Bloodstone Crystal: Properties, Benefits, How To Use It + More

Bloodstone, also known as “heliotrope,” is a cryptocrystalline mixture of quartz that occurs as jasper or chalcedony. Bloodstone is typically a dark green color with telltale red inclusions of hematite, which look like spots of blood, making this stone very aptly named.

As Ashley Leavy, founder and educational director of the Love and Light School of Crystal Therapy tells mindbodygreen, bloodstone has an incredibly rich history, believed to be a stone of healing, protection, divination, and more, by ancient cultures.

According to her, an early-Roman philosopher named Pliny the Elder (one of the oldest known stone writers) even claimed bloodstone was a stone of invisibility. “Some other ancient sources believed it could control weather and eclipses, and it was also called ‘The Stone of Babylon,’ because the ancient Babylonians believed it was so powerful and magical that they used it to make really important artifacts, like seals and amulets,” Leavy notes.

Today, bloodstone can be found all around the world, in countries like the U.S., Brazil, India, Australia, Germany, Italy, and South Africa.