Cu2Cl(OH)3
Green heart-fire opening the inner eye
Atacamite is named after the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, the hyper-arid region where it was first described and where it occurs abundantly. Few minerals are so tied to one of the driest places on Earth.
Atacamite is a copper chloride hydroxide, orthorhombic in symmetry, forming slender prismatic crystals and crusts in vivid, deep emerald to grass-green. It is moderately soft (about 3–3.5), with a vitreous to adamantine lustre and a brilliant green streak.
It is a secondary copper mineral that forms in the oxidised zones of copper deposits under arid, salty conditions — the chloride in its formula a signature of the desert brines that made it. It also forms around fumaroles and, remarkably, in the teeth of some marine creatures.
First described from the Atacama Desert of Chile, atacamite is found in arid copper districts around the world, from South America to Australia, wherever copper ore weathers in a dry, chloride-rich setting.
Its intense green has long made it both a prized collector's mineral and, historically, a green pigment — the desert's own emerald, born of salt and copper.
Contains copper — do not ingest, lick, or make crystal water or elixirs from this mineral. Soluble copper compounds are toxic.
It is moderately soft, so wash hands after handling, do not grind or inhale its dust, and keep it away from children and pets.
A vivid grass-to-emerald green born of copper and desert salt — one of the brightest greens in the mineral world.
Born in the driest desert on Earth, its chlorine a fingerprint of the salty brines that formed it.
Remarkably, it hardens the jaws of some marine worms — a mineral made not only by rock but by life.
"The wish within a human being is the most powerful energy that exists."— Swami Rudrananda
Atacamite is seated in the heart — the centre of all the chakras, the bridge between the upper and lower centres and the great healing place of the emotions. Its vivid green is the very colour of that centre, and as a stone of Love, Life and Joy it floods the heart with warm, living, gladdening energy, helping it open and clear.
Yet its gift reaches upward: it stimulates the third eye and creates powerful spiritual vision, helping to remove energy blockages and to build trust in one's own intuition. It carries kundalini, the rising current, so the heart's opening becomes a doorway through which energy climbs to the inner eye — love at the centre lighting clear sight above. Its frequency and power are balanced and mild, so this happens gently rather than overwhelmingly.
"In pure being consciousness arises; in consciousness the world appears and disappears. Before all beginnings, after all endings — I am."— Nisargadatta Maharaj
So this is heart-opening medicine that also clears the inner sight, teaching a person to trust what they sense from within. It is green, living, kundalini-bearing energy — though, being a copper mineral, it is to be honoured only by presence and never taken inwardly in any form.