Ca6Al2(SO4)3(OH)12·26H2O
A golden fountain crowning the spine
Ettringite is named after its type locality, Ettringen in the Eifel volcanic district of the Rhineland, Germany, where it was first described in 1874. Like many minerals, it carries the name of the small place that first gave it to science.
Ettringite is a hydrated calcium-aluminium sulfate, trigonal in symmetry, and one of the most water-rich of all minerals — twenty-six water molecules sit within each formula unit, woven through tall column-like structures. It forms prismatic crystals, soft (about 2–2.5), and is most prized in a glowing, almost luminous bright yellow, though it also occurs colourless to white.
It is a low-temperature mineral, forming in metamorphosed limestone blocks and in altered manganese ore. The same compound also forms in hardening cement and concrete, making ettringite one of the few minerals central to both the spiritual cabinet and modern engineering.
First described from the Eifel of Germany in 1874, ettringite is now famous for the brilliant lemon-yellow crystals of the N'Chwaning and Wessels mines in the Kalahari manganese field of South Africa, among the most striking yellow specimens in all of mineralogy.
It grows where calcium, aluminium, sulfate and abundant water meet at low temperature, often beside calcite and other secondary minerals in the altered zones of manganese and limestone deposits.
At its finest a luminous, almost neon yellow — one of the most vivid colours in the mineral kingdom.
Twenty-six waters per formula unit make it one of the most water-rich minerals on Earth.
The same mineral that delights collectors also forms inside hardening concrete — nature and engineering in one.
"Realise the true meaning of 'I' and 'Thou'. To the Gnani who has attained the state of non-duality, the distinction vanishes."— Gnananda
Ettringite is one of the great vertical workers of the cabinet. It opens the crown so that the kundalini can spray upward like a fountain and rain back down through the body, cooling and settling it — the very image of its water-rich, column-like crystal, twenty-six waters carried up and let fall. As it does so it aligns the chakras one above the other and helps the spine itself draw straight, the whole central channel brought into one clear line.
Its named seat is the solar plexus, the fire-centre of will and vitality where the body stores its energy; from this strong base its good power lifts and feeds the rising current. Its frequency is low, so it works close to the body rather than in the far-subtle layers — a real, physical settling and cooling, not a faint one.
"Banat, banat, ban jai — making, making, some day made."— Lahiri Mahasaya
As a stone of Joy it leaves brightness in its wake, the golden gladness mirrored in its lemon-yellow light; and as an Expanding stone it carries that risen, cooled energy outward, softening the old traumas and dramas stored in the body — especially those gathered below the heart. This is generous, fountain-like medicine for the whole standing column of a person, the lower hurts loosened as the current climbs and showers down.