History

   Although the reasons for the striking purple hue of amethyst are now known, the original naming of this gemstone stems from Greek mythology. In the legend, the god Dionysus, enraged by an insult, vows to set his tigers upon the first mortal to cross his path. A young girl on her way to the shrine of the goddess Diana comes upon the tigers. To protect her, Diana transforms her into ‘rock crystal’ (quartz). The remorseful Dionysus pours a goblet of wine onto the crystal in offering to the girl. This gives the crystal a purple hue and the name ‘amethyst’ which derives from the Greek word meaning ‘not drunken’.

Amethyst, a variety of quartz, contains excess iron within its structure. When the atoms of iron are aligned, rather than scattered within the crystal, light passing through is seen as a purple colour. The alignment of iron is caused by the emission of low-level radiation from the surrounding rocks.

In Ontario the six-sided purple amethyst crystals are found in thin sheet like deposits in crevices called veins and in vugs – pockets within rock where trapped liquids and gases have created an environment suitable for crystal formation. With the growth of crystals zoning takes place – layers of different colours caused by changing compositions of the fluids that formed amethyst. Thus no two amethyst crystals are alike in colour or composition. One crystal can be uniform in colour while another can vary from a subtle shade of lavender near the crystal base, to an intense, dark purple at its point.