Published June 2017  •  Updated March 2024  •  Read Time: 6 minutes
Dumortierite is a nesosilicate mineral that is rich in aluminum.  It is usually brown or blue, but can occasionally be green, purple or pink!  Sometimes it is used to make high-grade porcelain, but the prettiest specimens are often saved for the collector’s market.  Dumortierite was first discovered in southern France in the late nineteenth century and was named after Eugene Dumortier, a French paleontologist.  Dumortierite is a wonderful stone for the mind and is recommended for students, scholars and life-long learners of all kinds.  Its energy keeps our perspectives clear and it helps us to feel calm and confident in our opinions, which remaining open-minded when new information is presented.

Dumortierite

Dumortierite Meaning

Spiritual Healing Properties

Dumortierite is a powerful aid for psychic perceptions including clairvoyance, clairaudience, and clairsentience.  It can be used to open and enhance intuitive abilities as well as to help us to accept our gifts and feel empowered within them.  Dumortierite brings inspiration, prophetic dreams, and messages from our spirit guides.  It also shows us how us to more clearly verbalize our spiritual ideas and beliefs. This combination of inspiration and verbalization makes it an especially good crystal ally for astrologists, tarot readers, and other spiritually-based interpreters. Dumorteirite is attuned to the Third Eye Chakra and linked to the astrological sign of Leo.  It is connected to the Element of Wind and vibrates to the number 4.

Metaphysical Properties Dumortierite
Chakra Third Eye
Element Wind
Numerology 4
Zodiac Leo

Emotional Healing Properties

Dumortierite is a calm, happy, comforting stone that helps us to trust that everything is unfolding as it should, even if we don’t understand the Divine Plan yet.  It encourage us to relax and it heightens emotional intelligence.  If we feel like fear is driving us into a panic, Dumortierite helps us to calm down, breath deeply, and look at our fear logically.  Dumortierite gives us courage to move through the dark times in our lives and have faith that we will emerge safely on the other side.  It helps us to stand up for ourselves and have emotional stamina.  Dumortierite also encourages us to see “outsiders” as friends we simply haven’t met yet, and to be actively inclusive of others.

Mental Healing Properties

Dumortierite brings mental clarity. It encourages us to keep our perspective open and be willing to look at situations from other points of view.  Dumortierite can help us to recognize compulsive behavior and our own bad habits and to calmly shift them towards a more healthy way of being.  It reduces illogical stubbornness and increases patience and curiosity.  Dumortierite is an excellent stone for enhancing pure mental abilities including linguistic skills, mathematics, abstract thinking, etc. making it an excellent totem for students and scholars.   Dumortierite encourages memory retention, teaches problem-solving skills and invites us to look at problems as interesting challenges rather than difficult obstacles.

Physical Healing Properties

Dumortierite is recommended for healers who want to enhance their skills at diagnosis and treatment.  It encourages holistic and logical thinking, and reminds healers to treat both the symptoms and the root cause.  Its calm and clearheaded energy is helpful for anyone suffering from an addiction who needs to deal with it on both the physical and the psychological levels in order to get free.  Dumortierite is similarly supportive for anyone struggling with impulse control, especially the more extreme forms such as OCD or ADHD.   Dumortierite is a soothing talisman during severe headaches, especially if the headache is accompanied by dizziness, nausea, and/or light sensitivity.

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Dumortierite Mineralogy

Where does Dumortierite come from?

Dumortierite deposits have been found in Austria, Botswana, Brazil, California, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, Norway, Peru, Slovakia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden and the United States (Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada)

Mining and Treatments

Dumortierite is a secondary mineral found in aluminum-ore mines and garnet mines. It is used in manufacturing high-grade porcelain and ceramics, as well as an ornamental stone.

All Dumortierites may be considered fully natural, enhanced only by tumbling, cutting, or polishing.

