Franz von Arx

Franz von Arx was born and raised in the canton of Uri in Switzerland. From an early age, he was out and about in the mountains and finding small crystals fascinated him. Crystal seeking became his great passion.

In a crevice on the Planggenstock at a depth of 30 meters, after years of searching and digging, he made his first big find: huge crystals, of a size and transparency that had not been found in the entire Alpine region in the last 400 to 500 years.

After this find, he turned his hobby into a profession, with all the risks involved.

Why do you think are you so successful?

If I have one special characteristic, it is that in addition to perseverance and resilience I am quite versatile, which is probably what makes the difference. The courage to reinvent myself, to move on in a completely new field with a strong will to succeed. I used to work as a construction manager, as a salesman, as renovator then I bought a house that was dilapidated, rebuilt everything by myself and started breeding fish and goats, in winter time I left for New Zealand looking for gold, always being very passionate and determined about everything that I was doing and therefore being successful.

Besides all these undertakings the passion to look for crystals never left me, on the contrary it grew. I decided to dedicate myself entirely to the crystals. And In 2005 we found these really big crystals, weighing up to 450 kilos, one meter long, three tons of stones, crystals.

When after digging for months, years, at the end of a 60-meter hand made tunnel you take off the final lid and look into the chasm and it sparkles and glitters like a tabernacle, then nothing is the same anymore. I mean, I am not in any way conceited or whatever. But you notice once more how irrelevant we are with these 70, 80, maybe 90 years that we have on this planet. The crystals have been here on this earth for millions of years and will outlive us for millions of years more.

We are talking about humility again. I mean when you succeed in finding crystals like we found them, knowing they are 16, 18 million years old, we noticed that we become humble and modest.

It is a determination of ours that we just look for these crystals with the perseverance that we have, because the crystals want to come into daylight. What is the good of them being unseen deep down in the mountains?

They are meant to amaze, to make us be in awe in front of another wonderful work of mother nature. That is their message and task.

And it’s also about recognizing the old true values again. This world is full of fake stuff. We live in a special time, of course that is quite clear, but we need authenticity and truth.

But even in these times the crystals provoke feelings. That’s what we saw in this exhibition. They didn’t leave anyone cold. Every day visitors left the gallery space with tears in their eyes, and they no longer understood their own world, having been confronted with such a great and beautiful thing. These are unique wonders of nature. Even a normal sized crystal is enjoyed by a lot of people. With these huge crystals you can actually reach out to almost everyone.

Yes. that was unbelievable at this exhibition. When you saw what kind of people were coming seasoned farmers, men from really remote valleys. They came and they had a tear in their eye when they saw these crystals. That’s so fascinating, so great, isn’t it?

What is the impact of nature and beauty on your life?

For me, nature is the core of everything. From nature you can learn any lesson for a meaningful life.

The crystals are unmatched works of art created by nature. In front of them you just become small and humble and grateful. And I would feel so happy if everyone could experience this path to modesty. But everyone has to live his way of life.

The crystals are not just dead material. They have a vibration like we as human beings do. In the subconscious, we sometimes perceive these vibrations to an extent. If you’re sensitive, anyway. When we had a large crystal in front of the table at a fair, if you felt tired you would lean on it, and you could sense the vibration of these stones. Some more, others less. They tickle your fingers.

I think crystals find you, but you must be open to seeing the signals and be ready to listen to your sensitivity, that is the crucial point. We always say; Crystals will find you, you can’t really look for them. If you go looking for mushrooms because you have guests in the evening, you very often don’t find any, right?

Equally, if you go out of the house in the morning and say, today I want to come home with crystals, then you will most likely find none. Many of these finds we made on Planggenstock we made them at the end of the season, when we were already packing our bags to go. That has been the case two or three times.

When dealing with nature, as soon as you approach something too doggedly- you will not get what you want, you can’t force the pace of nature.

You have to be patient, but also very, very persevering.

After our first great find, there was a period of time when we worked for six years without finding anything, just anything, but we did not give up and succeeded again.

You have to stick to your vision with great determination.

And we have to realize, that we are a part of the whole. We are a very, very small cog in this movement. Or maybe just a screw. Not even a cog.

If you have a quartz watch, you have a piece of quartz in there and that regulates the time with its vibration. And a crystal is pure silicon and they are the best data carriers. So, this is not just dead material.

Today our sensitivities have shifted a lot. In the past people looked up in the air and said in an hour or two it rains. Today people only notice that it rains when they get wet.

Do you give advice?

No.

What is your utopia?

My greatest wish is peace.

It’s that simple. I do not want to wish for anything else. Only that we can live in peace. I have already quarreled with the Lord God and said, why do we have to constantly have this never-ending quarrel?

We do have to evolve and grow as a human species, develop new strategies, and live up to the old values.

But what I see is that we have we learned nothing from history. We are acting like we did thousands of years ago starting wars for irrelevant reasons. And that cannot be.

Again, learn from nature, take a tent and try to spend a night outside, feel the uninfluenceable cycle of nature, feel your own irrelevance and let yourself get carried away by the beauty around you. Many things will lose importance and the right ones will gain value.

And I am deeply convinced that beautiful things promote healing, physical and mental healing.

Reconnecting with nature promotes a sort of a reset of acquired bad habits.