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The Talismanic Use of Special Stones: India

An Armenian writer of the seventeenth century reports that in India the lal or balas-ruby, if powdered and taken in a potion was believed to banish all dark forepodings and to excite joyous emotions. To the carnelian was attributed a virtue somewhat analogous to that ascribed to the turquoise, as anyone wearing a carnelian was proof against injury from falling houses or walls; the writer emphasizes this by stating that "no man who wore a carnelian was ever found in a collapsed house or beneath a fallen wall." (Arakel, "Livre d'histoire," chap. liii; transl. in Brosset, "Collection d'historiens armeniens," St. Petersburg, 1874.) Chalcedony An ingenious though far-fetched explanation of the power attributed to chalcedony of driving away phantoms and visions of the night is supplied by Gonelli, writing in 1702. For him the source of this asserted power was to be found in what has been erroneously termed the alkaline quality of the stone. This dissipated the evil humors of the eye, thus removing the diseased condition of that organ which caused the apparitions to be seen. (Josephi Conelli, "Thesarus philosophicus, seu de gemmis," Neapoli, 1702.) However absurd this explanation may be, it nevertheless shows that the author put little faith in visible ghosts, and rightly enough recognized the purely subjective character of such phenomena.