You walk into a crystal shop. 
To the SOUTH, there is a DOOR.
To the NORTH, there is a glass SHELF. 

>go north

You approach the SHELF. There is a variety of yellow and orange CRYSTALS on it.

>seduce shelf

...

>attack shelf with sword

We're going to be here for a while. 

>identify crystals

Finally. There is a CITRINE, a TANGERINE QUARTZ, a LEMON QUARTZ, an OURO VERDE QUARTZ, and a GOLDEN HEALER. 

>pick up lemon quartz

Okay, but that one's not the lemon quartz. 

>pick up golden healer???

Also wrong. 

>wtf

Beats me, buddy. I didn't name them.

Before I get into this, there’s a quote on a Mindat thread that I think sums it up pretty well:

The discussion was on lemon quartz versus citrine, with one poster attempting to discern if their specimens were natural, untreated citrine. If it seems kind of confusing… it probably should, to be honest.

I’ve written about citrine in the past, and I think I did an alright job of covering the chemical and physical properties of natural citrine and heat-treated amethyst. This time, I’d like to look at a couple of other semi-related mineral specimens.

What is lemon quartz?

Lemon quartz is a variety of quartz that presents with a light yellow color. It’s unmistakably yellow, too — not the toasty orange of heated amethyst, or the smoky yellow, apple juice hue of a lot of natural citrine.

So, is it dyed? Irradiated? Cooked? What’s the difference between one type of yellow quartz, and another type of yellow quartz? While it does certainly seem like some lemon quartz is just light, very yellow citrine, this isn’t always the case.

A tower of a translucent, honey-colored mineral sits on a wooden table. In the background, there are several houseplants and a rainbowy lens flare. — Pexels assures me that this is citrine, but it honestly looks more like a faceted and polished honey calcite to me. Photo by Alina Vilchenko on Pexels.com

Ouro Verde quartz, which is also called lemon quartz, is a treated gemstone with a greenish yellow color. These are made by heating irradiated, very dark smoky quartz. (There’s a very interesting explanation of the treatment and discovery of this quartz here.)

To sum up: Specimens sold as lemon quartz may be either particularly yellow citrines, or a bright greenish yellow quartz produced by irradiation and heat treatment.

Is your stone a lemon quartz?

With all of the above in mind, how do you know if you have natural lemon quartz?

As I briefly explained in my post about citrine and heat-treated amethyst, the best way to tell is to observe how the stone behaves in light. Hold it up to a polarized light source and turn it from side to side. Does the color seem to shift a bit from one angle to the other? The stone is exhibiting pleochroism, a hallmark of natural citrine. If the stone is very yellow, that citrine can also be considered a lemon quartz. Heated amethyst doesn’t exhibit this phenomenon, and neither would irradiated and heated clear quartz.

It should also be noted that, in their natural forms, crystals don’t often exhibit the kind of bright hues you can get from heating and irradiating stuff. If it’s really bright yellow — bright, sunny, lemon-candy-highlighters-and-pineapple-Fanta yellow — it’s likely had some help getting there.

Okay, so… What about tangerine quartz?

Look, you pick a fruit, and there’s probably someone online selling quartz named after it. It’s like when people were posting about “strawberry makeup” and “latte makeup,” when what they really meant was “pink blush and eyeshadow” or “different shades of tan eyeshadow and also maybe some bronzer.”

Gem folks and mineral folks very often don’t use the same names for things. In the gem trade, having something that sounds new, unique, and exotic helps you stand out and improves the marketability of your stones. Mineral folks are more concerned with identification, so interesting new names are more of a hindrance than a help. Neither is necessarily better, they’re just two ways of approaching vastly different goals.

The trade names that stones are given don’t need to have any real meaning or relation to the stone’s actual composition. They don’t even have to relate to each other. While they’re both citrus-y, natural lemon quartz is yellow citrine and tangerine quartz is quartz with a coating of iron oxide.

You’ve probably seen or heard of aura quartz before. This is quartz that is colored by vapor deposition, in which the stone is coated with a micro thin layer of vaporized metal ions. This thin layer of metal gives it a shiny, brightly colored finish, and the specific metal ions you use determine the final color.

