Published December 2014 • Updated August 2024 • Read Time: 7 minutes
Watermelon Tourmaline is a rare variety of bicolored Elbaite Tourmaline. It is always green and red/pink. Ideally, it should have a pink interior with a ring ring around it. When sawed into think cross-sections, it looks just like the delicious fruit. The color on the inside or bottom of the crystal is the older material, while the part on the outside or top is the younger material. Most of the Watermelon Tourmaline on the market comes from Brazil. It has one of the sweetest crystal energies imaginable. It encourages us to live from the heart and to love generously in every connection, be it family, friend, lover or a new person we have just met.

Watermelon Tourmaline Healing Energy
Spiritual Healing Properties
Watermelon Tourmaline is a stone of love and joy. It helps us to stay fully present, heart-centered, and aware of the beauty of the moment. At such times, we may embody our Highest Self and begin to resemble a Laughing Buddha. Like any fully realized being, that often means we will find humor and delight in everything around us and want to generously share our gifts with the world. Watermelon Tourmaline strengthens the practice of compassion and mercy and can facilitate deep spiritual and emotional healing. It also positively enhances the experience of being in nature and connects us to all beings great and small.
Vibrations | Watermelon Tourmaline |
---|---|
Chakra | Heart |
Element | Water |
Numerology | 2 |
Zodiac | Gemini, Libra and Virgo |
Emotional Healing Properties
Watermelon Tourmaline is an incredible stone for the heart! It increases our capacity to love with wild abandon, to be exquisitely tender, and to offer the hand of friendship to all we meet. Watermelon Tourmaline facilitates all types of relationships, including romantic, familial and platonic. Watermelon Tourmaline also inspires feelings of safety and security, helping to reduce depression and temper tantrums. This is ultimately a very joyful stone which can help us keep an even keel, able to weather the ups and downs of regular life. With it, we learn that true happiness is created within and with practice it can be maintained regardless of outer circumstances.
Mental Healing Properties
Watermelon Tourmaline teaches diplomacy and tact, helping us to combine logic with emotional sensitivity. It is extremely good for seeing the potential benefit of otherwise negative experiences. Watermelon Tourmaline shows us that all experiences are given to us so that we can grow. While life may have its moments of struggle and strife, life is ultimately good. Moreover, we have the choice to determine where we put our mental energy. Watermelon Tourmaline gently nudges us to focus on the positive.
Physical Healing Properties
Watermelon Tourmaline is recommended for anyone who is struggling to love their own body. This struggle may be caused by unrealistic beauty standards verse the reality of our genetics, injuries and other issues that make it impossible for us to have the body we want. The struggle can also be caused by a more serious body dysmorphia or exasperated by underlying conditions such as depression. Watermelon Tourmaline wraps us up in a big loving energy hug and tells us that we’re gorgeous and don’t ever forget it! Watermelon Tourmaline helps us to see and acknowledge beauty, both inside and out, more readily. It asks us to be kinder to our actual body as well as to our self-image. Watermelon Tourmaline is an excellent talisman when there are serious problems with our physical heart. It is also a sweet talisman when we are faced with serious issues affecting our nervous system, such as multiple sclerosis or paralysis.
Geology of Watermelon Tourmaline
Where does Watermelon Tourmaline come from?
Tourmaline is found around the world. While Schorl is reliably black, Dravite and Elbaite can appear in a rainbow of colors. Watermelon Tourmaline is highly-desirable variety of bicolored Elbaite. Most are found in Brazil, but they may also come from Afghanistan, Australia, Madagascar, Mozambique, and the United States.
Mining and Treatments
Tourmaline is a fairly common mineral, but gem quality crystals are relatively rare, and found almost exclusively in Pegmatite. Numerous mines exist whose primary purpose is finding gem-quality Tourmaline.
Opaque Tourmalines are natural, enhanced only by cutting and polishing. But transparent Tourmaline can be heat-treated to brighten the color. For example a dark green Tourmaline might be heat-treated to become a vivid emerald green. Such treatments primarily occur in the fine gemstone jewelry industry. Lab-created Tourmaline also exists. But it is typically used for research purposes and so is not readily available to the general public.
