silicates
Larimar
- Also known as
- blue pectoliteDominican turquoiseAtlantis stone
- Crystal system
- triclinic
- Hardness
- 4.5–5 on the Mohs scale
- Lustre
- silky
- Colour
- Pale sky blue to deep blue, mottled with white
- Where it forms
- In gas cavities in basalt in a single small area of the Dominican Republic, where copper-bearing fluids were present. Nowhere else has produced it.
- Chiefly from
- Los Chupaderos, Barahona Province, Dominican Republic
Why it is that colour
Copper substituting for calcium in the pectolite structure. The mottled pattern follows the original radiating crystal texture.
Safety
Safe to handle. It fades with prolonged exposure to strong sunlight and to heat, which is a genuine limitation.
Where it comes from
One deposit, worked by hand in narrow vertical shafts on a mountainside, largely by independent miners under difficult and poorly regulated conditions. Supply is finite and the accessible material is diminishing.
Historical use
None before the twentieth century.
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
Larimar was noticed by locals long before, but it was brought to market in 1974 by Miguel Méndez, who named it by combining his daughter Larissa’s name with mar, the Spanish for sea. Its association with Atlantis comes from a reading of an Edgar Cayce prophecy about a blue stone with healing properties being found in the Caribbean, applied retrospectively after the stone was found. All of its meanings postdate 1974.
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
The Atlantis attribution is unusually traceable, and it runs backwards. Edgar Cayce, the American psychic, is said to have predicted that a blue stone with healing properties would be found in the Caribbean, associated with Atlantis. Larimar was brought to market in 1974. The prophecy was then applied to it retrospectively, and the name Atlantis stone followed.
This is a common shape and it is worth being able to recognise. A general prediction, made earlier, is matched to a specific later event, and the match is presented as fulfilment. Nothing in the original singled out this stone, this island or this date.
The mining is worth mentioning too. Larimar comes out of hand-dug vertical shafts on a steep hillside, worked by independent miners with minimal equipment. It is one of the more physically dangerous supply chains behind an inexpensive stone.
Identity checked against IMA-CNMNC master list, June 2025.