Tanzanite History

The Tanzanite gemstone is a member of the Zoisite family and is in fact, often called blue Zoisite. Its name comes from the area it was discover in, Tanzania Africa, where it was first discovered in 1967 and has since gone on to become one of the favorites among the healing arts community. Unlike Zoisite however which can be found all over the world, Tanzanite can only be found in Tanzania and specifically in and around the Usumburu mountains and Umba valley in the North of the country.

Tanzanite was first discovered by Manuel D'Souza who was a tailor by trade. He noticed a sparkly blue crystal lying on the ground near his home. The German Society for Precious Stones in Ida-Oberstein performed the initial testing on the stone and discovered the chemical signature for Zoisite.

When Tanzanite first comes out of the ground, most of the stones look nothing like the beautiful blues and purples that made this stone so precious to the jewelry trade. In fact, most are in shades of brown, with perhaps some blues and grays mixed in or even a bronze shade. But by heating the stones to a temperature of 500 to 700 degrees, the fabulous blues and purples come shining through in all their glory.

If it were not for one problem with this stone, it would probably be the darling of the jewelry industry and command prices many hundreds of times above what it actually demands. There is a debate within the community as to where the problem is natural to Tanzanite or if it is an affect of the heating of the stones, however the stone tends to fracture and break quiet easily.

This fracturing problem, coupled with the high costs involved in mining the stones (including loss of human life) and the stones tendency to be much smaller than most crystals used in jewelry, resulted in most of the mines being closed in 1999.

Tanzanite is a good stone to use in meditations. For this purpose, many prefer the stones that are basically colorless or clear. The stone helps you to slow down and let go of stress and tensions, allowing you to become most composed, able to maintain your poise and work in harmony with the universe even when everyone around you is jumpy and tense.

This is a wonderful stone for helping you to become more in tuned with your own body, mind and soul. During those times when we need to be extremely truthful with ourselves in order to advance beyond our current level, Tanzanite can help you look at yourself and look honestly, without condemnation and without fooling ourselves into think we are more than we really are. This is often extremely hard for most people to do. We tend to want to place blame on others or outside of ourselves because we feel to admit our mistakes will somehow make us less than we are.

What many don't realize however is that mistakes are nothing more than opportunities to learn. We could have been made perfect, but we would have lost those many opportunities to improve ourselves. Tanzanite will not lie to you or sugar coat the truth, but it will also help make sure you do not lie to yourself and pretend the situation is more or less than it really is.

Tanzanite helps to clear and balance the throat chakra which opens up and increase your communication ability. It can help you to find the right words to say when needing to comfort others and is a good stone for those in management that have to let employees go as it can help you to do your job in a compassionate way, without taking on the other persons pain or frustration.

It also activates and clears the third eye chakra helping you to define and empower your ability to "know". It can aid in helping to improve any of the psychic abilities. It can help those who experience visions to see more clearly and is a good stone for professional psychics to keep around while doing readings of any type.

Those involved in magick of any type or who work on manifesting within your life will find Tanzanite can lend strength to your workings. It helps you to focus your mind and your energies to almost pin point intensity to help make your dreams and desires a reality.