Crystal Guides, With the Geology Left In
Look up any of our 84 stones by name, or pick a colour below and see where it takes you.
Pick a Stone by Colour
Open the crystal finder →
Quick Crystal Facts on Video
More on YouTube →Short videos on the science behind the sparkle. Tap one to watch it on YouTube.
Did You Know?
- Got a quartz point and a window? Quartz is 7 on the Mohs scale, glass is about 5.5, so the real thing scratches glass and a fake mostly won't.
- Ruby and sapphire are the same mineral, believe it or not. Both are corundum, and a pinch of chromium is all that turns it red.
- Obsidian's got no crystals in it whatsoever. It's lava that cooled so fast they never had the chance to grow, which makes it glass.
- The flash on labradorite isn't a coating or a trick of the polish. Light's bouncing around between super thin layers inside the stone.
- Moldavite's about 15 million years old. It's from a meteorite strike in what's now southern Germany, and the melted bits landed as far off as Czechia.
- Selenite's a type of gypsum and it's soft, like really soft. It's a 2 on the Mohs scale, so your fingernail can leave a mark on it.
- Opal isn't technically a crystal. Those colours come from light catching on loads of tiny silica balls stacked up inside it.
- Pyrite might be fool's gold, but it's the tougher of the two. Gold is around 2.5 to 3 on the Mohs scale, pyrite is 6 to 6.5.
- Amethyst's purple comes from a bit of iron plus natural radiation. Leave it on a sunny windowsill for a long time and it can go pale.
- Friedrich Mohs came up with his scratch scale back in 1812, and geologists still carry little scratch kits based on it.
Crystals for Your Star Sign
Each star sign has a few stones people tie to it, mostly through colour, element and old birthstone lists. Pick yours.
All twelve signs and their stones →
Read the full zodiac crystals guide
Crystals for Each Chakra
Crystals get matched to the seven chakras mostly by colour, red at the root up to violet at the crown.
Hi, I’m Abigail
I have an MSc in Earth Sciences, and I write Earthly Soul to put crystal folklore next to what the rocks actually are. You'll get both here: what a stone is said to mean, and what it's made of.
More about me →
