Rose quartz
Rose quartz is pink quartz, sold today as the stone of love. That reading belongs to modern crystal healing, whose popularity Carl Sagan traced to books of the 1980s; tests of crystal healing have found nothing beyond suggestion.
Meaning
Rose quartz is a variety of quartz named for its pink colour, GIA explains, and it usually grows as a solid mass rather than as separate crystals, so well-formed rose quartz crystals are prized. GIA’s gem encyclopedia calls it the “love stone”, said to balance the emotions and heal anger and disappointment, and it is the stone of the fifth wedding anniversary. Its meanings today come from crystal healing, a belief held by its practitioners.
Origin and history
GIA’s encyclopedia gives rose quartz an ancient past: it says rose quartz beads from about 7000 BC have been found in what was Mesopotamia, and that the Assyrians made rose quartz jewellery around 800–600 BC. GIA does not say where or by whom either find was made.
How rose quartz became the love stone
The religion scholar Joseph Laycock, writing in The Conversation, notes that Carl Sagan traced the modern popularity of crystals to a series of books by Katrina Raphaell in the 1980s; Raphaell founded the Crystal Academy of Advanced Healing Arts in 1986. Laycock gives a current example of the stone’s reading: Colleen McCann, a self-described shaman working with Goop, says rose quartz helps with love, as Bloodstone promotes good health. The model Miranda Kerr has said she filters her skincare products through rose quartz “to give the vibration of self-love”, The Guardian reported in 2019.
What the evidence says
Laycock notes that there is no evidence crystals bring health, prosperity or the other powers enthusiasts claim for them. The psychologist Chris French, of Goldsmiths, University of London, ran the only experiments on what people feel when they hold a crystal: the sensations were the same with real quartz and with glass, and he put them down to suggestion (Clear quartz).
Where rose quartz comes from now
Some of it is mined in Madagascar. Tess McClure, reporting for The Guardian, began at Anjoma Ramartina, a cluster of villages on some of the island’s largest rose quartz deposits, and found that more than 80% of Madagascar’s crystals are dug “artisanally”, by small groups and families working without regulation for very low prices.
Read next
- Next in Crystal and gemstone loreClear quartzClear quartz, or rock crystal, is colourless quartz. Pliny the Elder believed it was a kind of ice, which is how it got its Greek name; John Dee used a crystal ball to call angels, and modern crystal healing credits it with an energy no test has found.
- The same shape in Tarot cardsKing of CupsThe king of cups in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a king with a short sceptre and a great cup, his throne set on the sea. A. E. Waite read it as a responsible man of business, law or the church; art and science.
See also
Amethyst, Citrine, Carnelian, Onyx, Bloodstone, Moonstone.
Sources
- Rose Quartz (GIA Gem Encyclopedia), Gemological Institute of America, About rose quartz; facts
- Rose Quartz History and Lore (GIA), Gemological Institute of America, History and lore
- What’s behind the enduring popularity of crystals?, Joseph P. Laycock (Texas State University), The Conversation, 6 July 2022, Religion News Service, Sections “Contagious magic” and opening
- Dark crystals: the brutal reality behind a booming wellness craze, Tess McClure, 17 September 2019, The Guardian, Paragraphs on Madagascar and Anjoma Ramartina
- Romance in the stones? The power of crystals vs the power of suggestion, Chris French, 21 April 2021, The Skeptic (UK), Account of the 1999 and 2001 studies; author note
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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