Jewels and the woman: The romance, magic and art of feminine adornment

The Seasons

Precious stones have from earliest times been associated with special powers. Not only were they guardians against demons, but each by its particular virtue warded off certain diseases or other misfortunes. In their astrological aspects, they could help to arrange, if not wholly to secure, a happy future. From this connection with things to come, the gems came to be linked with various times: each season, each month, even each day of the week, had its special stone.

The season of spring, with the first flowering of the reborn year, is considered especially appropriate for the amethyst, the green diamond, the chrysoberyl, the spinel, the pink topaz, the olivine, and the emerald. The bright sun of summer, that bells the fruit and spreads the foliage, is best for zircon, garnet, ruby, and fire opal. Spinel, chrysoberyl, and pink topaz still hold their charm. As the languors of summer tang toward the crispness of autumn, it grows time for sapphire, hyacinth, oriental chrysolite, tourmaline, jacinth, and topaz. Then with the challenge of winter come turquoise, white sapphire, rock crystal, quartz, moonstone, pearl, and the gleaming diamond. Of course, the brilliant solitaire, the diamond of the engagement ring, is an appropriate stone in any season.

The Days of the Week

The days of the week are more intricately bound in gemmed symbol. If you know the day on which you were born, you can garner all the good fortune that comes with the proper stone. Each day of the week, along with the stone, bears other significances and powers.

Sunday

The golden-yellow day of King Sol, the sun, is marked with the yellow jacinth. If one wears this, we are told, one has the power of a lion on that day—especially when Leo, the lion in the heavens, takes the summer season with the sun.

But also this is a token of secrecy in the man—it ensures discretion, always advisable, often essential, in a lover—while in the woman it betokens generosity, always desired but not always appreciated by a lover.

Monday

The serene day of the moon is the day for pearls. Pearls should be bestowed on a Monday. The color white is bound with them and with the day, for the snow-white blanket of peacefulness. A man might wear a pearl in a tie clasp, bar, or in a tie pin, which is coming back into favor. The pearl is a token, in a man, of friendship, of integrity, of a religious feeling; and in a woman of contemplation, purity, affability.

Tuesday

Tuesday is a more active day. Tiw is the Nordic god of war, and his name is used to translate the Latin for Mars’ day. Hence its stone is the blood-red ruby. This is a fitting day to hold in memory those who have died valiantly in battle. But it is likewise a day to be on one’s guard, for while the star ruby marks nobility and power of command in the man, it may also spill over in excess to bloody vengeance. And in the woman, while the ruby of this day adorns a proper pride, it may descend to a pettier obstinacy. At its best, the ruby is resplendent on a Tuesday.

Wednesday

Although Woden was king of the Nordic gods, his name is used to translate the Latin for the day of the fickle and thievish Mercury, who was placated on this day. The emerald is its precious stone. The color green may mark jealousy when it flickers in a woman’s eyes, but in a gem it is a token of change. In a man it betokens joyousness, quick-soaring but transitory. In the woman, with the Wednesday emerald comes a spontaneous, childlike delight in passing things, a love of variety. This is a good day to hold in memory those who have died in the flower of youth.

Thursday

Thor’s day, said the Anglo-Saxons. Again they transmuted the powers, for Thor is the god of war, while to the Romans this is the day of Jupiter, king of the gods. It is a violet day, the day of the violet sapphire. This is a precious stone indeed, and a potent day. In the man it marks sober judgment, gravity, industry. In the woman the Thursday sapphire denotes high thoughts, and a love that lifts beyond the body with the spirit. Fortunate are they between whom a violet sapphire passes on a Thursday.

Friday

Here the Anglo-Saxons made no mistake, for Friya is their god of love, and Friday is Venus’ day. Friday still feels the force of the sapphire, but the sapphire must be blue. In the man, the blue sapphire marks magnanimous thoughts and wisdom.

In the woman, the blue sapphire of Friday, especially the star sapphire, marks courtesy and keen powers of observation. The girl Friday sees more than she tells. But there is need for caution; without the stone, these feminine powers may shift to a colder watchfulness, accompanied by jealousy and suspicion. Beware a flaw in the precious stone, the precious one. Friday is an auspicious day for love, if love is bedecked with a blue sapphire.

