Amethyst

Amethyst is a purple quartz found most commonly in Brazil, Canada, and East Africa. The color can range from light violet to deep purple or can be nearly colorless. Amethyst has been prized for jewelry for hundreds of years, and before a huge cache was discovered in South America, it was valued as a precious gemstone. It is now classified as semiprecious.

It is one of the stones most esteemed by healers. The legendary American psychic Edgar Cayce recommended it for control and temperance. Amethyst is believed to aid in the production of hormones and regulate the circulatory, immune, and metabolic systems. Amethyst is treasured for its centering and calming properties and seems to connect directly to the mind, fighting emotional swings and depression. Aquarians and Pisceans can count it as their birthstone, and this might be a very good thing because the Fishes frequently struggles with substance-abuse issues, and amethyst can conquer drinking and other sensory indulgences, such as out-of-control sexuality. Amethyst also helps with metal focus, intuition, meditation, and memory.

In early Renaissance, amethyst was held to have the power to prevent evil, at least evil thoughts, and to offer protection in time of war. The lovely purple gem continues to reign as one of the most popular of all stones. Little wonder, since it is such an aid to our physical and emotional health.

Amber

The color amber is named after the stone, indicating how long people have been using this gem. A fossilized resin, amber comes from the sap of trees dating back millions of years. It frequently contains other fossils—insects, plant fragments, and rocks. Amber is prized for its honey gold color, but Baltic amber has a green color. Amber has been held in high regard as a power and protection talisman for thousands of years and has been used just as long as a healing stone, said to draw out disease, particularly afflictions of thyroid, inner ear, spleen, brain and lungs. You should clean amber after you use it because it draws in energy, which could include bad or negative energy from the body or the environment. Due to its organic origins, amber is an earth stone. It is so grounding and centering that you should not wear it all the time.

Amazonite

Resembling the light green color of its namesake river, the Amazon, this potash feldspar, or microcline, is found in Russia, North America, and, naturally, Brazil. Green stones are frequently associated with the nervous system, and so is amazonite. This mentally stimulating crystal has the marvelous property of making the wearer more intuitive, smarter, or at least more clever: it provides focus. Amazonite should be held to your forehead to open your third eye for greater psychic ability. This is a stone for artists and is especially helpful for men.

Alexandrite

First found in the 1800s in Russia, this stone was names after the country’s czar, Alexander. It has since been found in Brazil and Sri Lanka. A mysterious green, alexandrite shines red under light. The phrase “emerald by day, ruby by night” illustrates the color changes of alexandrite. This stone can be of very great value and command a great price if the colors are pure. Alexandrite is good for the nerves and is calming to the wearer. This stunning stone is also a confidence booster and makes a great ring for making a commitment to yourself.

Albite

This is the sister of the polished moonstone. A milky-colored stone with blue shading, it can be found in Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Albite is helpful for immune system and breathing problems and can assist the spleen and thyroid. This translucent stone calms the wearer and fights depression. A chunk of albite in your bedroom will help banish the blues.

Agate

Agate, which comes from the chalcedony group of stones, was beloved by Egyptians for its side-by-side stripes. These stripes occur because of tiny crystals lined up in bands. Agate has a translucent quality and is found all over the world. It is used for grounding and balance and is said to enable higher consciousness. Agate is a stone of confidence and can make the wearer feel a better sense of self and engender more self-understanding. An agate necklace or ring is a powerful centering stone to wear at important meetings or presentations.

Botswana agate is named for the region in which it is found. Botswana agate is gray in color and looks smooth and waxy. This is a powerful tool for anyone dealing with smoke—whether a firefighter or a smoker who wants to quit the habit. Botswana agate is good for the skin, the lungs, and the respiratory system and can also fight depression.

Moss agate is usually a dark color: brown, black, or blue. Moss agate comes from India, North America, or Australia. it is named as such because it has patterning in light-colored clusters that resembles moss. This is a cleansing stone and can bring balance to both sides of the brain, therefore reducing depression or emotional ailments. Moss agate is also useful for treating hypoglycemia. It is the stone of farmers, botanists, and midwives—those who work with the earth. It also aids intuition and creativity and can reduce inhibition and shyness. If you are a speaker, singer, or performer who occasionally suffers stage fright, moss agate us your gem to wear.

