oxides
Hematite
Fe2O3
- Also known as
- bloodstonespecularitekidney orered ochre
- Crystal system
- trigonal
- Hardness
- 5–6 on the Mohs scale
- Lustre
- metallic
- Colour
- Steel grey to black, with a distinctive red streak
- Where it forms
- In banded iron formations, in sedimentary deposits, and by weathering of other iron minerals. It is the mineral that makes red soil red and Mars red.
- Chiefly from
- Minas Gerais, BrazilPilbara, Western AustraliaCumbria, EnglandMars
Why it is that colour
Iron oxide. However dark the specimen, hematite always leaves a rust-red mark when scraped, and that streak is the standard identification test.
Safety
Safe to handle. So-called magnetic hematite, sold in bracelets and as tumbled stones, is not hematite at all — hematite is only very weakly magnetic — but a manufactured ferrite ceramic. The magnetic-bracelet health claim has been tested and does not hold up.
Where it comes from
The principal iron ore of the world, mined in vast quantity in Australia and Brazil. Iron ore is among the largest commodity trades on earth by volume.
Historical use
Red ochre burials, Palaeolithic cave art, Egyptian and Roman pigment, and the entire steel industry all rest on this mineral. The banded iron formations it comes from record the Great Oxygenation Event, when photosynthetic bacteria first put free oxygen into the oceans and dissolved iron precipitated out.
Recorded as history and attributed where possible. That a stone was used for something establishes that people used it, not that it worked.
What is attributed to it, and since when
Red ochre, which is powdered hematite, is one of the oldest pigments used by humans, appearing in burials and on cave walls from at least a hundred thousand years ago. Its name is from the Greek for blood, and the association between the red streak and blood is ancient and near-universal. Modern grounding and protection meanings are New Age but sit on genuinely deep foundations.
Described, not endorsed. Dating a claim is not the same as assessing it — but an association that first appears in a book published in 1985 is not an ancient inheritance, whatever the label says. A sincere account of feeling better is compatible with the stone doing nothing — see the placebo effect.
Sold as this, but not
Worth knowing
Magnetic hematite is one of the clearer mislabellings in the trade because it is checkable in a second. Hematite is antiferromagnetic and barely responds to a magnet at all. If a bracelet snaps together, it is not hematite — it is a manufactured barium or strontium ferrite, sometimes sold as hematine, which is a perfectly good material that has never been in the ground.
The underlying magnetic-therapy claim has also been tested properly. A 2007 review in the Canadian Medical Association Journal concluded that magnetic bracelets do not work for pain, and the 2013 trial that tested copper bracelets tested magnetic wrist straps in the same study, with the same result.
Identity checked against IMA-CNMNC master list, June 2025.