Saturday

Saturday is the seventh day, the day of rest. Thus the Anglo-Saxons did not labor to translate it from the Latin; it is the day of Saturn, the Roman god of time and growth. Saturn was the father and first king of the gods; his stone is the king of gems, the diamond. Saturday crowns the days of the week, as the diamond crowns the family of the gems. In a man the diamond marks gravity, fortitude, constancy. In a maiden, it may betoken a certain giddiness, a flighty fancy that has not yet found its destination; but in a woman it marks perseverance and constancy. The woman of the Saturday diamond knows what she wants, and works unfaltering to attain it.

The Months

Thus, from the jacinth and the pearl to the sapphire and the diamond, runs the gemmed story of the days. More fixed in popular imagination are the special stones of the months, for these have become the birthstones that mark the natal days. In early times there was considerable variety; today there is general agreement as to these stones. They may have come, as many believe, from the twelve stones in the breastplate of the Jewish high priest. Or they may be transferred from the twelve foundation stones proclaimed in Revelations for the New Jerusalem. The ages have fixed them as memorials of birth, and one should have at least one lucky jewel adorned with one’s birthstone.

TABLE OF BIRTHSTONES

Each of the birthstones is caught into more than one jingle. Its powers have been trusted so long that folklore has wrapped them in song, and truth hangs upon them like the beard of a patriarch. And the stones themselves endow the wearer with the special grace of the natal day.

January: Garnet

The January stone, at its best, is a deep red, or a red shading to violet. With its burgundy sparkle, it has a dark brilliance found in no other gem.

The color of the garnet drew it naturally to association with blood. It has been considered a sovereign remedy against all kinds of inflammation and bleeding and disorders of the blood. Since the face flushes with anger, the garnet was held as a charm against anger; it was felt to have a calming influence and to be potent against mental disorders. Psychoanalysts take long years to accomplish what one may gain just by the wearing of a garnet.

February: Amethyst

The February stone has a wider range of color, and may be chosen in any shade from light lilac to a deep royal purple. It is a symbol of beauty and of power. It has been traditionally associated with the Princes of the Church, and down the ages has been the chosen royal gem.

Out of the ancient Hebrew comes the thought that the amethyst has the power to prevent nightmares and unpleasant dreams.

With its buried meanings of beauty and power, of power-claiming beauty, the amethyst was one of the earliest stones to be cut in the shape of a heart.

Here is a story of the best known and most heralded of the powers of the amethyst, its potency as a guard against intoxication, against the evil effects of overindulgence.

The god of revelry and wine, Bacchus, we are told, fell in love with a nymph, who sought to avoid his tipsy embrace. (One needs not the gods to picture such a pickle!) This nymph, however, prayed to Diana, goddess vowed to chastity. Diana changed her to an amethyst, with power to withstand the effects of drink. The frustrated Bacchus gave the stone the color of wine. Hence the amethyst was known to the Greeks as “the sobering gem.” It should surely be the token stone of Alcoholics Anonymous, for its very name, a-methyst, comes from the Greek, meaning “against strong drink.”

February, we are told, is the cruellest month; its chill seems to call for the warm coursing of an invigorating drink. It is most fortunate that the stone for this month of biting cold is the amethyst.

March: Aquamarine

March is the month when spring rains begin. It is also the month when of old, after the winter’s frost, men ventured forth again. In the Mediterranean to the south, and from the fjords and headlands of the north, our ancestors pushed their boats out from the shore, in quest of food and far adventure. Thus the gem of March is the aquamarine, whose name means “water of the sea.” And the stone is truly cousin to the waters. At its best it is clear as mid-ocean, and of a brilliant greenish blue. It has been said that whoever wears an aquamarine can do no dirty deed, will all his life be clean of body and spirit. For this reason, the aquamarine is a favorite gift to a newborn baby.

Sea voyagers today, as the Vikings long ago, for protection from the dangers of the deep may wear an aquamarine.

