Mineralogical and Metaphysical Properties of Phantom Crystals
The phantom typically displays one or more translucent thin, cloud-like layers of mineral deposits resembling small points. Each layer of cloudy inclusion contains a revealing snapshot of the crystal's termination faces in the remote past. Each phantom marking represents a different stage in the crystal's growth -- and each stage can last for hundreds of thousands of years! Each phantom crystal reveals its own evolutionary pattern -- it is as though we can see the record of the transmigrations of the crystal's soul.
Phantom crystals are created when a faceted tip forms at one point in the crystal's growth, but the crystal's growth is interrupted for some reason, and then the quartz crystal resumes its crystallization, eventually enclosing the phantom crystal outline within itself.
One possibility is that a pocket inside the earth surrounding the crystal dried out, stopping the crystal's growth. When a crystal's growth is interrupted for some reason, a thin dusting of such minerals as pyrite, hematite, chlorite or galena can gather on the termination faces.
Perhaps the pocket was later resaturated, triggering another stage of crystal growth.
If the crystal's growth then resumes, over long cycles of crystalline growth, the dusting of alien minerals covering the crystal's original termination faces, is incorporated into a much larger quartz crystal than the original.
This long growth process creates a piece with the classic phantom crystal point which can be seen within a larger crystal. Sometimes one can see two or three phantom points within a given crystal wand, and in such cases, the growth process was undoubtedly stopped and started several times over unthinkably long periods of geological time.
The final result is the formation of a "phantom crystal", much larger than the original crystal structure at the point of growth interruption.
It should come as no surprise that phantom crystals help us to unearth our own histories, and to come to terms with unresolved issues from our past. Phantoms help us to see our own messy histories and our painful karmic issues as part of a beautiful spiritual evolution. In this way, they help to restore a sense of inner balance, unity and an aura of magic where there had been pain and struggle.