Watermelon Tourmaline
Mineral Family
Tourmaline is a generic term which refers to 11 varieties of borosilicate minerals that can be any color of the rainbow. Silicates are minerals which contain the elements Silicon (a light gray shiny metal) and Oxygen (a colorless gas). Together, these two elements form a tetrahedra – a shape similar to a pyramid – with a Silicon atom in the center and Oxygen atoms at each of the three corners. These tetrahedras connect with other chemical structures, in six different ways, to form various minerals and rocks. There are six main groups of Silicate minerals, and these main groups are further subdivided into a variety of secondary subdivisions, such as Quartz and Feldspar. Tourmaline belongs to the cyclosilicate family. Cyclo means circle and all the minerals in this family form closed rings of tetrahedras. All Tourmalines are borosilicats, which are cyclosilicates that contain the element boron. Elbaite is a type of Tourmaline that comes in every shade of the rainbow, including red and green. All Watermelon Tourmalines are Elbaites.
Watermelon Tourmaline’s energy works well with its family – other Cyclosilicate minerals. Try it in combination with Aquamarine, Dioptase, Emerald, Eudialyte, lolite, Morganite, and Sugilite. It also works well with other varieties of Tourmaline. Try it with Dravite and Schorl.
Watermelon Tourmaline Formation and Crystal Associates
Tourmaline is created when liquid magma from a volcanic explosion cools down and transforms into igneous rocks. During this cooling down period, borosilica acid shifts from being a gas/liquid into a solid compound, called Tourmaline. Most species of Tourmaline are found in Pegmatite, a type of ignenous rock which typically develops underwater
Watermelon Tourmaline’s energy works well with its “friends” – crystal associates formed in the same geological environment. Try it in combination with Lepidolite and Quartz.
Why are some Tourmalines multicolored?
Elbaite Tourmalines can come in every shade of the rainbow and sometimes multiple colors are found in the same crystal. These different colors show a visual record of how the stone grew. The color on the inside or bottom of the crystal is the older material, while the part on the outside or top is the younger material. Most of the time multicolored crystal are called Bicolored Tourmalines. Watermelon Tourmaline is the most famous variety of Bicolored Tourmaline. Ideally it has a pink interior with a green ring. When sawed into thin cross-sections it looks just like the delicious fruit.
Mineralogy | Watermelon Tourmaline |
---|---|
Chemical Formula | NA (Mg, Fe, Li, Mn, Al )3Al6(BO3)3Si6O18(OH,F)4 |
Cleavage | Indistinct |
Color | Red/pink and Green |
Crystal System | Hexagonal/triagonal |
Form/Habit | Prismatic, acicular |
Fracture | Uneven, small conchoidal, brittle |
Hardness – Mohs Scale | 7-7.5 |
Luminescence | Blue (short wave) |
Luster | Vitreous |
Mineral Family | Cyclosilicates |
Specific Gravity | 2.82-3.32 |
Streak | White |
Transparency | Transparent to opaque |
History of Watermelon Tourmaline
Tourmaline comes in every color making it difficult to trace in early lapidaries, texts which describe gemstones and their powers. In antiquity, Red and Pink Tourmaline were most likely confused with other similarly-colored gemstones, such as Garnet, Ruby or Spinal, while Green Tourmalines were likely confused with Emerald. The name “Tourmaline” reflects this multicolored splendor. It comes from the Sri Lankan word turmali, which can be translated as “stone with mixed colors” or “gem pebbles.” Sri Lanka is known for its beautiful Elbaite Tourmalines that come in every shade of the rainbow. The Dutch East India Company first visited Sri Lanka in 1602, and then took control of the island’s coastline from 1640 until 1789. Among the many imports that the Dutch East India Company brought back to Europe were sparkly gemstones. The oldest record for Tourmaline’s healing powers is from a lapidary published in 1632 which calls Tourmaline, “the stone of wisdom, that is clear and resistant to all vagaries of fate.”
Elbaite Tourmalines can come in every shade of the rainbow and sometimes multiple colors are found in the same crystal. These different colors show a visual record of how the stone grew. The color on the inside or bottom of the crystal is the older material, while the part on the outside or top is the younger material. Most of the time multicolored crystal are called Bicolored Tourmalines. The most famous variety is Watermelon Tourmaline which has a pink interior with a green ring ring. When sawed into thin cross-sections it looks just like the delicious fruit.
Watermelons were first domesticated in Libya as early as 5000 BCE at the very dawn of agriculture. It was farmed in Egypt as early as 2000 BCE. Increasingly sweet varieties were cultivated in northern Africa and by the Roman period the fruit had become popular throughout the Mediterranean world. From there they traveled along the silk road to India and then to China. By 1576 it was being grown in Florida by Spanish settlers. There are actually over 1200 different varieties of Watermelon in the world! Over 2/3 of all Watermelon are grown in China.
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