The second part of the story about stones and health, healing properties of gems and minerals. Gemstones are able to improve your health.

Amazonite

It triggers people’s intuition, improves the work of hormones and lymph system. It has calming effect, dissolves sadness and helps to forget about grief and eases irritation. Perfect for cramps and it act as an aid while giving childbirth. It is said to be a good filter of energy as it blocks electromagnetic pollution emitted from computers or cell phones.

Amethyst

“The stone of sobriety” as it gives the ability to make appropriate decisions, improves reflex and prevents from getting drunk. It used to be used to give up addictions because it improves person’s strength. Therefore, it helps to curb talking too much. When it comes to diseases, it is good cure for migraines, sleeplessness, liver diseases, injuries and edemas.

Aventurine

Good for vision problems, hair loss and eczemas. It attracts money to us, all you need to do is to keep it in both and imagine fortune coming to you, this will happen soon. It is also said to calm down quarrelsome people. Blue aventurine helps to overcome selfishness, aggression and helps to maintain the inner peace.

Natural amber is widely sough for in the whole world. How is it formed and what affects its color?

Secondary types of amber

The primary types of amber influenced by the air, light or humidity and temperature swings bring about the change of color and inner structure of the amber and result in creating the secondary types. These changes include amber color turning from yellow to red or orange. The changes to the inner structure involve creating various cracks or nodules inside which cause sugar-like structure. Apart from that, the amber gets covered with oxidized layer that makes its surface rough and coarse. The amber nodules which were exposed to oxygen above the level of the water have the biggest degree of oxidization. Ambers presented in various expositions and collections which are constantly exposed to contact with oxygen change color from yellow to red and orange or from white to yellow. The types of secondary ambers include: red amber, firey amber and sugar-like amber.
Ambers are also divided into various categories according to the origin. For example, amber imported from Sambia is mostly translucent and yellow, Baltic amber has plenty of types and colors. These differences are caused by the conditions amber had been exposed to. For 40 million years Sambian amber was located in blue earth which has got perfect preserving properties, that is why it kept its original form. Whereas Polsih amber was continuously changing its location, the differences were caused by long-lasting transportation and different conditions it was placed. Thank to those varieties the Baltic amber is so sought for among artists and cleints from the whole world.

One of the properties of amber is the richness of types, this involves large variety of amber transparency and colors - from the fair yellow through white, bluish, greenish, beige till brown. The richness of colors makes it desired and valued material in jewelry and folk art.

Primary types

Primary and Secondary types are judged on the basis of amber’s inner structure, organic inclusions and the amount of weathering.
When it comes to primary types of amber the level of transparency and the amount of inclusions decides on amber type. As the recent studies on amber structure with the use of electronic microscope revealed the transparency of amber is influenced by the number and placement of air bubbles in the stone. There are several kinds of amber:

Transparent amber: has got very distinct layer structure, there are no air bubbles or the bubbles which exist are large - diameter 0.5 - 2.0 mm. The color of transparent amber varies from yellow to dark yellow.

Translucent amber: its parts or fragments contain large concentrations of air bubbles which cause cloudiness. Its color includes all shades of yellow.

Opaque yellow amber: it has solid structure, sometimes it contains large concentrations of gas which are placed on the edges of amber. Its color varies from all shades of yellow to all shades of beige.

Opaque white amber - the number of air bubbles reaches 900 000 per square millimeter and its inner structure is porous, foamy. Its color is white, sometimes bluish.

The ‘earth” amber belongs to the group of primary ambers, which are not influenced by the inner structure. “Earth” amber is polluted with organic substances and elements of wood, it frequently contains numerous gas bubbles which were created during putrefactive processes, there are also examples of plant and insect inclusions. This type of amber has darker colors: from almost black to greenish.

In the river basin or river Narwia where amber had been extracted since 15th century there are numerous names for amber depending on its color and transparency. A dictionary of Polish amber types contains 80 terms which not only describe its color and transparency but also the amount of weathering, type of surface, where it was found, usefulness and its role it fulfilled.

A. Chętnik describes several versions of amber - totally transparent fair yellow, reddish similar to fire, the honey shade of yellow, ambers with air bubbles that resemble clouds. Translucent ambers such as “cloudy” and “woolly” which have concentrations of air resembling cloud and wool balls.
The group of opaque yellow ambers there are: beige, yellow with beige smudges that look like cabbage leaves, stone which includes several shades of yellow and white, marble-like and mosaic, mixed where one stone is a combination of two other stones. The striped amber contains several types of transparency and colors that create stripes.
The group of opaque white amber contains: chalk-like amber, white with yellow shades and all unique bluish shades. They have plenty of air bubbles which have noticeable foamy structure under electronic microscope.
The group of ambers with plant inclusions, so called ‘earth’ ambers have got parts of plants grey or black, there are also ambers with large air bubbles that are visible on yellow-brown background, “green” with greenish color, “earth mixture” where there are parts of yellow opaque amber with plant inclusions.