Abalone

Abalone is the beautifully iridescent lining of a seashell—a product of our oceans and the end result of a living thing. Abalone is fished in California and in the warm, tropical coastal waters of Japan, China, and South America. Abalone is used to heal the heart and the muscles tissue, and to aid digestion. Use abalone as a dish to hold your sage smudging-stick for clearing energy at home. This gorgeous organic gem is a beautiful and sacred token for your altar or shrine at home. Just looking at abalone gives a sense of inner peace.

Zircon—Legacy of Hyacinth

Blue zircon is a thread of the fabric of Greek mythology. In the tale of the Greek youth Hyacinth, a blue hyacinth flower grew in the place where he died. In a less charming but equally fascinating fable, zircon was used for exorcism. The methodology was simple—a cross was cut into a loaf of freshly baked wheat bread. Then, a zircon was used to trace along the cross shape before the bread was eaten to drive away the evil spirits.

Turquoise—Turkish Stone

                                          

One pretty legend relating to turquoise is that is generated by rainbow touching the earth. Turquoise seems to have always had a mythic link to horses, beginning with the medieval belief that anyone wearing this stone would be protected from falling off the animal. Sir John Mandeville’s Lapidaire further claimed that this blue-green stone prevented horses from the harm of drinking cold water when they were sweaty and hot. Turkish equestrians went so far as to attach this crystal to the bridles of their horses as a talisman for the animals.

An unusual story about turquoise comes from the court of Emperor Rudolph II, whose physician was given a specimen that had faded completely. The doctor’s father had given it to him with these words of wisdom, “Son, as the virtues of the turquoise are said to exist only when the stone has been given, I will try its efficacy by bestowing it upon thee.” The young man set it in a ring and in one month’s time, the splendid color was completely restored.

Topaz—Saint Hildegard’s Cure

Sailors once used this golden gem to shed light of the water during moonless nights. Topaz was also used as an aphrodisiac and to prevent the excesses of love, functions that certainly don’t seem to go together. Ground into a dust and mixed with rose water, topaz was used to treat excessive bleeding. Similarly, powdered topaz mixed with wine was a treatment for insanity once upon a time. The ancients used topaz to guard against magicians by setting it in a gold bracelet and wearing it on the left arm. Saint Hildegard of Bingen, who suggested topaz was an aid to poor vision, placed the stone in wine for three straight days and then gently rubbed it on the eye. The wine could then be drunk—after removing the stone, of course. This is one of the first written records of a gem elixir. Medieval physicians also used topaz to treat the plague and its accompanying stores, and several miracles were attributed to a particular stone that had been in the possession of Pope Clement VI and Pope Gregory II.

Star Sapphire—Giver of Great Luck

Sir Richard Burton always carried a star sapphire with him as a talisman while he traveled through Asia and the Middle East. According to Burton, the stone brought him excellent horses and ensured that he received attention right when he needed it. It does seem to have worked, as he is still receiving accolades and consideration long after his passing. A generous soul, he would show his star sapphire to the friendly folk who had helped him, since this gem is a giver of good luck.

Sapphire—Eye of Horus

The ancient Persians believed that Earth rested on a giant sapphire and the blue sky was a reflection of its color. The Greeks identified white sapphire with the god Apollo. They deemed this stone very important indeed: The oracles at Delphi used it to make their prophecies. The Egyptians designated sapphire as the eye of Horus. Star sapphire is especially prized, as the lines crossing the blue of the stone were believed to represent faith, hope, and charity.

Sapphire has been used as an eye cure for millennia. Medieval scientist Sir Albert the Great recorded incidents in which he had seen sapphire used with success as a healer, stating that it was necessary for the stone to be dipped in cold water prior to surgery and afterward, as well. A contemporary of Albert the Great’s by the name of von Helmont advocated using sapphire as a remedy for plague boils by rubbing this gem on the afflicted spots. He did offer the disclaimer that the condition could not be too advanced and explained the science behind his cure with the early theory of magnetism, in which a force in the sapphire pulled “the pestilential virulence and contagious poison from the infected part.”

