Peridot—Pele’s Teardrop

Peridot is one of the most misunderstood gems on the planet. It is really a combination of two other stones, fayalite and forsterite, with a bit of iron, a dash of nickel and a pinch of chromium. The world’s oldest source of the green charmer was the mist-shrouded desert island of Zeberget, also called Saint John’s Island, off Egypt’s coast. Unfortunately for the peridot miners, this island was a pit of deadly, venomous snakes! The pharaohs so treasured their peridot that any uninvited visitors to the island were put to death. Nowadays, the only residents of Zerberget are a few turtles and some seabirds. Perhaps the stones from the breastplate of Solomon and his high priest, Aaron, came from this odd little island. Peridot was one of the twelve stones believed to have the power to create miracles for the rituals of these priests and to help protect them in battle. Furthermore, Solomon drank soma (an intoxicating plant juice) from cups carved from peridot, thus gaining his wealth of wisdom.

Now that the mines on Zeberget are no more, most peridot is mined by Native Americans in Arizona and in the exotic locales of Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and the Kashmir Himalayas. Peridot has also been found in some meteorites. In the 1920s, a farmer in Kansas awoke one day to find lumps of peridot-studded meteorite in his fields. Maybe you really have to follow the peridot road to get to Oz!

It is believed that Cleopatra, queen of the Nile, adorned herself with high-quality peridots instead of emeralds. The Romans called peridot the evening emerald. This stone, brought back as booty by the Knights Templar and Crusaders, was used to adorn cathedrals in medieval times. One the Shrine of the Magi in Germany’s Cologne Cathedral, there is a huge 200-carat peridot.

The powers of peridot are believed to be twice as intense if it is set in gold. Peridot was thought to have the power to drive away evil, and if you are so lucky as to have a goblet carved out of peridot, any medicine you might drink out of it will have magical healing powers. In Hawaii, the lore of this gem is that the goddess Pele cried tears that turned into peridots.