Fluorite Gemstone
Fluorite
Fluorite is a mineral with a veritable bouquet of brilliant colors that range from purple, blue, green, yellow, colorless, brown, pink, black to reddish orange. Fluorite deserves the title “The Most Colorful Mineral in the World” by all means.
Due to its glassy luster Fluorite is highly coveted. Fluorite is the natural crystalline form of calcium fluoride and often forms beautiful cube-shaped crystals.
The many colors of fluorite are truly wonderful. The rich purple color is by far fluorite’s most famous and popular color. It easily competes with the beautiful purple of amethyst. Often specimens of fluorite and amethyst with similar shades of purple are used in mineral identification classes to illustrate the folly of using color as the sole means to identify minerals.
The blue, green and yellow varieties of fluorite are also deeply colored, popular and attractive. The colorless variety is not as well received as the colored varieties, but their rarity still makes them sought after by collectors. A brown variety found in Ohio and elsewhere has a distinctive iridescence that improves an otherwise poor color for fluorite. The rarer colors of pink, reddish orange (rose) and even black are usually very attractive and in demand.
The name fluorite comes from the Latin fluere which means to flow. This name comes from the fact that fluorite melts easily. The mineral flourite was originally termed fluorospar and was first discussed in print in a 1530 work Bermannus, sive de re metallica dialogus, by Georgius Agricola, as a mineral noted for its usefulness as a flux. A flux (from the Latin noun fluxus, a wash or current of water) is used in metallurgy to lower the melting point and promote the fusion of metals and minerals in slag, during smelting.
Fluorite is frequently fluorescent and, like its normal light colors, its fluorescent colors are extremely variable. Typically it fluoresces blue but other fluorescent colors include yellow, green, red, white and purple. Some specimens have the added effect of simultaniously having a different color under longwave UV light from its color under shortwave UV light.
Fluorite is said to absorb and neutralize negative vibrations. It makes one more receptive to the vibrations of other stones. Fluorite should be kept in every room of the home. Fluorite is known as the “Genius Stone”.
Healers use it to help with ulcers as well as the respiratory tract by stimulating cell regeneration in these areas. It fortifies bones, improves arthritic or other joint ailments. It can be laid directly on the body.