Some Stones Look Like the Ocean: What Gemstone Meanings Leave Out

Some stones look like the ocean.

Hold one up to the light and you are looking down into deep water. Blue on blue, with a glow somewhere at the bottom.

Others look like the universe. Dark, with tiny sparks of colour scattered through them like faraway stars.

I look at stones every day, and they still stop me.

Part of that is physics. With most things, light hits the surface and bounces straight back. With some stones it goes in first. In opal it passes through millions of microscopic spheres of silica and comes back split into colour, which is the play of light I have written about before. In moonstone it scatters between thin layers inside the stone, and a soft glow drifts across the surface as you turn it. And when the body of a stone is dark, it swallows the stray light, so every spark of colour burns brighter against it. That is the universe look.

People have given stones meanings for thousands of years. Turquoise for protection. Moonstone for calm. Amethyst for a clear head. That last one is written into the name: amethyst comes from the Greek amethystos, "not drunk", because the Greeks believed the stone kept its wearer sober. Some people feel an energy in stones, and I understand why.

Some of the charts are younger than they look, though. The modern birthstone list, the one you see on jewellery counters, was agreed by a convention of American jewellers in 1912.

But the meaning that matters most is yours.

Some stones feel calm in the hand. Some feel bright and loud, as if they want to be noticed. Some you cannot stop turning over.

I do not choose mine by what a book says they mean. I choose them by how they make me feel when I look into them.

I would ask you to do the same. Forget the charts. Forget what is in fashion this year. Look into the stone and notice what happens to you.

A few things help. Look at it by a window in daylight, then again indoors: a stone that changes between the two is showing you its depth. Turn it slowly rather than holding it still. And notice whether you keep coming back to it after you have put it down. Photographs flatten nearly all of this, which is why I wrote a whole letter about what the camera can't do.

The practical questions still matter: how hard a stone is, and how it will wear on a ring that gets knocked about every day. There is a guide to those on this journal. But they come second. Some of the stones that stop me are on the stones we love page.

If it makes you happy, it is your piece.

Come and look into a few at Paddington Markets on a Saturday morning. They look different in the hand.