Three stones belong to August: peridot, sardonyx and spinel. Peridot is worn for letting go and for growth in crystal practice, sardonyx for strength and stability in a partnership, and spinel for renewal.
Some time this week you noticed that you had stopped going over the old argument. You were halfway to work, thinking about something else, and the grievance you had carried since Easter was simply not there. It had taken months.
People who work with stones keep peridot for that moment, the grudge put down, and for the growth that has room to start afterwards.
After a grudge
Put it on once you have decided to let something go. On chakra charts peridot sits at the heart or, on some of them, at the solar plexus. Its green has some yellow in it, and it looks its best in August daylight. On an August birthday, wear peridot if the year behind you had something in it to put down, and one of the other two if it did not.
The growth can be as simple as evenings freed up and a friendship back. After a reconciliation, either side can give the other a small peridot, a stud or a single drop. Two old friends can do the same, or a parent and a grown child.
Peridot is softer than many gems, and long contact with sweat can harm it, so wear it as a pendant or in earrings.
The island in the fog
King Juba wrote of an island in the Red Sea, three hundred stadia from the mainland, that was surrounded by fog and often sought by sailors. In Juba’s story the island took its name from the search, because in the language of the Troglodytae, he said, topazin meant to seek, and so the island was Topazos.
The rest of the story is Juba’s too, as Pliny the Elder passes it on. Philon, the king’s prefect, was the first to bring the island’s green stones back, and he presented them to Queen Berenice, the mother of the second Ptolemy, who was wonderfully pleased with them. When the stone was first found, Pliny wrote, it was preferred to every other kind of precious stone. The island, called Zabargad now, is the oldest recorded source of peridot.
August’s list took shape in three steps: sardonyx, with peridot as its alternate, when the American National Retail Jewelers’ Association adopted its list in August 1912; peridot and sardonyx printed with equal standing in 1952; and spinel in June 2016, added by Jewelers of America and the American Gem Trade Association.
A long partnership
Give sardonyx to a couple a good way into their life together, after a year that tested it, a redundancy or an illness in the family. Practitioners read sardonyx for strength and for stability in a marriage or any partnership that has lasted, and for happiness and plain speaking as well.
A business partner can be given one on the tenth birthday of the firm, and so can a couple who run something together, a shop or a farm. One of them can wear it, or it can sit in a dish at home where both of them pass it. Sardonyx is a banded stone, reddish brown layered with white or black, and the bands are what to look at when you choose one.
Spinel and the thing picked back up
Take up something that stalled, the novel you put down at chapter four or the instrument that has been in its case since the children were small, and spinel is the August stone for it. In crystal practice it is kept for renewal and for fresh energy. Put it with the thing itself, in the instrument case or on the desk beside the manuscript. If the thing stalls again, leave the stone where it is until you go back.
Spinel comes in red, pink, orange, purple, violet, blue and bluish green. Light will not fade it, though strong heat can fade some colours.
Which one every day
Spinel is the durable one of the three, and it takes well to a ring worn daily. A peridot ring is best kept for evenings out, and sardonyx should be treated with the same care in a ring. For a child born in August, spinel is the practical choice. For a wedding anniversary, peridot is the sixteenth and spinel the twenty-second.
If you are giving one August stone and do not know the story behind the year, spinel is the safe present, since it wears well and there is a colour of it for nearly anyone.
Warm soapy water and a soft-bristled brush suit all three, and keep peridot away from steam and ultrasonic cleaners.
Choose a sardonyx whose bands run evenly across the stone, and give it on the anniversary after the hard year.
Sources
- GIA, August birthstones, for peridot in rings and with perspiration, Zabargad as the oldest recorded source, sardonyx with courage, happiness, clear communication and stability in marriage and partnerships, sardonyx’s colours and layers and with care in a ring, peridot’s yellowish green, spinel’s colours, durability, stability in light and fading in high heat, the sixteenth and twenty-second anniversaries, and the care of all three: gia.edu
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History, book 37, chapter 32, Bostock and Riley, for Juba’s island of Topazos and the name he gave for it, Philon and Queen Berenice: perseus.tufts.edu
- The Jewelers’ Circular and the Horological Review, 14 August 1912, for the adopted list, with sardonyx for August and peridot as its alternate: archive.org
- Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, August 1952, p. 219, for the 1952 list, with peridot and sardonyx printed together: archive.org
- National Jeweler, “JA, AGTA Add Spinel as August Birthstone”, 2 June 2016: nationaljeweler.com