Part of the myth and magic of sapphires is that they offer a great deal of myth and magic. Magicians and seers love this stone because it adds to their sensitivities and enables them to augur better. Historically, it was regarded as a gem of nobility, and any regal personage wearing this noble gem would be protected from harm, particularly the threat of poison. Another dubious legend is that Moses wrote the Ten Commandments on tables of sapphire, but it is more likely that they would have been carved into the soft and more readily available lapis lazuli. Even with God on his side, where would Moses have gotten sapphires of such massive size and flatness? Sapphire remained popular with the religious; one notable instance was when the twelfth-century bishop of Rennes commended this gem as an ecclesiastical ring due to its obvious connection to the heavens above. The holy— and legal—minded also favored this stone as it was believed to help counteract deception. Once, sapphires were believed to have gender. Dark sapphires were “male,” and light stones were “female.”

Ruby—Mother of the Earth’s Blood

In the tenth century, Chinese gem carvers engraved depictions of dragons and snakes of the surfaces of rubies to gain money and power. In India, worshippers gave rubies as an offering to their god Krishna, and in China, the stones paid homage to Buddha.

In his famed Lapidary, Philippe de Valois lavished praise on the royally red rock, writing that “the books tell us the beautiful clear and fine ruby is the lord of stones; it is the gem of gems and surpasses all other precious stones in virtue.” Sir John Mandeville similarly evoked his opinion that ownership of a ruby would accord safety from all peril and wonderful relationships with friends and neighbors. He further recommended that rubies be worn on the left side of the body.

In Myanmar, ruby was viewed as a stone of invincibility, and soldiers had a radical approach to harnessing its protective power—before marching into battle, they would embed the gem into their skins! They believed the color “ripened” inside the earth. Prehistoric peoples believed that rubies were crystallized drops of the mother of the earth’s blood.

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.

Pearls—Tears of the Gods

Pearls have a romantic past. The Chinese regarded them as the physical manifestation of the souls of oysters. One of the prettier names given to the pearl was margarithe, meaning “child of light.” The Arabs called them tears of the gods and said they were formed when raindrops fell into oyster shells. In India, pearls were the perfect wedding gift, promising devotion and fertility. A Hindu wedding ritual involved the piercing of the perfect pearl, a virginity ceremony.

One less-than-successful cure for the plague was this ancient recipe: six grains of powdered pearl in water mixed with ash-tree sap. One remedy for excessive bleeding was a glass of water with one part burned pearl-powder. Snuffing the same was a treatment for headaches. Pearl oil was used for nervous conditions, and pearl poultice was even used for leprosy! Other less glamorous uses for pearl potions were treatments for hemorrhoids and poisoning. An elixir made with one-half a pearl grain was supposed to cure impotence and be an overall aphrodisiac. In bygone days, people were so fond of grinding up pearls that they even used them in toothpaste!

Opal—Cupid’s Stone

In the classical era, humans believed that opals were pieces of rainbows that had fallen to the ground. They also dubbed this exquisite iridescent gem Cupid’s stone because they felt it looked like the love god’s skin. The Arabs believed opals fell from heaven in bright flashes of lightning, thus gaining their amazing fire and color play. The Romans saw opals as symbols of purity and optimism. They believed this stone could protect people from diseases. The Roman name for opal is so beautiful and evocative—cupid paedros, meaning “a child as beautiful as love.”

Saint Albert the Great was one of the most learned men of the thirteenth century, a student of the natural sciences as well as theology, literature, and languages. He fancied mineralogy and waxed on about opal: “The porphanus is a stone which is in the crown of the Roman Emperor, and none like it has ever been seen; for this very reason it is called porphanus. It is of a subtle vinous tinge, and its hue is as though pure white snow flashed and sparkled with the color of bright, ruddy wine and was overcome by this radiance. It is translucent stone, and there is a tradition that, formerly, it shone in the nighttime, but now, in our age, it does not sparkle in the dark, it is said to guard the regal honor.”  

