SODALITE

CORRESPONDENCES

EARLY WINTER
Energy

CAPRICORN
Northern Hemisphere

CANCER
Southern Hemisphere

F# / LA#
Music Note

LAPIS LAZULI BLUE
Color

THIRD EYE
Chakra

Sodalite is a rich royal blue tectosilicate mineral widely used as an ornamental gemstone. Although massive sodalite samples are opaque, crystals are usually transparent to translucent. Sodalite is a member of the sodalite group with hauyne, nosean, lazurite and tugtupite.

HISTORY

First discovered by Europeans in 1811 in the Ilimaussaq intrusive complex in Greenland, sodalite did not become important as an ornamental stone until 1891 when vast deposits of fine material were discovered in Ontario, Canada.

COMPOSITION

Sodalite is a cubic mineral which consists of an aluminosilicate cage network with Na+ cations in the interframework. This framework forms a cage structure, similar to zeolites. Each unit cell contains two cage structures. Natural sodalite holds primarily chloride anions in the cages, but they can be substituted by other anions such as sulfate, sulfide, hydroxide, trisulfur with other minerals in the sodalite group representing end member compositions.

HARDNESS

Mohs Scale Hardness: 5.5 - 6

The Mohs scale of mineral hardness is a qualitative ordinal scale characterizing scratch resistance of various minerals through the ability of harder material to scratch softer material.