Gemstone Meanings

Gems are not only rare and beautiful products of nature. For a long time people believed that different gemstones have special meaning for our lives and can affect our health and wellbeing.

Over the centuries, many cultures have contributed to the legends and lore surrounding gemstones. These rare products of nature have inspired philosophers and mystics to attribute unusual powers for these special minerals.

The best compendium of traditional gem is undoubtedly the one found in the book by George Frederick Kunz The Curious Lore of Precious Stones published in 1913. But Kunz was not mystical Crystal Gazer. Rather it was the gemologist leaders of his time and, in his role as resident expert gemstone Tiffany and Co. of New York, helped create the modern market for colored stones. He was also instrumental in putting together some of the largest collections of rare gems, including the famous JP Morgan-Tiffany collection, now at the American Museum of Natural History.

Kunz believed that we can learn a lot by studying the ways that gems have been used by different cultures and beliefs that people at different sizes of rare gems. But for Kunz this study was not only sociological curiosity, was a way of knowing the same gems. As he wrote, "Many of these ideas may seem rather strange to us now, and yet when we analyze them we see that they both have their roots in some intrinsic quality of the stones, or an instinctive appreciation of their symbolic significance."

To learn more about the meanings associated with all the different gemstones, see our detailed article on the meaning of precious stones. You can know the meaning of all the gems from Agate to Zircon .......