A crystal is a beautiful, perfect form. It contains harmony, balance, purity, and perfection. Natural quartz crystals are formed at great depths at very high pressures and high temperatures from highly structured aqueous solutions of silicon dioxide. They rest in the ground, and sometimes in voids, where they have washed away from more upper layers due to soil displacement processes. Gold or silver is often found next to quartz crystals. Quartz crystals and their varieties are found all over the world. Crystals are currently being developed in Arkansas, Brazil, Columbia, Sri Lanka, and other countries.
Almost 90% of the Earth's crust is made up of a group of minerals known as silicates, silicon compounds with oxygen, and other elements. The simplest silicate is a compound of silicon with oxygen - a quartz crystal. In chemistry, it is silicon dioxide, which has a hardness of 7 on the Mohs scale. The quartz crystal has a hexagonal structure.
Quartz is the mineral that withstands weather better than others. It is durable, scratches glass, and steel. However, it can crack if dropped. The most common crystal shape is a hexagonal prism. This crystal structure is due to the ordered arrangement of atoms.
The formation of quartz crystals took place about 500 million years ago, before the Earth's crust underwent a shift process, as a result of which the continents that exist today were formed.
Under the upper layer of the Earth's surface, loose sand and sedimentary rocks at high pressure and high temperature have penetrated solid stones. Sand turned into sandstone and sedimentary rocks into shale. The layers of the Earth continued to shift and collide. The stones under pressure took the form of folds and crawled over each other. Giant cracks formed, in which cavities opened. It was in these cavities that the crystal growth process began. Water seeped into these cavities. Silicon (from sand) was present in the solution, and a quartz crystal grew on the sandstone walls. At temperatures from 300 to 500 ° C (the temperature required for the formation of crystals), underground waters that could not escape to the surface turned into a boiling plasma of water and silicon dioxide. Quartz crystals already formed by that time were dissolved under the action of high temperature and pressure, just as lumps of sugar disappear in hot tea or coffee. The crystal cells remained, and these cells have memory. They know who they are and what they need to do. They float in this boiling solution until they find their "beginning" - the crystal matrix or the place where a small, undissolved piece of the crystal has survived. The cells attach to this place and wait, and after a particular time, having gone through the necessary stages of development, a six-sided quartz crystal appears. This growth can take several weeks, depending on temperature and pressure. When the temperature and pressure change, growth stops, and several hundred thousand tiny crystals no larger than a nail can form.
If a large crystal of perfect shape is found in the ground, it is undoubtedly an elderly crystal, because the growth period of crystals takes many thousands of years, and each of them contains foreign inclusions. These inclusions accumulate in crystals because their growth is uneven. Thousands of times in the course of its development, the crystal begins, slows down and stops its growth. And with each new renewal of growth, it captures those particles that have managed to be deposited on its surface and continue to grow.
Today, quartz in the United States is found primarily in the state of Arkansas. There is speculation that quartz crystals must occur near Arizona. This is the centre of the vortex of energy and the gathering place for metaphysicians. In the 1800s, railways were being built in California, and many large and valuable crystals were discovered. Still, unfortunately, the railroad builders often discarded the crystals as their goal was to build railways, not geological explorations. American workers were amazed that the Chinese workers picked up all the quartz crystals and sent them to Chinatown and San Francisco, where Chinese stone carvers were engaged in making balls from gems. Some crystals were even taken to China, where they were always highly valued.