Opals had many superstitions attached to them. There was the belief that an opal wrapped in a bay-laurel leaf could cure any eye disease and combat weak hearts and infection. In the Middle Ages, opal was called ophthalmios, or “eye stone.” The great Scandinavian epic the Edda contained verses about a stone forged by the smithy of the gods to form the eye of children, doubtless a reference to opal. In olden days, it was thought that an opal would change color according to the mood and health of the owner, going dull and colorless when the owner died. Blond women favored opals because they believed they could keep their hair light in color. (I trust they were not using black or dark blue opals!)

It was ever believed that an opal could render the wearer invisible, making this the patron stone of thieves. Black opal has always had top ranking among opals, being the rarest and most dramatic type. One legend told that if a love relationship was consummated with only one party wearing black opal, the gem would soak up the passion and store it in its glow.

Moonstone—Prophecy and Passion

In olden times, it was believed that wearing a moonstone during the waning moon would offer prophetic abilities. The people of India have held moonstone as holy for thousands of years, but they had a superstition against displaying the sacred stone except on a cloth of yellow, the most spiritual color in their culture. The Indians also believed moonstone was very potent in the bedroom and not only aroused enormous passion but also gave lovers the ability to read their future together. The only problem was that they had to hold the moonstone in their mouths during the full moon to enjoy these magical properties.

Malachite—Stone of Juno

This stripy green stone belonged to the Greek goddess Venus. The Greeks believed it had major magical powers when set in copper jewelry. The Romans switched things around a bit and turned malachite over to Juno, cutting it into triangular shapes to indicate her sacred peacock symbol. My favorite bit of malachite lore is that drinking from a goblet cut from this stone supposedly gave the imbiber understanding of the language of animals!

Magnetite—Herculean Stone

The ancients were fascinated with magnetite and its mysterious workings. The great Pliny wrote that the first instance of the discovery of magnetite, commonly known as lodestone, happened when a Cretan shepherd was walking on Mount Ida with his flock, and the nails of his shoes clung to a rock in the field. The shepherd’s name was Magnes. Pliny also recorded the tale of Ptolemy, who wished to make an iron statue of a woman for a temple dedicated to his wife and his sister. The trick was that he wanted to use the new art of magnetism to suspend the statue in the air without any visible means of support! Unfortunately for us, Ptolemy and his architect, the Alexandrian Dinocrates, died before its completion. Otherwise, there might have been an eighth wonder of the world. Lodestone, the polarized version of magnetite, was held to be a protection against spells and other magical mischief. The ancients also believed that a small piece of lodestone beneath the pillow would be a testimony to virtue. Alexander the Great gave his soldiers lodestone to defend against unseen evil spirits.

Lapis Lazuli—Babylonian Blue

Ancient Babylonians and their south-of-the-Mediterranean neighbors, the Egyptians, could not get enough of this bright blue jewel. The Egyptians named it chesbet and usually included it on their list of VIP items to be paid to nations under the dominion of the great kingdom of the Nile. The Babylonians, who piled lapis lazuli high in their tributes to Egypt, had access to a plentitude of this stone because they were the earliest people to mine it—back in 4,000 B.C.!

Lapis lazuli was so holy to the Egyptians that the high priest himself worse a pendant of the blue stone in the shape of their goddess of truth, Mat. The Egyptians seemingly wished to swim in seas of lapis, as they used it daily— as adornment, for funeral masks and tools, and as an ingredient in their art, traditions that lasted for many generations into the future. Lapis has the unusual ability to hold its pigment even when it is ground up, which leads to what is perhaps my favorite of all the myriad and wonderful uses of lapis lazuli: eye makeup. Can you imagine getting ready for a big night out by painting your eyelids peacock blue with a very expensive lapis lazuli-laced eye shadow? I love the idea, and I’m sure Cleopatra did, too.