April: Diamond

With the magic of spring, in myriad raindrops lit by the sudden sun, in the glint of young leaves and the brightness of early flowers, April shares the sparkle of the diamond. For springtime and for its precious stone, superlatives are the order of the season. The diamond has the greatest brilliance and most power of reflection of all gems. Its clearness and its cleanness are unsurpassed. It is colorless, yet it can show the entire spectrum of colors.

The god of mines, we are told, created the diamond by pulverizing all other precious stones—ruby, sapphire, emerald, and the gathered host—blending and pressing them into one supreme stone, a crystal that, itself without color, imprisons and releases all the fused colors in its core.

More sentimentally, legend records that in one of his unguarded tender moments, Jupiter, king of the gods, asked the young man who had rocked him in his cradle to name his own reward. The young man asked that he might endure unchanged forever. Jupiter turned him into a diamond.

Increasingly through the centuries has the diamond been valued. Popes have proclaimed its virtues. Musical comedies have sung its praises. Only the flawless diamond, the Hindus pointed out, has the power to heal. Pope Clement VII stated that the greatest curative potency dwelt in the powdered diamond. In the eighteenth century, the French maintained—to the smiling acquiescence of the feminine kind—that the diamond possesses talismanic virtue only when given as a gift; a purchased diamond held no luck for the purchaser.

This symbolism blent with the meaning of the ring to make the diamond the first formal gift to the loved woman upon betrothal. As the seal of an engagement, a solitaire is more effective than the old “writ” or quill-penned bond; it symbolizes at once a bond and an indestructible union of power and beauty.

There is in this gem, though it is not always the most costly of precious stones, the strongest appeal to a woman, and she is fortunate indeed whose claim to the diamond is a birthright.

A diamond in a jewel adorning another beauty sets unrest in a woman’s heart, until she too is asparkle. The diamond is a sign of love; it confers loveliness, or at least it imposes pride. It is the ambition of every woman—and it should be the fortune of everyone Aprilborn—to possess a flawless diamond.

May: Emerald

May is the month when meadows and woods put on their richest garb of green. May is the month of the emerald. The ancients said that the gem was the captured glow of the firefly.

Deep green and translucent, this stone at its best is very rare. It was prized before and beyond all other stones and, for large flawless gems, outvies the diamond. Among church stones it ranks very high; Andreas, Bishop of Caesarea, wrote of the emerald: “Its transparency and beauty may not change; we conceive the stone to signify John the Evangel.”

The potency of the emerald has been extolled in various fields. It was especially prized as a panacea for poisons. In this field, it was an admirable alexipharmic; it protected against poison from fangèd bite, and from the gangrene of wounds. It warded off the dangers of poison artfully secreted in food; also, of poison from eating the wrong food, as toadstools for mushrooms, spoiled food, or just too much food. And it preserved one from that most pestilent of all poisons, the poisoning of the mind.

Still more widespread was the use of the emerald as a talisman and a cure-all for the eye. The calming influence of its dark green hue has been recognized from early times to the modern eye shade. The Roman Emperor Nero, who suffered from an eye ailment, used to hold a specially ground emerald before his eye to relieve the strain, and to enjoy the relaxation that came with its gentle soothing. In the early Renaissance the watchmakers and the goldsmiths, their eyes bleary from long strain at their fine operations, would pause in their work and gaze upon an emerald. The emerald is the only stone that delights the eye without ever bringing fatigue.

Less worthy use was made of the emerald by those ambitious in love. In the Orient, the emerald was the token of love and was often used to adorn the statues of the god or the goddess of love. But later it became associated (as were the gods themselves) with the more passionate aspects of love. Then the emerald was employed—often, of course, as a bribe to the pandar or a gift to the girl, but also as a talisman—by those who sought success in their amours.

It is in its more peaceful aspects, of the green and eye-enchanting colors of May, that one cherishes the emerald.

June: Pearl

What symbol of glistening life could be more significant than the lustrous pearl? It is one of the gems that delights in more than the beholding, for the feel of the soft fine smoothness of the gem is like the petal of a pansy.

While the pearl does not have the brilliance and fire of a well-cut precious stone, it has a soft glow unique among gems, and an amazing variety of glints and shadings around its basic hue, from the purest white to the darkest black. Most desired of its dark shades is the “mordoré,” a greenish coppery iridescence over black. This, however, is so rare that not more than four necklaces of such pearls are known. More frequent among the valued shades are the cream and the light pink pearl.

