|
The beautiful sapphire has always been a great favorite with lovers of precious stones and to it has been attributed a chastening, purifying influence upon the soul. Even Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, wherein precious stones are rarely mentioned, takes occasion to write as follows of the sapphire: "It is the fairest of all precious stones of sky colour, and a great enemy to black choler, frees the mind, mends manners."
The poets have sung the praises of the turquoise. In Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, when the "amorous Jessica" made off with her father's jewels, Shylock particularly bewails the disappearance of his turquoise, crying out that he would not have lost it for "a wilderness of monkeys." The poet Donne, also, writes of this stone and draws attention to its sympathetic quality in these words:
As a compassionate turquoise that doth tell, By looking pale, the wearer is not well.
That Queen Elizabeth clung fondly to life is well known, and it is said that she trusted much in the virtues of a talisman which she wore round her neck. This was a piece of gold engraved with certain mystic characters. The statement has also been made that at the bottom of a chair in which she often sat, was the queen of hearts from a pack of cards, having a nail driven through the forehead of the figure. Could this have been a spell of witchcraft used against her hated rival, Mary of Scotland?
The belief that turquoise changes its hue with the changing health of the wearer leads an early seventeenth century author to offer it as a symbol of wifely devotion, saying that "a true wife should be like a turquoise stone, clear in heart in her husband's health, and cloudy in his sickness." Although a more prosaic explanation than that of occult sympathy has been proposed for this asserted change of hue, we need not therefore reject the more poetic fancy. |
You are here:
JJKent Home >>
Precious Stones Guide Vol 8
>> About Precious Stones in Historical Literature and Writings
| <<Properties of Precious Stones and the Historical Belief of Their Vitality | About Pascal and the Amulet in His Garment>> |