Jasper—Building Block of Heaven

According to the Bible, the top of the holy walls of New Jerusalem, or heaven, contain 4,780 bricks encrusted with 1,327 hand-cut, polished red jasper stones. Jasper is mentioned throughout the Bible, particularly as a protective stone in the breastplates of the priests of Aaron. Evidently, the ancients considered it to be an extremely powerful stone. Even God is referred to metaphorically as a red jasper stone in one interpretation of Revelation chapter 4, verse 3, which states, “And He who sat there was like a jasper and a sardius stone in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, in appearance like and emerald.” (NKJV, www.Biblelight.org)

The ancients also favored jasper for curing snakebites, repelling evil spirits, and controlling the weather by bringing rain. “Lithica,” a fourth-century epic poem, praises this stone: “The gods propitious hearken to his prayers, who’ever the polished glass-green Jasper wears: His parsed glebe they’ll saturate with rain, and send for shower to soak the thirsty plain.”

Jade—The Concentrated Essence of Love

Jade has been called the concentrated essence of love. The French literary legend Voltaire, author of Candide, was involved in a kidney-stone scandal caused by the innocent generosity of a Mademoiselle Paulet, who gave Voltaire a lovely jade bracelet. She wanted him to be cured in the same way she had, but French society thought it was a token of love, and his reputation was irrevocably damaged.

I always thought jade was a word of Asian origin until I learned better. It comes from the Spanish word piedra de hijada, translating to “stone of the flank,” a name prompted by the Indian use of jade as a cure for kidney disease. Jade also served as an aid to ancient midwives and birth mothers, and on the opposite end of the spectrum of life, the Egyptians, Chinese, and Mayans placed a small piece of jade into the mouths of the dead.

The erudite world-exploring nobleman Sir Walter Raleigh wrote this about jade: “These Amazones have likewise great stores of these plates of gold, which they recover in exchange, chiefly for a kind of greene stone, which the Spaniards call Piedra Hijada, and we use for spleene stones and for the disease of the stone we also esteem them. Of these I saw divers in Guiana, and commonly every King or Casique had one, which theire wife for the most part weare, and the esteeme them as great jewels.”

Iron Pyrite—Fool’s Gold

Iron pyrite was supreme in early Mexico, where it was polished into mirrors for shamanic scrying, a method of looking into the future and the past. These people also carved sacred symbols into these vessels of inter- dimensional viewing. 

Garnet—Noah’s Lantern

Garnets have much lore around them. The ancients believed them to have protective powers that prevented travelers from accidents and mishaps and also kept the sleeping from nightmares and bad dreams. It is said that the fiery glow of a garnet kept Noah and his ark afloat. A popular biblical gem, garnet was one of the stones used by King Solomon in his breastplate. In Asia, garnets were used as bullets, most notably in the rebellion in India in 1892. Garnet’s name comes from the Greek word for pomegranate, and the gem is associated with a Greek myth surrounding this fruit. Persephone, the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, tasted three seeds from the pomegranate, dooming herself to spend half of the year in the underworld, married to Hades, god of the underworld.

Emeralds—Popular Protectors

Emeralds are believed to have been brought to Earth from the planet Venus. This precious stone is one of the only ones that retains its value, according to gemologists and jewelers, even if it is deeply flawed. Emeralds have a richly varied mythology attached to their glowing green history. For thousands of years, Hindu physicians in India regarded this stone as a benefit to many stomach-related illnesses—it was an appetite stimulant, a curative for dysentery, a laxative, and a treatment for too much stomach-irritating bile. In India of old, they also believed emeralds could drive away demons or rid a body of ill spirits.

Another antiquated belief about emeralds is that they portended events from the future, rather like scrying, or seeing things in a mirror or the glassy surface of the gem. Emeralds were thought to be foes to sorcerers, a belief stemming from a legend that emeralds vanquished all wizardry in their wake. The ancients loved emeralds and connected them with the eyes. Theophrastus, a student of Plato’s, taught that emeralds protected the eyesight. He was taken so seriously that engravers kept emeralds on their tables to look at to refresh their eyes.

