About the History of Birthstones

Throughout the East the belief in mysterious powers resident in jewels has been always universal. Form and system were all that it required under the magianism of Persia and of Babylon, but it was with this systematized shape that the western nations became acquainted with it.

No people were more credulous in this respect than the Jews and the nations bordering upon them. Eastern writers pretend that wise King Solomon, amongst a variety of physiological compositions, wrote one upon "gems," a chapter of which treated upon those which resist or repel evil genii. They suppose that Aristotle stole philosophy from Solomon's books. "The magii of the East," observes Warton, "believing that the preternatural discoveries obtained by means of the Urim and Thummin, a contexture of gems on the breastplate of the Mosaic high-priest, were owing to some virtues inherent in the stones, adopted the knowledge of occult properties of gems as a branch of their magical system." The shekinah in the breastplate gleamed with a sombre darkness that came over the stones (in one account it was a special stone, the sapphire, that was the sensitive agent of this manifestation) when the anger of the Lord was kindling; but when He was at peace with His people, the light of heaven shone brightly on the stones of the sacred vestment. The minute description of the jewels in the twenty-eighth chapter of Exodus indicates the symbolical reverence attached to them even by the Israelites.

It became a peculiar profession of one class of their sages to investigate and interpret the various shades and coruscations of gems, and to explain to a moral purpose the different colours, the dews, clouds, and imageries which gems, differently exposed to the sun, moon, stars, fire, and air, at particular seasons, and inspected by persons peculiarly qualified, were seen to exhibit. The gems corresponding to the different months, and also to the twelve Jewish tribes, were the following:-

January Hyacinth Dan.

February Amethyst Gad.

March Jasper Benjamin.

April Sapphire Issachar.

May Agate Naphtali.

June Emerald Levi.

July Onyx Zebulun.

August Carnelian Reuben.

September Chrysolite Asher.

October Beryl Joseph.

November Topaz Simeon.

December Ruby Judah.

Artists have made certain changes in some of the gems corresponding to the months, and the tribes represented in the Urim and Thummim. They consider May to be represented by the emerald.

June Chalcedony, onyx, agate.

July Carnelian.

August Sardonyx.

October Aquamarine.