Story of Birthstones

The idea of birth­stones – a gem­stone as­signed to each month of the year – is thought to be an an­cient one, and schol­ars trace it back to the Breast­plate of Aaron de­scribed in the Bible in the book of Ex­odus. The Breast­plate was a re­li­gious gar­ment set with twelve gem­stones that rep­res­en­ted the twelve tribes of Is­rael. The gems were set in four rows of three: sard, to­paz and car­buncle; em­er­ald, sap­phire and dia­mond; lig­ure, agate and amethyst; and beryl, onyx and jasper.

So, how did we go from gem­stones rep­res­ent­ing the twelve tribes of Is­rael to birth­stones? The writ­ings of Flavi­us Joseph­us (first cen­tury AD) and St. Jerome (fifth cen­tury AD) made the con­nec­tion between the 12 stones in the Breast­plate and the 12 signs of the zo­di­ac. The idea was pro­posed that each of the gem­stones had spe­cial powers as­so­ci­ated with the cor­res­pond­ing as­tro­lo­gic­al sign and that wear­ing these stones at the right time would have thera­peut­ic or talis­man­ic be­ne­fits.

However, this was not quite the same idea as our concept of the birth­stone. Based on this as­tro­lo­gic­al mod­el, one ought to own a col­lec­tion of the 12 dif­fer­ent gem­stones as­signed to the signs of the zo­di­ac and wear the ap­pro­pri­ate gem dur­ing the as­cend­ancy of the cor­res­pond­ing sign. This is more like the Ved­ic as­tro­lo­gic­al tra­di­tion of In­dia, which as­signs nine dif­fer­ent gem­stones to nine plan­ets and pre­scribes the wear­ing of par­tic­u­lar gems ac­cord­ing to your health and the chal­lenges you face in your life.

The idea of each per­son al­ways wear­ing a gem­stone cor­res­pond­ing to the month of his or her birth is a dis­tinctly mod­ern idea that schol­ars trace to 18th cen­tury Po­land, with the ar­rival of Jew­ish gem traders in the re­gion. The mod­ern list of birth­stones was not defined un­til 1912, by the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­ation of Jew­el­ers (Jew­el­ers of Amer­ica) in the USA.

The mod­ern birth­stone list has been un­changed since 1912. Only re­cently have we seen two at­tempts to change it, both curi­ously as­so­ci­ated with the gem­stone tan­zan­ite. In 2002, the Amer­ic­an Gem Trade As­so­ci­ation (AGTA) an­nounced that they had ad­ded tan­zan­ite as a birth­stone for Decem­ber, though Decem­ber already had two birth­stones (tur­quoise and zir­con). The Jew­el­ers of Amer­ica went along with the idea and provided this sound bite for the AGTA press re­leases: "JA sees the ad­di­tion of tan­zan­ite for Decem­ber as a way to build busi­ness. Any step that helps re­tail­ers sell more jew­elry is a good one." The world had clearly come a long way from the pur­por­ted ma­gic­al powers of as­tro­lo­gic­al gem­stones.

In Feb­ru­ary 2006, Tan­zan­iteOne Ltd., the as­pir­ing tan­zan­ite car­tel, an­nounced a mar­ket­ing strategy to make tan­zan­ite a birth­stone. Tan­zan­iteOne wasn't con­tent for tan­zan­ite to be just an­oth­er birth­stone, though. They wanted to go one bet­ter – they wanted tan­zan­ite to be giv­en on the birth of every child, re­gard­less of month. With the slo­gan "Be Born to Tan­zan­ite," they cited rather du­bi­ous con­nec­tions to Ma­sai tri­bal birth prac­tices. At this point, we can safely say that the com­mer­cial­iz­a­tion of birth­stones is com­plete.

We would like to thank www.gemselect.com for al­low­ing us to copy this art­icle from their web­site and share it with you.