Sometimes, a process similar to this can occur in nature. Tangerine quartz is quartz that has received a blanket of iron oxide particles at some point during its formation, giving it an orange color. Depending on when this happens, the iron oxide may be present as phantoms or inclusions within the stone. Sometimes, it’s just a surface coating.

When nature throws quartz and various metal oxides together, you can get some really funky-looking crystals. I saw a tiny double-terminated quartz the other day that had so much iron oxide in/on it, it looked like red jasper. Wild.

If tangerine quartz is quartz and iron oxide, then what are golden healers?

Quartz and iron oxide. It’s just that sometimes iron oxide is yellow instead of orange or red.

Golden healers are often the color of citrine, but they get their color by the same mechanism that tangerine quartz does. Quartz grows, a coating of metal particles happens to it, et voilà — you get a golden yellow crystal.

Arkansas, in particular, is home to a beautiful variety of naturally occurring quartz sometimes sold as “solaris quartz.” As these stones form, they receive a layer of iron and titanium. It gives them an interesting golden yellow-orange color (and sometimes a bit of iridescence, too).

Any type of quartz can be a golden healer, as long as the right conditions are met. I have a few Herkimer quartz specimens that are totally or partially covered in golden yellow iron oxide. I’ve even seen amethysts with the typical golden healer coating.

As an aside, golden healers are unrelated to wounded healers, though you can have a crystal that’s both a golden and wounded healer. In metaphysical circles, wounded healers are crystals that have either been damaged at some point or have broken and self-healed during their formation. I’m told that these are considered some of the best crystals for crystal healing, as they have experienced what it’s like to be “injured.”

How do their metaphysical properties differ?

This is a bit of a tricky question to answer. The closest I can come is probably, “what do colors mean in your tradition?”

Lemon quartz can be used the same way as citrine, because it is — it’s just on the yellower end of the spectrum. Ouro Verde quartz, as a treated quartz, is still perfectly fine any situation in which you’d choose a yellow or green stone.

Golden healers and tangerine quartz aren’t super different. Golden healers sometimes include titanium ions, and sometimes are just coated with yellow iron oxide. Tangerine quartz is more orange. Use golden healers in situations that call for the color yellow or gold, and tangerine for those that call for the color orange.

In a lot of guides to color magic, yellow is associated with the element of Air, the intellect, friendship, and joy. Orange is associated with the element of Fire, creativity, willpower, and optimism. Green is connected to the element of Earth, prosperity, and fertility. However, all stones are innately connected to the element of Earth because they’re stones. Where the line falls between “yellow” and “green” or “yellow” and “orange” is also highly subjective.

For this reason, I’m hesitant to point to a specific metaphysical use for these minerals. Use the one that seems to volunteer to you. I guarantee, even if you pick the “wrong” kind, nobody is going to explode. Consider it a helpful exercise for your intuition!

The fact is that nature abhors absolutes. Everything — and I do mean everything — exists on a kind of gradient. At what point does a citrine become a lemon quartz, or a golden healer become a tangerine quartz? The only answer I can really give you is, “when it seems like it.” Trade names shouldn’t influence how much you enjoy your stones (or how you use them). It’s fine to be curious about how things get the names they do, but don’t give your power away to what is, a lot of the time, just a marketing gimmick.

Note: While I was not originally compensated for the links in this post when I initially wrote it, I have been compensated for some links that have been added. None of the information or opinions offered here have changed.

From what I have seen, citrine is like wasabi or olive oil — it’s entirely possible for someone to love it without ever having actually used it. That’s not to say that a lot of citrine crystals on the market are fake, as in made of resin or glass, just that not everything labeled as citrine is actually what it says it is.

What is citrine, really?

Citrine crystals are best known as a bright, sunny yellow variety of quartz. Nobody is really sure where the color comes from. Some suggest that it’s caused by iron impurities in the crystal’s structure, while others say it’s more likely caused by aluminum or irradiation. From what I’ve been able to gather, there are probably several varieties of yellow quartz created under different conditions, all of which have been lumped together for the gem trade under the name “citrine.”

