Jade
Jade 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.
Meaning
Jade is the name for two different minerals, nephrite and jadeite, as George Frederick Kunz explained in 1913. GIA describes Chinese jade carving as a tradition that has lasted more than 3,000 years, and notes that Asian buyers have never lost their fascination for the stone. The English name came through Spanish, from piedra de ijada, “stone of the pain in the side”, because Spanish explorers saw people in the Americas holding it to their sides against pain, GIA notes.
Origin and history
Kunz found jade written into the Chinese script itself. The earliest form of the character for “precious”, he wrote, shows a house with jade beads, shell and a jar inside, and the oldest form of the character for “king” seems to be a string of jade beads, still in his day a mark of high rank in China. GIA gives Confucius’s saying that jade is like virtue and that its brightness is heaven. In Chinese state worship, Kunz records, six jade tablets of different colours served for heaven, earth and the four directions: a dark green round tablet for Heaven, an octagonal yellow one for Earth. Confucius himself, troubled at the failure of his teaching, is said to have played the “musical stone”.
Jade was the most precious material on the other side of the world as well. The Metropolitan Museum of Art dates Olmec jade figures on the Gulf Coast of Mexico to 1000 BC, and says that by the time the Spanish reached Tenochtitlan jade was reserved for gods and royalty and was a symbol of life and purity.
Jade amulets in China
Kunz described the amulets of his day. A jade padlock hung on a child’s neck was meant to bind the child to life and keep away illness, and jade amulets were placed in the mouths of the dead to protect them. People carried small pieces to handle, Kunz wrote, believing that something of jade’s virtue passed into the body.
Does a jade butterfly mean love or long life?
The two sources disagree. Kunz, in 1913, gives the butterfly as a symbol of successful love, from a story of a young man who chased a butterfly into a mandarin’s garden and ended up marrying his daughter; bridegrooms gave jade butterflies to their brides. GIA’s list of motifs still used in jade carving gives the butterfly as long life, the bat as happiness, the peach as immortality and the bi, the flat disc with a hole in the centre, as heaven.
Read next
- Next in Crystal and gemstone loreLapis 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.
- The same shape in Angel numbers2222 angel numberFour twos, as on a 24-hour clock at 22:22. Angel-number writers read 2222 as balance, and as a sign that something hoped for has been planted and will grow.
See also
Amethyst, Rose quartz, Clear quartz, Citrine, Carnelian, Onyx.
Sources
- The Curious Lore of Precious Stones, by George Frederick Kunz, 1913, J. B. Lippincott (Project Gutenberg edition), ch. 2 (Jade); ch. 7 (ceremonial use in China)
- Jade History and Lore (GIA), Gemological Institute of America, History and lore
- Jade (GIA Gem Encyclopedia), Gemological Institute of America, Facts
- Jade in Mesoamerica, Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Essay
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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