Stones as Symbols

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Objective

   The Dowager Empress of China was fond of Tourmaline, just like Imelda Marcos had something with shoes. Precisely now, when I am writing this, the (believe it or not) jewels of Madam Marcos are for sale, to make up a little bit for her greediness from the past - but that has nothing to do with gems of course.

How could somebody manage to reach the top of the pyramid in an honest way, in fact - and boldly show her/his gems as a symbol for that wealth without being punished for it?

Subjective

   Without human brains, no gems. Possibly the stones might be where they are, but without a name or recognition as such.

Tourmaline (Syberg)

In this natural Tourmaline, the inclusions in the crystal are visible with the naked eye. Impurities, cracks and all sorts of rubbish, are almost always in the game. The color itself, number one in determining the value of the precious stone, is caused by the presence of minimal amounts of some 'strange' metal oxide. 

By the way, value and precious ... for a stone, well then! The whole world is covered with stones. Some of them are useful for us, as building elements in our houses, or necessary for our body, or perhaps in industry, but only a few of them we call precious, because they are rare or vividly colored or almost transparent and free of inclusions, or perhaps shaped in a strange way, as if somebody made them to fit in our collection of mental references, belonging to a clear category, in one way or the other. When we use gems as a status symbol, we leave the realm of matter and cross the bridge towards the mental space.

Consider Tourmaline, for example:

Theophrastos lived from 372? to 287 BC, and so was able to think about it for 85 years. Gembrokers mention the possibility of lyngourion to be tourmaline, but orhers think it was a variety of amber, obtaining an electric charge when rubbed. So, static electricity.

The mineral Tourmaline is also called 'Aschentrekker', a Dutch name with reference to the use of a Tourmaline crystal for pulling hot ashes out a burning pipe.

The mineral produces an electric charge when heated, and so it does when it is compressed. Then it is called piezoelectricity. It can be used for depth measurement in submarines. 

Something about solidified urine of animals we found in Italy :

So far we told about the utilitarian functions of the mineral. When looking at the crystal in the  picture, it is obvious that some minerals, sometimes, are attractive in themselves. For our human brains and mind, these objects seem to have a special significance. 

Obviously there are other birds having a strange attraction for sparkles:

And then, still an other one, found in my restless quest for resonance in our collective unconscious, the internet, making some associations on magpies, jewels, sparklies, dreams, human nature, and so on; Jewel, by Vera Hannah: 

Where birds are attracted by the sparkles, we, people, feel fatal attraction for gems to use them as jewels, more specifically, as symbols for status, power or any significance imaginable. Human jewels are signifiers, just as words are, but with a more universal use, branching into a larger range of mental categories. Tourmaline was used by the (last) Empress of China, and we found some examples on the net :

Because the tale about the Empress is so beautiful, a little bit more of it:

We meet the same Empress at Palagems, in California:

Tourmaline rose in price quite spectacularly when the demand for it in China augmented, and there it was certainly not used to make medicinal powders but to ad luster to the social order. Stones, pieces of matter, serving to consolidate a social space. We hope to indicate in our site that social and mental have a little bit much to do with each other, and that gems occur at the cradle of language, even before protolanguage, but after and on top of animal primitive yells. 

For those who are interested: nicely explained by W. Calvin ( Ref 8 ). Probably our brains markedly expanded because we learned to throw stones accurately. Perhaps not precious stones, but stones all the way. 

So stones may be looked at as the missing link between our mental space now, and the period without symbols before the stone age, and probably a good reason to make jewels even today, not only mobile phones. 

References

1. Gembrokers, an electronic gemshop : (http://www.gemsbrokers.org/english/tourmaline/myths.htm)

2. Mondo Gemmologico : (http://www.asgvicenza.it/mg1.pdf)

3. Gardensafari : precious stones and magpies : http://www.gardensafari.net/dutch/pagesnl/ekster.htm

4. Creative magpie : (http://www.nfobase.com/html/the_creative_magpie.html)

5. Gembrokers, about mythology : (http://www.gemsbrokers.org/english/tourmaline/myths.htm)

6. Women in world history, biographies : http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/rulers.html

7. Palagems, Californië, with tourmaline history : http://www.palagems.com/california_gem_mining.htm

8. W. Calvin, neurobiology : http://www.williamcalvin.com/index.html

9. Jewel : http://www.angelfire.com/vt/tiergarten/Page34.html 

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Site Last  update 22.01.2007