartz comes from its scientific properties that make it useful in electronic devices. From this one truth, Crystal Healers make huge leaps in logic. They believe that its crystal formation can align the harmonies within the human body, that they can “program” the crystal easily, that acupuncture needles coated with quartz are more effective, and that it has the ability to receive and send energy.

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By: D.Rhadika

Some of the world’s most spectacular diamonds and other gems are located in the National Gem Collection in the Museum of Natural History in Smithsonian Collection in Washington, D.C. In the collection are diamonds known to almost everyone, such as the Hope Diamond, as well as other large diamonds and other precious gems and jewelry.

In the National Gem Collection are examples of spectacular minerals and crystals, as well gemstones and jewelry. You can see a beautiful purple quartz amethyst crystal, or the mineral azurite, which is a bright blue copper compound mineral. You can also see a huge green beryl crystal. Beryls are the mineral family that include emeralds, aquamarines, heliodor and morganite. It’s almost as exciting to see the raw crystal as it is to see the finished product when it’s been cut and polished.

Some of the finished pieces in the Smithsonian Collection include the crown Napoleon used for the second Empress, Marie Louise. It originally was made of 700 carats in diamonds and 79 emeralds. The emeralds have been replaced with Persian turquoise cabochons.

You can also see the 182-carat Star of Bombay star sapphire that was given to Mary Pickford by Douglas Fairbanks and a brilliantly colored black opal. Black opals are the most valuable of the opal family of gems.

There are also extraordinary examples of quartz crystals, including a 7,000 faceted clear quartz egg! Part of the Smithsonian’s collection includes pieces of jade and turquoise used in other cultures. This includes a collection of Zuni Indian turquoise jewelry and jade lanterns carved from nephrite for the Chinese emperor Chi’en Lung in 1750. A more modern piece is the Dragon Vase, carved from a rare piece of lavender jade.

But of course, the most dazzling items in the collection are the individual gemstones and jewelry that have been owned by royalty through the centuries.

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