November’s birthstones are topaz and citrine, and people who work with crystals wear golden topaz for confidence and keep citrine for optimism and abundance.
The clocks have gone back, the list for the rest of the year runs to two pages, and this morning you put a citrine ring on for the first time since March. It sits a little loose, as rings do on a cold morning.
Three lines on a topaz
In 1913 George Frederick Kunz recorded a topaz that George Agricola had noted in his book on minerals of 1546. It belonged to a Neapolitan, Hadrianus Gulielmus, and in old Roman letters it carried three short sentences: Natura deficit, Fortuna mutatur. Deus omnia cernit. Nature fails, fortune changes, God sees everything.
Kunz called it a “terse and pregnant inscription”. More than a century after Agricola, an English lapidary put the lines into English verse, very freely in Kunz’s view, beginning “Nature by frailty doth dayly waste away. / Fortune is turn’d and changed every day.” The Latin needs only seven words.
Kunz gives no colour for the stone. For much of history every yellow gemstone was called topaz, and every topaz was thought to be yellow, and the two November stones look so alike that they have often been taken for each other.
Topaz was November’s stone on all eight of the older month lists Kunz gathered, and the American National Retail Jewelers’ Association adopted it for November in August 1912. Citrine is not on the 1912 list, and the date it joined the month is not known.
Citrine or topaz
Chakra charts put citrine at the solar plexus, just above the navel, where confidence and will are placed, and crystal practice reads it for warmth as well as for optimism and abundance. A ring or a pendant will do, worn through November while the list is long. It is a quartz and wears well with a little care. Its colour runs from yellow to a brownish orange, so there is a citrine for someone who finds bright yellow too loud. Ask the seller which of the two November stones you are buying.
As a present it is for someone heading into winter after a bad year, given as a wish that the next one goes better, or for someone waiting on results that will not come until after Christmas, or a student halfway through a long course.
Golden topaz, the amber and sherry shades, is worn for confidence in crystal practice. Keep it for an interview or the first meeting you chair. It suits someone who is good at their job and does not say so, and it makes a present for someone about to be promoted over the people they used to work beside. On chakra charts blue topaz goes to the throat, and for a November birthday it is the choice for someone who wears only cool colours. Topaz comes in more colours than its name suggests, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, pink and purple among them, and it can be colourless too. Imperial topaz, a reddish orange to orange-red, is one of the most expensive topaz colours, a stone for a big birthday. Blue topaz is the fourth wedding anniversary stone, and imperial topaz the twenty-third.
Topaz can split if it is struck hard, so set a topaz ring in a mount that guards the stone. Some citrine fades in long, strong light, and some golden topaz in long sunlight or heat, and steam and sudden changes of temperature suit neither. Clean both in warm, soapy water.
A line for the stone
Give the stone a line on the day you start to wear it: one short sentence, said out loud over it, that names its job. Begin it with “This is for” and finish it with the thing itself, “This is for Thursday’s interview”. Keep it to one breath, and do not write it down. The line can take a day to find, and the stone can wait in its box until it comes. Say it standing, in an ordinary speaking voice, as if to someone across the room, with the stone on the table in front of you, and then put the stone on. When the thing the line names is done, the stone is free for another line.
In the United States Thanksgiving falls late in November, and a citrine on the table suits a meal that is about having enough. A citrine shared by a household, a point in a bowl on the kitchen table, can take its line from whoever put it there, said with everyone in the room.
If the stone is a present, tell the person about the line and leave the words to them, for the first morning they wear it.
Say the line for an interview over golden topaz before you leave the house.
Sources
- George Frederick Kunz, The Curious Lore of Precious Stones, 1913, pp. 141 to 142 and notes 205 and 206, for the Gulielmus topaz, its inscription, Agricola’s De natura fossilium of 1546 as Kunz cites it, and Nicols’s very free English verse of 1659, and pp. 315 to 316 for topaz at November on all eight older month lists: gutenberg.org
- American Gem Society, November birthstones, for every yellow gemstone being considered topaz and the two stones being mistaken for each other: americangemsociety.org
- The Jewelers’ Circular and the Horological Review, 14 August 1912, for the adopted list with topaz for November and no citrine: archive.org
- GIA, November birthstones, for the colours of citrine, and blue topaz and imperial topaz as the fourth and twenty-third anniversary stones: gia.edu
- GIA, topaz description, for the colours of topaz and imperial topaz’s colour and price: gia.edu
- GIA, topaz care and cleaning and citrine care and cleaning: gia.edu, gia.edu
