Every September I head up to Beaver Creek in Colorado for a mining conference. At 9,000ft up in the Rockies, it’s one of the most scenic conferences we attend. The conference format is one-on-one meetings; company management teams and investment delegates locked in small, anemic cubicles. The industry reps try their best to sound enthusiastic as they make their investment pitch for the 37th time in 2 days to the bored bankers. It’s hard work to be sure, but one thing keeps me going; something I look forward to every year- a sordid little secret that I keep to myself.
Sexy Time
When the show finishes on the Friday afternoon, I jump into my sensible mid-priced rental car and hit the I70 heading for Denver. It’s not my favourite road. It’s busy, twisty and in shit condition with traffic cops all over the place. The 2-hour drive to Denver can seem much longer if the weather’s bad. But it’s all worth it when I pull into the car park at the Denver Mineral Show, put on my geo-nerd cosplay outfit, and step into the first of the 3 giant exhibition halls. Crystal sexy time is here!
If Only I Could Remember
The Denver show happens every September, but this year it’s the week before Beaver Creek so I’ll miss it. Boo Hoo. It’s one of the largest rockfests in the world with hundreds of dealers selling material from around the globe. Crystal prices range from a buck up to as much as $2.5 million for truly spectacular pieces. It takes a day to see the halls and the car park tents -even longer if you visit the satellite hotels where the high-end dealers base themselves. You can buy everything from cheap beads to 8ft high clusters of quartz crystals. Last year one guy was selling large, erect penis statues carved from Peruvian pyrite- a niche market perhaps, unless solo sex with acid drainage appeals to you.
I try hard not to buy the first pretty thing I see because there’s always something better one aisle over. But when I try to remember where the bloody hell I saw that rock, the one I had to have, I’ve usually forgotten. Was it hall 1 or 2, or was it the chap from Pakistan or the guy from Oaxaca, dammit? So, I invariably end up buying my second choice because it’s the only one I can find again.
Spontaneous Selection
Two years ago, I tried to be a bit more spontaneous and harness that fuck yeah reaction. Tucked away at the arse end of one car park, in a grim dusty spot that smelled of stale pee, there was a tent that caught my eye. It was the place where the local rubbies took their nightly leak and I felt truly sorry for the dealer, stuck there for a week.
What persuaded me to not throw up my breakfast were the dozens of tables covered in samples of a single mineral from Brazil. Glorious, blue green, bladed vivianite crystals. My first impulse was to make a note of the display location and come back later once I’d bought a pyrite penis, but the voice in my head started telling me to stop being such a moron for fuck’s sake and buy a piece while I had the chance. Fifteen minutes later I’d chosen my rock and handed over the cash to pay the man.
It was a triangular piece with three starburst clusters of dark green vivianite blades. It wasn’t the biggest or the flashiest piece but something about the overall form tickled my fancy and yelled “buy me” at the top of its voice. I think I paid a couple of hundred bucks and I didn’t haggle – if the vendor could sell in a public toilet without complaining he deserved my cash.
Rotting Corpses
I didn’t know much about vivianite. I knew I wanted some to stroke and fondle in my bedroom. I also knew it was some sort of iron phosphate mineral, but that was about it. Google told me:
Vivianite, composition Fe3(PO4)2.8H2O is a striking, deeply colored hydrated iron phosphate mineral renowned for its vibrant blue and green-blue crystals. Prized by mineral collectors, it is famous for forming in phosphorus-rich organic environments, as well as its extreme softness.
Great, so now I knew. Except. Not quite. Avoiding the woo-woo crystal energy sites that my phone threw up (see below), I found an article which called it -rather darkly- the corpse crystal.
Vivianite can form through oxidation of iron bearing mineral deposits, which is nice. Any deposit that contains enough iron, phosphorous and water may eventually produce vivianite. But it can also form where phosphorous rich stuff like, er… human bones, are decomposing close to a source of chemical iron. Yes, the crystals can grow on corpses. So, a body in an old metal coffin or a bog full of iron rich, peaty water are perfect candidates.
The Iceman Cometh
A famous example is the mummified ice age individual nicknamed Ötzi the Iceman, discovered in the Alps in 1991 on the border between Italy and Austria. During forensic examination it was discovered that Ötzi had been killed by an arrow, and his skin was flecked with blue vivianite which had grown during the 5,300-years that he lay there covered in ice. Another well documented case was poor old John White, a railway engineer who was interred in a leaky iron coffin back in the 1860s. A hundred damp years or so later his body was exhumed to make way for a building project. When the casket was opened, the distinctive blue crystals were found all over Mr. White and the inside of his coffin.
Thankfully my Brazilian vendor wasn’t hawking vivianite on chunks of human leg bone or skull fragments. His was natural, from the Cabeza de Cachorro Mine in Brazil where sedimentary phosphatic nodules are mined. Phew. But it got me thinking about eventually donating my body to the advancement of mineral collecting. Stick me in an iron box in the garage and water me occasionally. Every hundred years or so my descendants can open the coffin and harvest a valuable crop of lovely green-blue crystals to sell online, a bit like mushroom farming but slower. Grandad’s crystalline legacy handed down from generation to generation.
So, What Does It All Mean?
As I touched on in an earlier piece, there’s been a massive explosion of interest in all-things crystal related. When I started collecting, the likes of quartz, garnet and topaz didn’t have supernatural powers. I remember a solitary small sign in my local rock shop saying, “Quartz for energy”. Today, we’re told by the thousands of crystal power websites that the shiny little bastards can be used for everything from accessing one’s Akashic records via some judicious kundalini tickling to tantric time travel (WTF, stop making shit up. Ed.). If only I’d known when I was a skinny 10-year-old in the 1970s, stuck in boring old Broadstairs on the UK’s southeast coast looking for a way out.
Now that we’ve established that vivianite has a slightly negative putrescent association, what do the hippy-dippy crystal lovers have to say about it? (Hint: It’ll be positive and lovely)
One couple mentioned online claimed that the mineral darkens as it soaks up evil energy from its surroundings until one day it’s full up and a new crystal sample is needed to continue the good work. It’s true that it darkens on exposure to light, but I’m betting they were mineral dealers.
And I met a self-proclaimed Necromancer at the Denver show lurking by the vivianite tables. He claimed to communicate with the dead. I’m guessing he was waiting in vain for a call from Great Aunt Maud given that the Brazilian crystals have never been near a body. If in doubt, ask a geologist.
Mediums aside and bearing in mind the moniker Corpse Mineral, here’s some wonderfully pretentious guff -definitely not meant to be ironic- about what vivianite is supposed to do:
“… helps one dive deep into their heart, healing wounds old and new. It brings gentleness and awareness to some who may not normally tend to share these qualities while bringing compassion about yourself and others around you…Vivianite assists in removing negativity and unwanted energies from your mind, body, and auric field. For people dealing with depression and anxiety, Vivianite is highly recommended. It will help take away that feeling of “being uncomfortable in your own skin” and aid in embracing the beauty in yourself. Physically, Vivianite can help in the healing of the body as well. It helps the healing of the eyes, especially if one has cataracts or pink eye. Vivianite also helps strengthen the bones (ha ha ha… I don’t think so) and is recommend for anyone showing signs of senility.“
Quite.