Egyptians valued emeralds almost beyond any other stone and claimed their goddess, Isis, wore a great emerald. Anyone who looked upon Isis’s green jewel was assured of a safe trip to the underworld, the land of the dead. Egypt was the main source for emeralds until the sixteenth century. The Cleopatra mines, south of Cairo, were the mother lode, and emerald traders from as far away as India sought the stones, obtained at great human cost under wretched conditions of extreme heat and dangerous underground shafts. I hope the common belief that these stones also protected people from any poison and all venomous serpents was true here. Emeralds were anathemas to snakes, which would supposedly be struck blind by merely looking upon the stones.

In ancient Rome, emeralds were quite sought after by the wealthy class. Nero watched the games in the Coliseum through a set of priceless spectacles made from emeralds. However, with the capture of South America by Pizarro and Cortés, the Spanish in the 1500s made emeralds more available to the Europeans, who had an insatiable appetite for jewels and gold. The discovery in 1558 of the Muzo mine in Colombia uncovered emeralds of incredible beauty and size, prompting the Spanish conquistadors to take over the mine and declare the natives slaves. Perhaps part of Montezuma’s revenge involved the seizure of the emerald mines. Emeralds were a popular cure for dysentery in the sixteenth century when worn touching the torso or held in the mouth. As with all very valuable stones, the people who actually mine them have no access to them unless they are smuggled out of the mines. According to a recent article in National Geographic, however, this is done more frequently than one might think, especially with larger stones. “Almost every high-quality emerald was smuggled at some point in its history,” according to National Geographic.

Diamonds—Fragments of the Stars

I love the charming legend that Europeans first discovered diamonds from Africa in the pouch of a shaman, who used them for healing magic. Prehistoric peoples believed they were fragments of the stars and teardrops of the gods.

In the most ancient times, diamonds were worn simply as adornment in their unpolished and rough state. As you might easily guess, diamonds are thought to bring luck, but there is another school of thought purported by diamondphobes who believe that these gems bring sure misfortune. The legend of the Hope diamond is a fascinating history wherein every owner of the royal rock was bankrupted until it was nestled in the safe of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Diamonds are associated with lightning and with ensuring victory to warriors wearing them. Diamonds are thought to be powerful enough to fend off madness and even to stave off the devil himself ! The medieval mystic Rabbi Benoni believed that diamonds were conducive to true spiritual joy and had power over the very stars and planets in the heavens.

A curiosity regarding most of the lore about diamonds is that they are supposed to be effective only if received as gifts; the outright purchase of a diamond is said to ruin the magic. I don’t agree on this; if I could afford a diamond for myself, I know it would bring me enormous fortune!

Renaissance astrologer and scholar Gerolamo Cardano was wary of the crown jewel of crown jewels. He proclaimed this about the diamond: “It is believed to make the wearer unhappy; its effects therefore are the same upon the mind as that of the sun upon the eye, for the latter rather dims than strengthens the sight. It indeed engenders fearlessness, but there is nothing that contributes more to our safety than prudence and fear; therefore it is better to fear.” Alchemist Pierre de Boniface was far more confident about this queen of crystals, claiming it could render anyone wearing one invisible! Still, other medieval healers and humbugs claimed diamonds could cure poisoning and were themselves a powerful poison if ground up. Perhaps the most obvious unfounded claim regarding diamonds is that they could overcome and cure the plague.

Chrysoprase—Love of Truth

Emanuel Swedenborg, a seventeenth-century Swedish theologian, scientist, philosopher, and metaphysician, credited this apple-green chalcedony with giving people a love of the truth. Other lore regarding chrysoprase is that the stone offers a most rare capability to give a man set to be hanged a sure escape from his executioner. All he has to do, supposedly, is place this crystal in his mouth.

Chalcedony—Stone of Protection

Chalcedony, made of Earth’s ancient living things, has incredible powers of protection. In the eighteenth century, it was used to chase off bogeymen or anything that went bump in the night. Associated with the Holy Grail, chalcedony was a favorite material for chalices and was believed to provide protection even from poison.