Crystal and gemstone lore
What amethyst, rose quartz, moonstone and other stones have been believed to do, from Pliny and the medieval lapidaries to modern crystal healing, and where each belief came from.
Test yourself: Crystal and gemstone lore quiz
Quartz
- AmethystAmethyst is purple quartz whose Greek name, amethystos, was read as “a remedy against drunkenness”. Pliny the Elder recorded that belief in the first century AD, and called it one of the magicians’ lies.
- Rose quartzRose quartz is pink quartz, sold today as the stone of love. That reading belongs to modern crystal healing, whose popularity Carl Sagan traced to books of the 1980s; tests of crystal healing have found nothing beyond suggestion.
- Clear quartzClear quartz, or rock crystal, is colourless quartz. Pliny the Elder believed it was a kind of ice, which is how it got its Greek name; John Dee used a crystal ball to call angels, and modern crystal healing credits it with an energy no test has found.
- CitrineCitrine is yellow to orange quartz. Before modern gemology it was confused with topaz, so it has little lore of its own, and most citrine on sale today is amethyst that has been heated.
Chalcedony
- CarnelianCarnelian is red-orange chalcedony, one of the oldest stones engraved as seals. Ancient Egyptians made heart amulets of it, Islamic tradition held that the Prophet wore a carnelian seal ring, and a medieval Spanish lapidary said it gave a timid speaker courage.
- OnyxOnyx is banded chalcedony, its layers often black and white, and its Greek name means “fingernail”. In lapidary lore it was the stone of discord: worn at the neck, it was said to cool love and part lovers.
- BloodstoneBloodstone is dark green chalcedony spotted with red. Pliny the Elder called it heliotropium, “sun-turner”, for a belief that it turned the sun’s light red in water; Christian legend later read the red spots as the blood of Christ.
Feldspars
- MoonstoneMoonstone is a feldspar whose glow seems to move across it like moonlight. Hindu mythology holds it is made of solidified moonbeams, and Kunz recorded the belief in India that, held in the mouth at full moon, it let lovers read their future.
- LabradoriteLabradorite is a grey feldspar that flashes blue, green and gold. An Inuit story from Labrador says the colours are northern lights trapped in the rock, partly freed when a hunter drove his harpoon into the stone.
Other stones
- GarnetGarnet is a group of minerals, best known as a deep red gem. Its name comes from the pomegranate, and for most of its history a red garnet was a “carbuncle”, the glowing red stone of Pliny and of dragon legends.
- JadeJade is two minerals, nephrite and jadeite, that China has carved for more than 3,000 years. In Chinese tradition it stands for virtue and heaven; the Aztecs held it the most precious of materials, a symbol of life and purity.
- Lapis lazuliLapis lazuli is a deep blue stone flecked with gold-coloured pyrite, from mines in Afghanistan that GIA calls the oldest known gemstone sources. Babylon and Egypt prized it, and Pliny knew it as sapphiros.
- TurquoiseTurquoise is a sky-blue to green stone, named “Turkish stone” in medieval French. It is sacred in Navajo (Diné) tradition and was the national stone of Persia, and from the thirteenth century European lapidaries said it saved its wearer from falls.
- ObsidianObsidian is natural volcanic glass, black and glossy. Pliny the Elder named it after Obsius, who found it in Ethiopia; the Aztecs polished it into mirrors, and John Dee used an Aztec obsidian mirror to call spirits.
About crystal and gemstone lore
People have credited stones with powers for as long as anyone has written about them, and the written record opens with a sceptic. In book 37 of his Natural History, in the first century AD, Pliny the Elder set down what the magicians claimed for each gem, that amethyst kept off drunkenness and that bloodstone made its bearer invisible, and called the claims falsehood and “impudent effrontery”. Each page here starts from that documented history and gives the modern readings afterwards, as modern.
The lapidaries
A lapidary is a book on the virtues of stones. George Frederick Kunz traces the tradition in The Curious Lore of Precious Stones (1913). Pliny’s material reached Christian Europe through Isidore of Seville, and at the end of the eleventh century Marbode, Bishop of Rennes, drew on Pliny for a poem on the virtues of stones that was translated into Old French in the twelfth century and supplied much of what later medieval writers said. Arabic lapidaries carried a second stream, which Kunz thought preserved lost Indian beliefs alongside Alexandrian ones. Kunz himself was vice president of Tiffany & Co., and his part in selling the British Museum’s crystal skull is told on the clear quartz page.
Crystal healing, a modern belief
Today’s meanings mostly come from crystal healing. The religion scholar Joseph Laycock notes that Carl Sagan traced the modern popularity of crystals to books written in the 1980s by Katrina Raphaell, who founded the Crystal Academy of Advanced Healing Arts in 1986, and he places crystals in what the historian Catherine Albanese called metaphysical religion. Practitioners hold that each crystal has its own healing properties, carried by a “subtle energy”. The psychologist Chris French, of Goldsmiths, University of London, notes that no one has measured that energy. In his experiments, people holding a glass copy reported the same sensations as people holding real quartz, and he put the sensations down to suggestion. The pages give such beliefs as their holders’ own and attach no health claim to any stone.
Living traditions
Some stones belong to traditions that are not historical curiosities: jade in China, turquoise in Navajo life, and the Inuit story of labradorite. Those pages give each tradition in its own words or a museum’s. The practical side, which stone belongs to which month, is on whatdoesthissymbolmean.com’s birthstone pages.
Sources
- Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, book 37, chapter 40, Translated by John Bostock and H. T. Riley, 1855, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, book 37, chapter 40 (Amethystos)
- Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, book 37, chapter 60, Translated by John Bostock and H. T. Riley, 1855, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, book 37, chapter 60 (Heliotropium)
- The Curious Lore of Precious Stones, by George Frederick Kunz, 1913, J. B. Lippincott (Project Gutenberg edition), ch. 1 (the literature of gem lore)
- The Skull of Doom: Acquisition History, Jane MacLaren Walsh (Smithsonian Institution), Archaeology (Archaeological Institute of America), 2010, Acquisition history
- What’s behind the enduring popularity of crystals?, Joseph P. Laycock (Texas State University), The Conversation, 6 July 2022, Religion News Service, Opening and section “Mining the metaphysical”
- Romance in the stones? The power of crystals vs the power of suggestion, Chris French, 21 April 2021, The Skeptic (UK), Introduction; the 1999 and 2001 studies
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research