Chrysoprase is a form of silica, much like sand or quartz, but it is made distinctive by the deposits of nickel in the stone that give it a distinctive green colour.
The crystals in chrysoprase are so fine that they cannot be seen under a magnifying glass – much finer than the crystals that colour amethyst or rose quartz.
This stone has been popular for thousands of years because of its bright colour.
The name literally means “golden leek” in Greek, because this stone looks so bright that it might have come from nature.
The colour is so distinctive that it is at the core of many of the stories of chrysoprase and its metaphysical meaning.
The Ancient Greeks said that chrysoprase was the sacred stone of Aphrodite, whose sacred colour was green.
Chrysoprase is found all over the world.
There are deposits in Brazil, South Africa, North America, Australia, and central Europe, all of which are very well-visited because of the stone’s beauty.
For hundreds of years, most chrysoprase was mined in Poland, but the mines there were completely depleted during the Middle Ages.
Most modern chrysoprase mining is done in central Tanzania, where chrysoprase mines have been in constant use for over thirty years.
It is not as high in monetary value as some gemstones but it has a powerful and healing energy that can highly benefit any user of the stone.
It is well-known for its promotion of growth, love, and forgiveness – qualities that everyone can benefit from.
Integrating chrysoprase into your life is easy and beneficial for anyone going through times of change or growth, or anyone in general.
Why Would You Use Chrysoprase?
Chrysoprase is an extremely useful stone for improving emotional health. It promotes forgiveness, empathy, self-growth, self-love, and general joie de vivre.
It is tightly linked to the heart chakra, with which it shares its bright green colouration.
Chrysoprase is one of the best stones you can use as a heart chakra stone in order to clear and promote the energy of the heart chakra.
For more information about chakra stones, you can read our article on the subject, but briefly, a stone aligned with a certain chakra can prevent the energy of that chakra from becoming either overactive or underactive.
Many people struggle with the energy of the heart chakra.
It is very difficult to strike a balance in the modern world, where emotional openness and communication are not highly valued, yet, at the same time, grand acts of romance are put on a pedestal.
This leads to many people struggling with feeling resentment and dealing with blockages of energy in their heart chakra.
Chrysoprase can be used to heal the energy of the heart chakra and promote a much stronger flow of energy through it. In turn, this aids a huge variety of common emotional concerns related to love and kindness.
An overactive heart chakra can be overemotional and highly dramatic, while an underactive heart chakra can be cold, bitter, and unfriendly.
Underactive heart chakras are much more common in the modern world, but whichever way you lean in, chrysoprase can help you to relieve those symptoms.
When you heal your heart chakra, you find better emotional balance and will find yourself relating to others on a more healthy, personal level.
In addition, the bright colour of chrysoprase is related to spring, growth, and nature.
This is a very natural and obvious connection, but it shouldn’t be understated – if you are interested in working nature magic or becoming more connected to the natural world, this is a great stone for you!
Ecologists and those concerned about the environment may find that this stone is very useful in helping focus your energy towards conservation projects and encouraging people to join you in your efforts.
And of course, this chrysoprase meaning ties it back into the themes of compassion and nurturing found in the heart chakra, too.
Love and emotional attachment is just as strongly felt for pets, animals and even plants as it is for our fellow human beings.
Chrysoprase promotes forgiveness and kindness, so you can reach out to nature’s joys more effectively.
Likewise, if you are heading to the countryside or down by the river to relax, but find it difficult to switch off an overactive mind, give chrysoprase a try.
It will help to anchor you to the here and now – the sound of the water, the sunlight rippling over it, the wind in the tree leaves, the chirps of the birds.
Letting nature in to work some magic is so important in recovering from the bombardment of our day to day reality!
How Will Chrysoprase Help You?
As discussed above, chrysoprase is one of the strongest stones that you can use to clear the energy of the heart chakra.
The value of this for any modern human cannot be understated!
We are constantly dealing with disruptions to the energy of our chakras, especially the heart chakra, and a stone that soothes and heals that energy will have an enormous impact.
However, this is probably one of the single most useful powers that anyone can master.
Since almost everyone in our modern culture is constantly in the middle of an emotional roller-coaster, balance and calm is a rare and precious skill.