A pearl is in its very being a symbol, the triumphant growth of beauty from disease. It marks the victory over drawbacks and handicaps, the building of one’s treasure out of one’s disadvantages.

From its gentle color and its smooth shape, the pearl came to be the symbol of modesty and purity. It was endowed with many powers. It brought succor in times of distress. It cemented friendships, out of first likings fashioning firm ties. It strengthened a weak heart and a weak memory. It gave maids courage to resist, and men stoutheartedness to overcome, evil.

Especially in the Orient, where it was first widely known, there have been many uses of the pearl. It was combined in jewels, used alone in many-stranded chains, woven into garments, woven in or hung upon tapestries that decked the walls of palaces. It was embroidered not only on women’s garments, but on priestly and ceremonial robes. There can hardly be a treasure in which the precious stones are not accompanied by pearls.

The soft lustre of the pearl, and its natural shape, inevitably linked it with the teardrop. Indeed, what are pearls but the crystalline tears of the angels, weeping over man’s indiscretions? The Romantics suggested that the pearl may sometimes bring tears. The materialists retorted that the tears were of vexation, shed by those that could not afford the pearls. But every morning of a clear June day, the teardrops are on every blade of grass, the glistening dew that is the brief land-pearl.

July: Ruby

With July, the heat of the sun begins to burn into bright flame the colors of approaching autumn. The range of red is in the ruby, from pale pink to that deep shade known as pigeon-blood. Rarest of all stones, the flawless ruby was endowed with the mightiest powers. The ancients, feeling its hidden forces, called it “the stone of life.”

The wearer of the ruby had naught but courage in his heart; he knew no fear. Well might this be, for in his mind the ruby rendered him invincible. The Russian Czar, Peter the Great, who scorned jewelry, always carried loose rubies in his pocket; he held one clenched in his fist when he gave orders for the exploits that justify his name.

Among the healing virtues ascribed to the ruby is power over ailments of the skin. Held between the palms of the hands, it is supposed to put an instant stop to internal hemorrhage. Worn against the skin a necklace of rubies, strung on silk, similarly made the skin impenetrable to sharpest blade or deadliest venom. In these days of the venomous pen and the deadly fall-out, it is interesting to note that the ruby necklace has again become popular.

To dream of rubies, one may read in the Arabic dream-books (which have many more years of authority than Freud), is to be destined to great felicity. Good news, good fortune, good health, all lie ahead.

Of those who possess a fine ruby, Sir John Mandeville says: “The fortunate owner of a brilliant ruby will live in peace and concord with all men; neither his land nor his rank can be taken from him.”

One cloud only darkens the ruby’s glow. The ruby itself at times is said to cloud; and when the gem grows dull, misfortune is on the wing. The early gemologist, Wolfgang Gabelchower, a seventeenth-century German, compiled a list of misfortunes that befell individuals after their rubies had developed a cloud. He capped his tales with the confirmation of his own sadness: he noticed that his ruby ring was clouded; the next day, of a sudden, his wife died.

Against this evidence I can only set my own observation and experience, and the traditions of a family for four generations involved in the creation of jewels: I know of no instance in which the possession of a ruby was the cause of a misfortune. Quite the contrary: a fine star ruby is a fortune in itself. And fortunate is she who knows the natal glow of a ruby.

August: Sardonyx or Peridot

The reddish brown of the August stone accords with the drying earth, and the leaves that herald the approaching turn of autumn. The sardonyx was the fifth stone in the breastplate of the High Priest of the Hebrews; among Catholics it is given honor as the stone of Saint James.

Physically, the sardonyx was used as a charm against warts, boils, and cramps. Spiritually, it was worn to turn away the evil eye and to prevent the transfer to the wearer of wicked impulses and thoughts. No witch could insinuate evil fancies into the mind guarded by this stone. And the most sardonic remark passed harmlessly by one who wore the sardonyx. On the contrary, wearing the stone made one witty, popular, and happy.

