Tiger's eye

Tiger Eye is a microcrystalline, golden brown to golden yellow striped variety of the mineral quartz. It is used exclusively as a gemstone, which processes the smooth cut called a surging shimmer, chatoyancy or " cat's eye effect " shows.

Education and Locations

The tiger eye emerges as the weathering product of the Hawk Eye, a bluish by incorporating parallelfaserigem crocidolite or similarly trained hornblende quartz variety. By pseudomorphs of quartz after crocidolite with additional storage of iron arises tiger eye. The parallel orientation of the crystal fibers also provides for the well-known effect of light chatoyancy. Due to the special education conditions also Falk eye and tiger eye often next to each other and grow together in the same locality.

As a gap filling in quartz rock, with the fibers of the Tiger eye perpendicular to the gap boundary, to tiger eyes found mainly in South Africa and Western Australia, besides also in China, India, Canada, Myanmar, Namibia, Ukraine and the United States (USA).

Use as a gemstone

Tiger eye is usually offered in the form of cabochons in various versions, but also spherical for necklaces or cut free for craft items. Particularly high vaulted cabochons show a wandering band of light, reminiscent of the slit pupil of a cat.

Manipulations and imitations

Blowing the tiger eye receives a strong coppery red color, which can come into play by then quenching in spirit to the Violet. Red tiger eye is not to be found in nature and, therefore, always be burned.

Boiled in strong acid the tiger eye loses its color and turns gray. In this form it is sometimes offered as an imitation of chrysoberyl cat's eye or cat eye quartz. Also, honey-colored tiger eyes sometimes serve as imitations of chrysoberyl.

Esoteric

New Agers use the tiger's eye as a healing stone among other things, headaches, testicular diseases and against sciatica. Scientific evidence for such effects, however, are not available.

As a " planet rock " he is (after Ahlborn 1996) assigned to the Mercury and Mars, and as a " stone of the month " the month of November.

As an amulet stone he shall bring the members of the Zodiac Gemini luck.