Thursday, September 18, 2014

SAPPHIRE


The Lore of Sapphire 
An old Vedic story from India describes the demon god, Vela, ripped apart by demigods. His primordial body tumbled through time and space to the solidity of earth, shattering, like glass. His eyes, cobalt globes of fire and fury, broke apart in a million pieces, many of which landed in the village of Ratna Purna, Sri Lanka where even today we source our ethically mined sapphires from a cooperative of small scale miners.

Vela represents the cathartic, primordial, untamed forces, the creative destructive elementals that formed from light and stardust, the earth and our body. That blue sapphires formed from the eyes of Vela might have something to do with sapphires being used as an "eyestone" to treat eye disease throughout the centuries. Egyptian physicians created an eye wash with sapphire, copper oxide and boric acid. Medieval texts also refer to sapphire as an elixir for the eyes particularly when dissolved in milk.

The Vela myth also suggests that the gem might be used as a type of shield to protect oneself from harm. Corundum, which is the family of gems from which sapphires come from, has a hardness scale of nine out of ten. The gem exists in many different shades of color. The skin of the demon became yellow sapphires. Damigeron, an Arab who wrote the earliest Middle Ages treatise on gemstones, wrote that sapphires were worn by kings as a protection from harm.

Sapphire was also considered an antidote for poisoning, as long as you chose the right gem. Wolfgang Gabelchover, a medieval writer, suspended a sapphire over a spider, swinging it like a pendulum. If the spider died then the stone was a good antidote. This theme was picked up by other writers who thought sapphires were a good cure for venom. It became a favorite for the practices of necromancers who used it to understand even obscure oracles. (Kunz 104) 


Brought to you by Anna's Legacy Jewelry www.mystiquestonemagic.blogspot.com

http://www.artisanweddingrings.com/myth_Sapphire-September.php

No comments:

Post a Comment