Metaphysically, citrine is a stone often used for prosperity, luck, and success spells. Its sunny color lends well to everything relating to the yellow, gold, and orange areas of color magic. As a healing stone, it brings positivity and optimism.

How is citrine faked?

Real citrine is pretty rare. It doesn’t seem so when you walk into a crystal shop, though — chances are, there are tons of clusters of bright orange crystals, usually at a very reasonable price. So, what gives?

While citrine is uncommon, amethyst is not. It’s not at all unusual to take amethyst, subject it to heat treating, and get something that can pass for citrine — in the sense that it’s a crystal, and yellowish.

How can you tell if a citrine is real or heat-treated?

To put it bluntly, if you’re used to seeing heat-treated amethyst, real citrine is… Well, disappointing. Most of it looks closer to a smoky quartz than the vibrant orange hues of the heated stuff. It’s like looking at a glass of orange juice next to a glass of orange soda. Compared to a glowing yellow heated amethyst cluster, the real stuff looks almost anemic.

There are other ways to tell, too. Real citrine:

Does not often have the same growth habit as amethyst. While we’re probably all used to seeing clusters of low-growing amethyst crystals that look almost like grape jelly, citrine usually appears with longer, straight crystals or as individual points, more akin to clear quartz.
Tends to vary between a light yellow, like white Zinfandel, to a smokier, apple juice color. It doesn’t naturally have that bright orange appearance.
Tends to be very clear.
Is pricier than heated crystals.

By contrast, heat-treated crystals:

Tend to have a very milky base, or be cloudy throughout.
Often show up as pieces of geodes, usually with a very white base. Individual points usually have a very triangular, almost toothlike appearance.
Are extremely brightly colored.
Don’t cost much.

There’s one other way to tell a citrine from a baked amethyst — pleochroism. It’s not something the average crystal-buyer can really use to their advantage, but it’s much less subjective than determining how clear a crystal is, or exactly where it falls in the range of natural and artificial colors. Pleochroism describes an optical phenomenon where a mineral appears to change colors when viewed from different angles, particularly when using a polarized light source. Amethyst, citrine, and smoky quartz are all pleochroic. Heating amethyst to alter its color causes it to lose this property, so it is consistently yellow (or orange, or brownish) regardless.

Interestingly, citrines created by heating smoky quartz do continue to exhibit pleochroism. These citrines also become pale when they are heated further, and turn yellow when exposed to radiation.

Does it really matter?

Well, yes and no.

Some argue that heat treating a crystal is just exposing it to the same effects that would happen naturally, so the end product isn’t actually any different from a genuine citrine. Others say that that isn’t the case, and the natural circumstances of a crystal’s formation influence its properties.

If you’re looking for a bright yellow or orange crystal because you want to tap into the magical properties of those colors, it probably doesn’t matter how the crystal was made. If using things in a raw, unadulterated form is important to you, you probably want to shy away from artificially colored crystals. The choice is ultimately up to you.

It matters to me because, under the right conditions, you can tell the difference between a heated amethyst and a citrine. Pleochroism is an empirical way to tell which crystals are baked amethysts, and which are not. I feel like this is an important distinction — magic is transformative. Natural citrine takes in light, and shifts its color based on how its viewed. A crystal that’s supposed to be pleochroic and isn’t wouldn’t be as useful to me as an unaltered stone.

From a practical standpoint, it can also matter because heating a stone affects its durability. High heat can alter the matrix, especially of crystal clusters, making it chalkier and more prone to crumbling.

Color magic is a deep and fully developed magical system of its own. If the color is all that matters to a spell, it doesn’t really matter whether a stone is natural, heated, dyed, or coated. For witches who prefer to work with stones in an unaltered state, the distinction between natural and heat-treated citrine can be an important one.

Tag: citrine

Lemon Quartz vs Citrine vs Tangerine Quartz vs Golden Healers — FIGHT!