Tanzanite

Chakra

Third eye, Crown

Element

Water

Planet

Jupiter

Signs

Sagittarius, Scorpio

Tarot

Judgement

Crystal correspondences are traditional; the descriptions are original to this site.

What Tanzanite means

Every piece of tanzanite comes from a strip a few kilometres long in Tanzania's Merelani Hills, where it was found in 1967. Tiffany's jewellers gave the blue-violet zoisite its market name the following year, wary that 'blue zoisite' read too close to another, unhappier phrase.

Emotional properties

Tanzanite joined the December birthstones in 2002, a newcomer on a list American jewellers first drew up in 1912. If you are the new one in a family, a team or a friendship that was settled before you came, wear it to the next gathering. A list that makes room once can make room again.

Spiritual properties

Most tanzanite leaves the mine a muddy bronze-violet, and only heating to five or six hundred degrees Celsius clears the brown away to show the blue beneath. Judgement, its card, pictures a trumpet sounding and the buried rising into clearer light. After a hard year, hold it and name one thing the year cleared, not only what it cost.

Physical properties

Tanzanite turns bluer in daylight and more violet under warm lamps, a shift anyone can watch across a single evening. Wear it home from work and glance at it as the lamps come on, so that the change of colour marks a change of pace. Let that shift be the signal that the working day is over.

Care and cleansing

Tanzanite cleaves along one plane and chips easily, and heat, sudden temperature change or an ultrasonic cleaner can crack it outright, so cleanse it only by hand in lukewarm water, never hot. Dry it gently, let a night beside a clear quartz point charge it, and pad its box with cotton wool so nothing can knock it.

A question to sit with

Have you counted what your hardest year cleared, as well as what it cost?