Citrine

Meaning in lithotherapy

The Crystal Council calls citrine the “master of one’s creativity centre” and the stone with the strongest manifesting energy. It is meant to help release personal will and uncover one’s truest desires, while giving a deep connection with Mother Earth through the lower chakras. Its themes include creativity, inspiration, dreams, joy, clarity, abundance, luck and the transmutation of negative energy. [48]

Crystal Vaults (Linda Mason) sees citrine as the “premier stone of manifestation, imagination and personal will”, carrying the power of the sun. Its relationship with heavy energy is distinctive: citrine is said not to hold it but to transmute, dissipate and ground it. It opens the “higher mind” to joy, helps release anger and deep-seated fears, eases sensitivity to criticism and encourages creativity and self-expression. [131]

Crystal Vaults calls citrine the “Merchant’s Stone”: in this current it is meant to help not only to acquire but to keep abundance, while encouraging generosity and sharing. It is also meant to ease tensions in families and groups, protect against envy, and, for people very sensitive to outside influences, to “increase the light around the body” and give confidence. The same source adds a warning rare in this literature: citrine may heighten aggressiveness in some, so it is not recommended for quick-tempered people or those inclined to gossip. The divinatory meaning of citrine: “A time to communicate your ideas and needs clearly.” [131]

Colour matters in this account: yellow citrine is meant to bring clarity and optimism to new interests and relationships (light yellow — a good start to an acquaintance, dark yellow — decisiveness and persuasiveness), golden — success, enthusiasm and mature commitment. The golden ray of good faceted citrine is said by Crystal Vaults also to stimulate the crown chakra and bring its energy down to the solar plexus and sacral chakras. [131]

Ways of working with the stone

The Crystal Council suggests holding citrine every day and “letting the universe hear” your goals, and meditating with it outdoors, ideally at dawn or dusk. Crystal Vaults describes meditation with citrine as an easy entry into the meditative state. Everyday practices include carrying it in a purse or wallet as a symbol of attracting money, and placing it where it catches the light and in the corner of the home associated with wealth. [48] [131]

Crystal Vaults recommends a “manifestation bowl” with citrine and — in feng shui — a stone in the centre of a room to brighten the whole space. A single-point crystal can be set in gold and worn with the termination pointing down to “channel” crown energy into the body. A custom from the same source is to give a newborn a citrine angel or sphere, and tumbled stones placed where they catch the light are meant to clear a place of “unfriendly ghosts”. In intention work Crystal Vaults stresses using this “power of attraction” only for the highest good. [131]

Chakras, elements and astrology

Both sources give citrine fire and the solar plexus, but they diverge in astrology: The Crystal Council lists Aries, Gemini, Leo and Libra and the Sun, while Crystal Vaults gives Cancer and summer birth periods. [48] [131]

Chakras

third eye, solar plexus, sacral, root (The Crystal Council); solar plexus, sacral, crown (Crystal Vaults) [48] [131]

Element

fire (both sources; “subdued” in Crystal Vaults) [48] [131]

Zodiac signs

Aries, Gemini, Leo, Libra (The Crystal Council); Cancer (Crystal Vaults) [48] [131]

Planet

the Sun (The Crystal Council) [48]

Birth period

21 June – 21 July (yellow citrine) and 22 July – 21 August (golden) according to Crystal Vaults [131]

Deities and angels

Demeter, Sekhmet, Persephone (golden crystals); the angels Samael, Gabriel, Uriel (Crystal Vaults) [131]

Feng shui

“subdued” Fire energy — the centre of a home or room (Crystal Vaults) [131]

Cleansing in the tradition

Citrine has an exceptional place in this tradition: Crystal Vaults counts it among only two crystals that “never need to be cleared or cleansed”, because they do not hold negative energy but transmute it. [131]

History

In the sources we read there is no older tradition of belief about citrine, but the stone does appear in history. Kunz (1913), following Benvenuto Cellini’s autobiography, relates that an enemy of the imprisoned goldsmith had a diamond ground up to put the dust in his food; the poor gem-cutter kept the diamond and ground a citrine instead — to which Cellini attributed his escape. [120]

The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds an intaglio portrait of Luigi Sommariva engraved in citrine around 1820 by Giovanni Beltrami of Cremona. It shows citrine as a material of fine nineteenth-century gem engraving; the museum record says nothing about beliefs attached to the stone. [151]

Where the sources differ

Crystal Vaults points out that much commercial citrine is in fact heat-treated amethyst or smoky quartz (see “How to identify”). The Crystal Council emphasises personal will and the joy of creating; Crystal Vaults adds money and wealth. Both sources’ references to ancient use of citrine find no confirmation in the historical source we read — in Kunz citrine has no separate tradition of belief. [131] [48] [120]

An Avonoria editorial suggestion

Beside the stone, write down an idea and the first step needed to explore it. This suggested intention practice depends on your own action, rather than a promise made by the stone.