FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Mare]

HI, I am new to your forum, and learning where to go within it. Excellent topics and very interesting pictures and members. I guess what brought me here is my quest for information on Citrine. And I am sorry if I am in the wrong area, but I am unable to ask a question before just diving right in due to the 10 day rule, so I am just going to go ahead and ask.

I want to learn about citrine, I have been told it is a mineral and also told it is a crystal. I have done some reading and found that it is really not a pretty orange colored rock (as you find in most shops) and I am trying to find the real thing. Can anyone lead me to a reliable source? I find the gems of the earth very interesting and their natural beauty amazing, unfortunetly, I have also found that man has managed to try and imitate this and it is confusing.

Thank you,
Mare
Wisconsin

[Antonio Alcaide]

Welcome, Mare, to the Forum.

There is a great amount of information about many topics spread all over the Forum. You can use the "search" button. Here I give you an example on citrine:

https://www.mineral-forum.com/message-board/viewtopic.php?t=786

Regards

[Peter]

Citrine is a variety name of the mineral quartz (which is fairly pure SiO2 or siliconedioxide). Quartz is an important mineral and may have differet colors due to small impurities of various elemets or particles of other minerals. Various colors have different names.

Natural citrine is a light yellow to a rak yellow color and often occur in larger smoky (dark almost black) quartz. Quartz may be massive as part of a vein or making the entire vein, or well crystallized, i.e. forming a crystal, meaning the grew in open space and developed well formed smooth faces, looking almost as if they had been polished!

Natural citrine crystals are quite rare. Pure yellow occur in 1-10 cm crystals in open caities in quartz veins in the Ural mountains of Russia for example. Some deposits in Brazil and Ukraine contain larger smoky and citrine colores quartz crystals.

What is sold as citrine on the market is most often produced from originally lilac colored quartz (this color variety is named amethyst) by heating specimens in ovens. The reasons beeing it may be easier to sell 100 ton amethyst and 50 ton heated orange amethyst than 150 ton amethyst.
Hope this helps a little!
A good tip is to buy some mineral book! and hopefully most of the contents will be close to reality!

[Mare]

Thank you everyone for the replies.

I guess it is going to be pretty hard to find natural citrine, that which could be appreciated for it's natural energy. If it was so easily available, I am sure everyone would be embracing it.

I am assuming the I would need the natural form of citrine to benefit from the energy within. (and that the heated amethyst would not provide this) This is an interesting science, and I appreciacte those with this knowledge. Thank you for sharing.

Mare

[GneissWare]

I am certain that both the natural citrine and that created by heating amethyst will have exactly the same energy.

[Mike Wood]

Hello Mare,

some years ago I purchased some rather fine citrine crystals, supposedly natural, from the Shaba area of the Democratic Republic of Congo. I just had a look on mindat to refresh my memory - there were some examples shown, and from what I read it looks like the crystals may have been originally amythest but have been subjected to heat (natural) by the proximity of a granite intrusion, intruded presumably after the original amythest crystals were formed.

Regards, Mike