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The Talismanic Use of Special Stones: History

In our own land beautiful specimens can be seen in the Morgan collection at the American Museum of Natural History and in the Higinbotham Hall in the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois.

Pliny quotes from Juba the tradition that the topaz (chrysolite) derived its name from the Island of Topazos, in the Red Sea, the first specimen having been brought thence by the procurator Philemon, to Berenice, mother of Ptolemy II, Philadelphus. This monarch is said to have had a statue of his wife Arsinoe made from the stone. (Plinii, "Naturalis Historia, lib. xxxvii, cap. 32.) If there be any foundation for this latter statement, the precious gift sent by Philemon must have been a mass of fluor-spar, or some similar material. More than three hundred years after Pliny's time, Epiphanius, evidently repeating another version of this tradition, states that the "topaz" was set in the diadem of the "Theban queen."

Chrysolite (olivine, peridot), to exert its full power, required to be set in gold; worn in this way it dispelled the vague terrors of the night. If, however, it were to be used as a protection from the wiles of evil spirits, the stone had to be pierced and strung on the hair of an ass and then attached to the left arm. (Marbodei, "De lapidibus," Friburgi, 1531, fol. 16.) The belief in the virtue of the chrysolite to dissolve enchantments and to put evil spirits to flight was probably due to the association of the stone with the sun, before whose life-giving rays darkness and all the powers of darkness were driven away.