August more generously than the other months permits an alternate birthstone. This is the peridot, an olive green stone so radiant that it sends back flashes even in very dim light. It has therefore been linked with the sun, whose bright rays it ensnares to hold against future darkness.

The peridot was a frequent stone in Egyptian jewels. From that time, it has been used to protect the wearer from the dangers that lurk in darkness, though in the fifteenth century it was maintained that the peridot was effective only if set in purest gold; this combination made it a perfect night talisman.

The stone was a favorite for earrings, as its power over light was transferred to sound, to make even the lightest sound quite audible. It also helped lighten the burden of neuralgic pains.

For warding off evil spirits, however, it was worn only beaded and strung.

Worn by a man, the peridot ensured his generosity, according to countless wives who have bestowed peridot rings upon their husbands.

One of the most beautiful of all peridots is high-set in the Cathedral of Cologne. Mysteriously it shines forth in the darkness of the dome, giving a lasting memory and quiet reflections to all who have seen it.

Those born in August may be happy with sardonyx or peridot.

September: Sapphire

In autumn the eyes turn upward from the bounteous earth, past the reds and yellows and browns of the restless foliage, to the endless dome of the skies. September is the month of the sapphire, which, like the heavens, ranges from a light celestial blue to the deepest velvet-like dark of indigo. It may have the lucid blue and cool brilliance of a mountain lake. Its color seems to well from endless depths, with a rich luminescence.

One of the rarest gems, the fine star sapphire, was held in repute among Egyptian astrologers, who called it the stone of the stars. Wearing a sapphire spun the stars into a favorable conjunction. In more than one section of the world of glamour today, movie “stars” carry on this tradition; sapphire jewelry, especially with a star sapphire, is their most potent talisman. In “the profession” a sapphire is an antidote for stage-fright. It builds confidence, brings success, and at the same time deflects the shafts of envy.

The sapphire has also held place in religious functioning. The Bishop of Rennes, in the twelfth century, hailed this stone as the most appropriate for ecclesiastical use: “The sapphire is like the pure sky, and mighty nature has endowed it with so great a power that it might be called the gem of gems.”

Physically, the sapphire was thought to effect various cures. The scientist von Helmhont praised its power for patients afflicted with boils. Some thought the sapphire, for ills of the eye, even better than the emerald. Thus Charles V of France had a sapphire set in gold, to which he had a handle attached, like a lorgnette, to hold to his inflamed and painful eyes. Queen Elizabeth I of England attributed more general magical powers to a sapphire that she wore and with which she never parted until her death. With it, she foiled countless plots against her life and in England’s most turbulent times lived out her full allotment of three score years and ten.

For the September-born, there is the exultation of the rustle of fall and the sweep of white clouds across a sapphire heaven.

October: Opal

October, with its sharp contrasts, is the month of the opal. This gem may be white, or black, or of that rare and precious kind, the fire opal. In its dark greyish background are imbedded the most luminous colors of red, yellow, green, blue, and purple, that seem to shoot forth rays. The opal does not refract light, being an opaque stone; but its own colors make fine interplay with light.

The Roman historian Pliny called the opal “the captive rainbow.” The wearer of the stone, the same authority assures us, not only will be urbane and courteous but will be free from the spleen of those around. An opal, like a soft answer, turneth away wrath.

For a while, especially in the early nineteenth century, the opal was considered a stone of bad luck; it fell from favor like one dismissed by royalty. Two stories, one from life and one in legend, helped produce this aberration; human credulity completed the work.

The true-life story is that of Alphonso XII of Spain. He gave a ring, bearing a magnificent opal, to his bride. Shortly after, she succumbed to a mysterious malady. His sister, who next wore the ring, died a few days later. His sister-in-law next put the precious opal on her finger; within the month she died. Hoping to end the series of sudden deaths, Alphonso took back the ring and gave it to no one. Alphonso died. The chain was broken when his heirs placed the ring upon a statue of the Virgin.

The legend is a gruesome one recited by Sir Walter Scott in his poem Anne of Geierstein. With mystic shadowings and eerie intimations, it unfolds the story of the wearer of an opal, who shuns pious references and avoids all contact with holy water. One night a watchful person delivers an aspersion of the holy water, and the next day, where the opal-wearer had slept, there rested only a pile of ashes.

