Rose Quartz

Rose quartz is the pink variety of quartz, silicon dioxide, and its colour has an unusual cause: rather than a simple trace element, the pink is now attributed to microscopic fibrous inclusions of a borosilicate mineral related to dumortierite, which is why rose quartz is typically cloudy rather than clear and why intense transparent pink quartz is rare and coloured differently. It commonly occurs in massive form rather than as crystals.

Rose quartz beads appear in the ancient Near East, and the material has been carved for millennia, but a specific documented symbolism for it in antiquity is thin. Its overwhelming modern identity as the love stone, tied to the heart centre and to self-acceptance and relationships, is a product of twentieth-century crystal-healing publishing and rests almost entirely on the gentle pink colour; it should be presented as a modern association, and it carries no medical property.