Gemstones and their attributions

The attribution of stones to planets and signs is old and well attested in the sources. It is also inconsistent — and the reason for that is instructive.

Where the attributions come from

Ancient and medieval natural philosophy assigned everything material to the planets: metals, plants, animals, parts of the body — and stones. The method was called the doctrine of signatures, and it worked by resemblance. A stone with a golden sheen belongs to the Sun, a red one to Mars, a dark and heavy one to Saturn.

The familiar basic attributions have stayed largely stable over the centuries: Sun and gold, Moon and silver, Mars and iron, Venus and copper, Saturn and lead. With stones, matters quickly become inconsistent.

Why the lists contradict one another

Three reasons, and all of them are matters of language:

• The names have shifted. What the ancient sources call sapphire is often lapis lazuli. Carbuncle names no particular stone, but red stones in general.
• Telling stones apart by mineral is recent. Older sources sort them by colour, hardness and place of origin — categories that do not coincide with ours.
• The chains of translation are long. Greek into Arabic into Latin into the vernaculars, and at every step a translator making decisions.

Anyone who compares two lists and finds contradictions is therefore usually not looking at two traditions, but at two ways of resolving the same unclear names.

What the sources claim and what they do not

The classical texts speak of correspondence, not of effect. A stone belongs to a planet as a plant and a metal belong to it — it stands in the same series. The step from “belongs to” to “helps against” is often not taken at all in the sources, and it is only the modern accounts that add it.

A necessary note

Stones are no substitute for medical treatment. That is not a formality: there are documented cases in which a treatable illness went untreated because something else was trusted instead.

Anyone who uses stones as a sign — as something that calls an intention to mind — is doing nothing questionable. Anyone who uses them as a treatment is doing something questionable.

Further reading

Anyone who wants to trace the attributions back historically will find them in the medieval lapidaries and in Arabic natural philosophy. It is a well-researched field within the history of science — and a good deal more interesting than the modern advice literature written about it.

See also: the planets and their correspondences.