Crystals
Peridot is gem-quality olivine, Mohs 6.5 to 7, used for lightness, release, fresh start. The mineralogy, whether it is safe in water and sunlight, what gets substituted for it, and what a stone can honestly do.
Start with the mineralogy, because most of the bad advice about this stone follows from not knowing it. Peridot is gem-quality olivine. On colour: Iron, and unusually it is the only common gem whose colour comes from the stone's own chemistry rather than from an impurity, which is why peridot is always green and never any other colour.
Where it comes from: San Carlos in Arizona, Pakistan, Myanmar and the island of Zabargad in the Red Sea, which supplied Egypt for three thousand years. Peridot has also been found in meteorites and in material returned from the Moon.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Mineral species | Gem-quality olivine |
| Chemical formula | (Mg,Fe)2SiO4 |
| Mohs hardness | 6.5 to 7 |
| Crystal system | Orthorhombic |
| Chakra | Heart |
| Usually linked to | Leo and Virgo, and to the Sun |
Hardness matters more than it sounds. The Mohs scale runs from talc at 1 to diamond at 10, and anything below about 5.5 can be scratched by ordinary window glass or by the quartz dust in everyday grit. At 6.5 to 7, peridot is hard enough to handle daily wear without much trouble, though it will still scratch a softer stone it is stored against.
Used for shedding something: resentment, a habit, a period you are ready to be out of. It is August's birthstone, and it is one of very few gems that exists in only one colour.
In the shorthand most shops and books use, it is a Heart stone, and the three words attached to it most often are lightness, release, fresh start.
This is the section that matters, and the one most pages get wrong. Cleansing advice is handed around as though every stone were the same mineral, and it is not. Here is what peridot will actually survive.
| Method | Safe? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Water | Yes | Safe in water. Quartz family stones are hard, non-porous and chemically stable, so a rinse does no harm. |
| Direct sunlight | Yes | Direct sunlight does no damage. |
| Salt or salt water | No | No salt, dry or dissolved. It is abrasive and it attacks softer and porous stones. |
| Moonlight | Yes | Harmless to every stone on this list, which is most of why it is the method that suits everything. |
| Smoke, sound or breath | Yes | Nothing physical touches the stone, so nothing can be damaged by it. |
Green glass and synthetic spinel are both passed off as peridot. Real peridot is strongly doubly refractive: look through a flat facet at a straight edge and you will see it doubled.
Two general rules that hold across the whole shop. If the price is far below everything else on the shelf of that size, something has been substituted or treated. And a stone sold with no locality at all is usually one the seller cannot trace, which in this trade often means tumbled, dyed and bagged somewhere a long way from where it came out of the ground.
Peridot is usually linked to Leo and Virgo, and to the Sun. Worth being straight about this: crystal and zodiac pairings are modern, they are not consistent between sources, and two reputable books will give you two different signs for the same stone. They are a useful organising idea rather than a tradition with a single lineage behind it.
If you want the part of this that does have a fixed method behind it, the Sun in Leo sets out what that sign actually describes, and it is calculated from a date rather than assigned by a writer.
Every piece of peridot in the shop is the same stone with the same associations, which is both the appeal and the limit of it. A birth chart is the opposite: it is calculated from your date, time and place and it describes one person. If you do not know your birth time, this covers how to find it.
Yes. At Mohs 6.5 to 7 it is hard and chemically stable, so water does no harm.
No. Sunlight does not damage it.
Lightness, release, fresh start. It is associated with the Heart chakra.
Mohs 6.5 to 7. That is hard enough for daily handling.
Green glass and synthetic spinel are both passed off as peridot.
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