Only the unthinking, however, and the wood-knockers shrink from the beautiful opal because of such old wives’ tales. The stouthearted Empress Victoria of England, for example, was extremely fond of opals, and bestowed upon many of her friends jewels in which opals were set. There are no records of sudden deaths at her court. In 1925, at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, Queen Mary, passing a booth tended by a miner’s wife, bought a black opal. It is a stone worthy of queenly favor.

Far from being a sinister omen, the opal is a stone of good fortune. It is especially sought, indeed, by fortunetellers. Some of them gaze upon it to induce that trance-like state in which the future spreads before one like a great mirage; better than a crystal ball are the incessant interplay of colors and the endless iridescence of the stone. An opal on a ring increasingly gives the wearer a view of the future. Unlike the man who considered augurs boring, I confess to a keen interest in what makes them tick, or click. Usually their powers are linked to a special stone, which, like as not, is an opal. The famous European telepath, Eric Jan Hanussen, for example, believed implicitly in the prognostic power of the stone. “Anyone could do what I do,” he once said to me, “if he had my opal.”

Certainly the opal is auspicious for the October-born.

November: Topaz

When nights are growing long and tempers short, when one seeks the consolations of philosophy (or memories of Florida) to store against the cold, November is the month of the topaz. This beautiful stone is at its best when honey-blond.

The topaz was a holy stone, signifying Saint Matthew. Two of the popes, Clement VI and Gregory II, possessed a topaz of great beauty, to which were attributed great healing powers. This stone gave the faithful a further impetus to make the pilgrimage to Rome from the far corners of the world so that their health might return to them with the blessing and the touch of this hallowed stone.

Even on less sacrosanct hands, the topaz was esteemed for its many therapeutic virtues. From earliest times, in accordance with the principles of sympathetic magic, the yellow color of the stone made it ideal for the cure of those afflicted with jaundice and other ailments of the liver. As the November stone, it was used in the Middle Ages to cure the contagions that begin to spread with the onset of cold weather. Its soothing color added it to the stones that were esteemed good for the eyes; the topaz was moistened with wine and laid upon aching eyelids. It also, many felt, cured diseases of the mind and helped the distraught to regain their mental balance.

The birthday wearer of the topaz is likely to be an upright soul, with good judgment fortified by wisdom. Faith and a deep spirit of charity are within its bestowal, gifts important in November’s shortening days and chilly blasts. It is clear that one of the most gracious of all stones is the topaz.

December: Turquoise

December, the last month of the dying year, chill with the shivering threat of its dying, needs a great virtue to preserve it till it is overtaken by the touch of January and the promise of the new year. This great virtue the ancients found in the turquoise.

Among the ancient peoples of many lands, it was the common practice to bury turquoises with the bodies of their monarchs and their chiefs, to tide them over the pitchy paths of transfer and bear them safely to the new world and the new life beyond the tomb. In the pyramids of Egypt, in the Aztec tombs, in the mounds of Mexico, jewels and beads of turquoise abound.

At the beginning of life in this world, too, the turquoise is welcomed; there is still no better good-luck gift to a newborn child than a necklace of turquoise beads. It is significant that December is the birth month of the Holy Child, for whose nativity the gifts no doubt included turquoise.

Since the turquoise is comparatively soft among stones, it can be readily engraved; magic inscriptions, charms, and prayers have been cut upon it, to add their power to its auspicious glow. The turquoise is thus a protective stone. December being a precipitous month, when snow and ice are prelude to a fall, with hillsides hazardous and even a level walk a place where one is prone to slip, the turquoise is an excellent talisman against falling. In fact, the saddles of horses have been set with turquoise, to keep the steed surefooted on journey or in battle. St. George was secure against a fall in his battle with the dragon; paintings and tapestries of the valiant saint show a turquoise in the hilt of his great sword.

Opaque though it is, the turquoise, because of its bright coloring, outshines most other stones. Its protective value may extend even to material things. It was the Hindu Tagore who arose from his pondering of less mundane concerns to report that, to ensure enormous wealth, one should look long at the new moon, then instantly fix one’s eyes on a turquoise.