If you can keep your head during a tough time, when everyone around you is losing theirs, then you have an enormous advantage over virtually the entire rest of the world!
People will be impressed by your clear-eyed approach to trouble and your ability to think logically while not neglecting the emotional aspects of a problem.
This will quickly lead people to want to make emotional connections with you.
People will be drawn towards you, and want to discuss their issues with you, because you can offer both a sympathetic ear, and sage advice.
If that sounds like it might get a little tiring, don’t worry – the power of chrysoprase will help you not get upset by other people’s problems, so you can actually work with them towards dealing with them.
When people feel like they can be open with you, and when they realize that your calm attitude rubs off effectively on them, then they will very quickly become fond of you and want to do things to help you in return.
Chrysoprase stone also has a protective quality to it that has made it quite popular to sensitive healing folks, as well as those who have the qualities of empathy that are difficult to switch off or tune out of.
Being the one everyone turns to may, as we have suggested, sound daunting, but chrysoprase will keep you safe!
It creates a barrier between yourself and others that ensures that, as suggested, you are more helping other people awaken their inner strength than just having them siphon off your own.
And of course, it’s worth reinforcing the fact that chrysoprase is a source of strength for you too!
From this source, abundance will come rolling into your life.
People will want to offer you new opportunities in work, new adventures in your personal life, and make positive social connections with you.
How to Use Chrysoprase for the Best Results?
Wearing chrysoprase as jewellery is both easy and beneficial, and any sort of jewellery works perfectly well for this, from a pendant to a brooch to earrings or bangles.
If you feel that the people around you would benefit from this stone’s calming and rejuvenating energy, wearing it somewhere that is quite visible, such as on a brooch or a pendant that rests outside your shirt, is highly positive.
People will be drawn to it and subconsciously be affected by its positive vibrations – and its bright colour might just put a smile on people’s face on a totally aesthetic level!
If you feel that you need its strength on a more personal, private level, such as if you are going through a personal emotional struggle that you feel you cannot share with those around you, then wear it next to the skin.
The stone should actually touch your skin, so if you have a piece that’s set in a metal backing, you might want to turn it around so that the stone is actually covered, but rests against your skin.
In an even simpler way to use chrysoprase, a raw piece in your pocket, your desk, or your bedside table can serve as a general improver of positive energy in a space.
If you chrysoprase it in your pocket, the air around you will suddenly become seemingly brighter and better, wherever you go.
Similarly, keeping it in a meaningful room like your bedroom or office will inject some brightness into that room and keep the attitude in it positive during even bad times.
The colour of chrysoprase can fade if it is exposed to harsh chemicals and a lot of sunlight.
This is not likely to be a problem unless you wear a chrysoprase ring while cleaning or keep it in a place that gets tons of light, but if you do end up with some fading on your chrysoprase, you can place it in a dark, moist place in order to re-oxidize the nickel shards and bolster the colour.
The Best Combination to Use with Chrysoprase
Since it is so tightly linked to the heart chakra, chrysoprase can be combined with other chakra energy stones to highly positive effect, depending on exactly what facets of your emotional and love life you want to improve.
Any combination of chakra stones can be beneficial, but, of course, there are some that more people feel the need to integrate into their lives than others!
Since the heart chakra is so easily blocked by our culture, we can address its power in combination with all the other chakras, but the sacral and throat chakras are the ones that most commonly go along with blockages in the heart chakra.
If you want to improve your intimate relationship with your partner then combine chrysoprase with a stone that rules the sacral chakra, the chakra of sexual and primal emotional energy.
If you feel that you are struggling to communicate your needs in a relationship, you can pair it with a stone that is associated with the throat chakra, which rules communication.
I cannot neglect to mention what a beautiful, as well as powerful, combination chrysoprase and turquoise is!
These stones pull the negativity out of your life, and the chrysoprase heals the psychic holes that the negativity leaves behind.
You can also combine it with other stones that represent the seasons in order to promote positive feelings about the natural world and the progression of time.
Many people find that some times of year leave them feeling unhappy, either because of natural processes or because of negative connotations with those times of year that we’ve built up over the years.
Combine chrysoprase (representing spring) with stones that represent summer, fall, and winter, such as ruby, topaz, and shungite (for example).
Having a set of four stones representing the four seasons will help you make the transition into each new section of the year (or your life) smooth and painless.
