An Introduction to Crystal Chemistry

‘We also have an aura, made up of energy layers, vibrating at different frequencies. With healing crystals, chakra stones … you can cleanse your own energy field.’ This is the sort of thing you will find if you enter the word ‘crystals’ into Google. Unfortunately this type of pseudoscientific new-age gobbledygook about crystals has become all too pervasive. I recently bought a lovely large crystal of Iceland spar (calcite) for my collection from a shop. The shop assistant advised me to keep it near me when I go to bed, as this would bring harmony and a good night’s sleep. Apparently it clears away ‘negative energies’. I tried it. It didn’t. I often have to tell people that crystals are among the ‘deadest’ objects in the universe—no auras, no energy fields, no chakras. They don’t always like to be told such things.

But this does illustrate a fascination with crystals that goes back a long way into the ancient past. We know that Peking man collected rock crystal quartz, probably to make tools, or possibly for a primitive animistic belief. Australian aborigines also used rock crystal and amethyst as rain stones in rain-making rites, and they also attributed malevolent powers to crystals. The earliest recorded observation of six-sided snow crystals was in China in 135 BC, where they were compared with the pentagonal symmetry of flowers by the author Han Ying in his book Disconnection