Dumortierite Placeholder
Dumortierite

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Mineral Family

Dumortierite is a nesosilicate mineral.  Silicates are minerals which contain the elements silicon (a light gray shiny metal) and oxygen (a colorless gas). Together, these two elements form a tetrahedron – a shape similar to a pyramid – with a silicon atom in the center and oxygen atoms at each of the four corners. These tetrahedra connect with other chemical structures, in six different ways, to form various minerals and rocks. There are six main groups of Silicate minerals. Dumortierite belongs to the nesosilicates group, in which the Silicate tetrahedra are not directly attached to each other.

Dumortierite’s energy works well with its family – other nesosilicate minerals.  Try it in combination with Chiastolite, Garnet (Almandine, Grossular, Hessonite, Rhodolite, Uvarovite), Kyanite, Peridot, and Topaz

Dumortierite Formation and Crystal Associates

Dumortierite is typically formed in metamorphic rocks, created by contact metamorphism. Metamorphism occurs when rocks are heated up by magma and squeezed by geological pressures.  The original rock doesn’t melt, but it is transformed physically or even chemically by the heat and pressure.  For example, a sedimentary rock like Limestone, can be changed into a metamorphic rocks like Marble.  In the case of contact metamorphism, an intrusive igneous rock is pushed up towards the surface of the earth, and the area directly next to it is metamorphized.  Dumortierite forms in this heat zone.  It is usually found in the metamorphized rocks that are aluminum-rich, unsurprising since aluminum is its principal element.  But it is also occasionally found in boron-rich igneous rocks, boron being the second most common element in the mineral.

Dumortierite’s energy works well with its “friends” – crystal associates formed in the same geological environment.  Try it in combination with Black Tourmaline, Citrine, and Muscovite

Mineralogy Dumortierite
Chemical Formula (Al,Fe)7(BO3)(SiO4)3O3
Cleavage Distinct, Imperfect
Color  Blue-black, Pink-red, brown, green
Crystal System Orthorhombic
Form/Habit Fiberous aggregates
Fracture Uneven, brittle
Hardness – Mohs Scale 7-8
Luminescence Yellowish-white (long wave) / Blueish-white (short wave)
Luster Vitreous
Mineral Family Garnet Group
Specific Gravity  3.2-3.4
Streak White, blueish-white
Transparency Transparent to opaque

History of Dumortierite

Dumortierite was discovered relatively recently and so is not included in any ancient or medieval lapidaries, texts that describe stones and their powers.  It was named after the French paleontologist Eugene Dumortier (1801-1876).  He had spent the first part of his life working as gilder, a craftsmen who is responsible for  applying a thin layer of gold or silver to decorative items.  By the age of 50, he was financially secure enough to retire from this career and focus full time on his passion for geology and paleontology.

Dumortier amassed an impressive collection of fossils and also wrote a four volume paleontological work for the Rhone-Alps region of eastern France.  He had a particular fascination with Jurassic deep marine fossils which were plentiful in the region.  During the Jurassic period (201-145 million years ago), many of the world’s great mountains ranges, including the Rockies, the Himalayas and the Alps, hadn’t formed yet.  Where the French Alps are today, there was an inland sea, La Voulte-sur-Rhone, whose  seabed was full of ridges and canyons, sometimes as deep as 650 ft (200 meters).  Based on the fossil remains the sea invertebrates, but there was a unique species of crocodile.  Dumortier described 250 new species, mostly  invertebrate marine animals, such as crustaceans, mussels and sea stars.  He carefully studied their placement in the rock formations, allowing him to establish a detailed stratigraphy.  Upon his death he bequeathed his fossil collection to the Natural History Museum in Lyons.  Five years later, in 1881, a new blue mineral was found in the Rhone-Alps and was named in his honor.

Eugene Dumortier, Dumortierite

Eugene Dumortier

Additional References:

  1. Dumortierite, mindat.org
  2. Charbonnier, Sylvain et al.  “The La Voulte-sur-Rhone Lagerstatte (Middle Jurassic, France),” Comptes Rendus Palevol, Vol 13. Issue 5, August 2014. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1631068314000487

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