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Deaccessed 97 Quartz Magaliesberg Mts, Pretoria, Gauteng Province, South Africa small-cabinet 4.5 x 5.3 x 3.2 cm Pat's description: When I was a little girl, I always used to dream about a fairy castle in the sky. When I received this shipment of spirit quartz from South Africa, it was as if my dream had come true! I picked out the one that looked most like the castle in my childhood dream (it's sitting right here next to me) and I'm auctioning the rest. Spirit quartz consists of core quartz crystals growing either singly or in clusters, all covered with a fine coat of sparkling smaller crystals that give the spires the appearance of cactus, hence the sometimes heard name, cactus quartz. But the African miners who originally discovered this variety of quartz gave it its proper name, spirit quartz, because they believed that the beautiful formations contained the spirits of their ancestors. When the formation arises as a series of turrets from the matrix rock, it is called castle quartz, or fairy garden quartz. It's hard to describe quite how lovely these little wonders of nature are, but I'll give it a try and let the picture do the rest. This castle has two turrets, both completely covered with hundreds of sparkling crystals. The crystals are colorless except for a slight red tinge of hematite. The left crystal is twinned and has a very slight ding on the top at the back. ----- Photos courtesy of / ©2004 Patricia B. Smith
label Mineral Occurances
label created: 2004-10-02 22:01:20; modified: 2012-10-22 22:32:39 |
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