Meaning & symbolism
Unakite is not a mineral but a rock, an epidotized granite. Hot mineral-rich fluid moved through an ordinary coarse-grained granite and replaced its plagioclase feldspar with green epidote, while the pink potassium feldspar resisted and survived unchanged. Every green patch is therefore a pseudomorph standing where a plagioclase grain used to be, which is why the two colours sit in discrete blotches rather than swirling together. Quartz fills the grey and glassy spaces between. Named for the Unaka Range in the Blue Ridge Mountains on the North Carolina and Tennessee border, where it was first described in the 1870s. Pronounced YOO-nuh-kite.
Healing properties
Mineralogy
- Rock, not a mineral: epidotized granite
- Epidote, potassium feldspar and quartz
- Mohs 6-7 (an average across three minerals)
- Specific gravity 2.8 to 3.2
- Opaque, coarse-grained, visible grains
Energy
- Chakras: heart, secondarily third eye
- Zodiac: Scorpio, with a defensible Taurus reading
- Element: Earth
- Numerical vibration: 9
- Affirmation: I am allowed to heal at the pace healing actually takes
Sources
- Lake Superior and Great Lakes glacial drift (most tumbled material)
- Unaka Range, North Carolina and Tennessee
- Virginia
- South Africa, Brazil, China, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe
How to use it
Wear it as a bracelet rather than a ring, since hands hit things and wrists mostly do not. Convention puts a receiving stone on the non-dominant wrist. Hold a tumbled piece while you sit with something difficult, or place it over the heart during meditation. Prefer larger rounded beads to chip strands, which expose the most edges.
Cleansing & care
One of the genuinely low-maintenance stones. None of its three components is water-soluble and neither colouring mechanism fades, so a rinse under cool running water is fine and a sunny shelf will not pale it. Avoid salt water, which works into grain boundaries, and avoid ultrasonic cleaners. It does not scratch easily but it does chip: store it away from quartz and harder stones, and take it off for the gym, gardening and washing up.
Questions & answers
No. Jasper is microcrystalline quartz whose grains are far too small to see, so it reads as one continuous colour. Unakite is a coarse-grained granite. If you can pick out individual grains with your naked eye, it is not a jasper.