How Much is Chrysoprase Worth?
Just like other gemstones, Chrysoprase worth depends on many factors, like color, diaphaneity, and clarity.
Color is the most important factor. The more deeply saturated the color of a Chrysoprase is, the more value it has.
The level of translucency of the Chrysoprase stone also affects its value. The most desirable is a stone that has a good balance between translucency and color.
Clarity also greatly affects a Chrysoprase’s worth.
The gemstone market is saturated with low-grade examples of Chrysoprase. Because of the high demand for premium-grade pieces, they are now rarer than ever.
However, this does not mean that Chrysoprase stones with inclusions are no good and undesirable.
There are actually a lot of jewelry designers who prefer working with Chrysoprase stones that have unique inclusions because they naturally give that unique, artistic, and interesting look that’s highly prized by serious collectors.
The price varies for this stone. You can buy a Chrysoprase that’s less than one carat for about $5 to $15. There are also 3-carat Chrysoprase stones that you can buy for as much as $150.
If you’re hoping to purchase or sell your Chrysoprase gemstones or jewelry pieces, make sure that you work with a knowledgeable and experienced appraiser.
There are many fake stones and fake appraisers out there, so this is very important. A legit gemstone appraiser will tell you what your Chrysoprase gemstone is worth with objectivity.
If you have just recently purchased one, then you know its worth.
But if your Chrysoprase stones have been inherited, or were given to you as a gift, or were purchased years ago at an auction or an estate sale, you will definitely wonder how much it’s worth now.
A gemstone’s worth changes over the years because the gemstone market value also fluctuates.
What this means is that you need to get your Chrysoprase gemstone, or any other valuable gemstone that you own, appraised every few years to make sure that they are insured at the accurate replacement value.
You can be paying for insurance coverage which you don’t need if the value is too high. If it’s too low, you will not be getting sufficient coverage in the case of loss.
While there are many ways that you can get your Chrysoprase appraised, make sure that you choose someone who’s a qualified expert.
Chrysoprase is often used in crafting spheres, beads, and cabochons. It’s a favorite in adorning cufflinks, necklaces, rings, earrings, and bracelets.
Some of the most fascinating pieces are set in beautiful combinations of colored stones and precious metals.
Chrysoprase is a good investment because you can easily transform your unwanted or unused Chrysoprase pieces into instant cash.
Exquisite examples of large and fine quality Chrysoprase stones have recently sold for a few thousands of dollars.
If you own a few nice pieces of Chrysoprase gemstones or jewelry, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the offers from potential buyers.
There will always be gemstone enthusiasts and Chrysoprase fans who will be interested in buying them.
Because this stone is quite rare and popular, the market for Chrysoprase will remain strong!
My Final Thoughts on the Power of Chrysoprase
I’m a huge believer in the power of chrysoprase to heal the heart chakra.
I also strongly believe that the heart chakra is one of the sites of power in the body that is in most desperate need of healing and attention in the modern world.
It is a source of power that we frequently neglect and underestimate.
Using chrysoprase to ease the energy of the heart chakra will have immeasurably great positive effects in your personal, professional, and romantic lives.
You might not think that a clearer heart chakra would help you professionally, but it will!
People like a clear-headed problem-solver who can see the emotional sides of an issue without being caught up in them.
That’s something that every professional organization needs!
I highly recommend acquiring a piece of chrysoprase to integrate into your daily life.
Even without all of its metaphysical properties, its beautiful green colour is still scientifically shown to bring joy when it is looked at – so why would you not want that in your life?
Do you think you can benefit from a clearer heart chakra? Which fields of your life do you feel that your heart energy is blocked in?
Please like and share this post – if you’re feeling that your heart chakra is blocked, people around you almost definitely are too!
About the author
Diana Houston
Diana Houston is a respected crystal expert and the author of 'A Beginner's Guide to Healing Crystals: Getting Started With Crystal Healing – A Complete Guide.' Her passion for crystals and their healing properties made her a leading authority on the subject.
Diana's expertise and passion for crystals have inspired countless readers and practitioners, and her book has received rave reviews on Amazon. With her clear and insightful guidance, Diana is a trusted guide for anyone seeking to unlock the transformative power of crystals.
