Zodiac stones and where they came from

The match between a stone and a zodiac sign is a cultural tradition, not a property of the mineral, and no instrument will ever show a link between a birth date and a stone's chemical composition. That does not stop the tradition from being interesting. It has an age, it has authors, and it has a history you can trace, one that ran through theologians, translators and merchants. The trouble starts where yet another list is served up as the verified original, while one reference book gives Scorpio opal, a second labradorite, a third topaz.

Where the twelve stones came from

The oldest thread leads to the breastplate of the Old Testament high priest, which by the description in the Book of Exodus held twelve stones in four rows. In the text each stone stood for one of the twelve tribes of Israel, and the zodiac was not mentioned at all. In the first century Josephus matched them to the twelve months of the year and the signs of the zodiac, in the fourth Jerome repeated the same idea, and from there the list went wandering through translations. Ancient Hebrew mineral names translate badly, because they described color rather than rock, and in every new version some of the stones were swapped for neighbors of a similar shade. By the late Middle Ages several mutually exclusive versions were in circulation, and they are argued over to this day.

The custom of wearing the one stone of your own month, rather than all twelve in turn, took hold in Europe in the eighteenth century, by the most common account. The list printed today on tags and in glossy magazines was put together for the trade by jewelers. In 1912 the American National Association of Jewelers approved it, and since then it has been revised several more times: tanzanite was written into it in 2002, spinel in 2016. The updates coincided neatly with the arrival on the market of stones that needed promoting.

Why the reference books disagree

The first reason is the calendar: a zodiac sign does not line up with a month, it takes the second half of one and the first half of the next. So the “stone of the month” and the “stone of the sign” answer different questions, and they are under no obligation to agree. A woman born on 25 October reads about opal in one source and about tourmaline in another, and formally she is right twice.

The second reason is the sources: Russian books of the nineties retold Western lists mixed in with the Indian navaratna tradition, where stones are tied to planets. The boundaries of the signs also drift by a day from year to year, so anyone born on the first or the last day of a sign should check the exact date. The third reason is entirely prosaic: compilers copy from one another and almost never cite an original source. On the stone itself, of course, none of this confusion has any effect.

Crystal lore likes to give a stone a character: this one “calms”, that one “protects”, a third “gives resolve”. Such wording describes centuries of experience in handling beautiful objects; there is no action of a substance on the body behind it, and it is no substitute for treatment.

Zodiac stones: what the popular reference books name

The table is assembled from popular reference books and cut down to the four stones our workshop works with, so there is no garnet and no sapphire in it. Tradition gives rock crystal the part of the universal stone, fit for any sign, and it is what stands in the rows where none of the other three found a place. The workshop has no version of these correspondences of its own — what is retold here belongs to other people.

Zodiac sign	Dates	What the reference books name
Aries	21 March – 19 April	Rock crystal
Taurus	20 April – 20 May	Rose quartz
Gemini	21 May – 20 June	Rock crystal
Cancer	21 June – 22 July	Moonstone, rose quartz
Leo	23 July – 22 August	Labradorite
Virgo	23 August – 22 September	Rock crystal
Libra	23 September – 22 October	Rose quartz
Scorpio	23 October – 21 November	Labradorite, moonstone
Sagittarius	22 November – 21 December	Labradorite, rock crystal
Capricorn	22 December – 19 January	Rock crystal
Aquarius	20 January – 18 February	Labradorite, rock crystal
Pisces	19 February – 20 March	Moonstone, rose quartz

A row in the table prescribes nothing: the next book along will give the same sign a different set, and there is nothing to judge the two lists by except the taste of whoever compiled them. Rows that look thin are explained by the size of the range, and the sign has nothing to do with it, because four stones for twelve signs is few by any count.

Venus, the Moon and the logic of the correspondences

Inside the tradition the correspondences are not random, they have their own mechanics, and those explain most of the table. A stone is tied to the planet that rules the sign, and through the planet to a color and a mood. In astrology Taurus and Libra are ruled by Venus, pink and green are assigned to her, and that is how rose quartz ends up in both rows. Cancer is ruled by the Moon, and moonstone goes to it on the strength of its name alone, although the mineral was given that name for an optical effect and not for the heavenly body at all. Pisces and Scorpio get the same stone at one remove, through water and the intuition ascribed to it.

Labradorite did not make the old lists at all, because Europeans learned of it only at the end of the eighteenth century, and a place was found for it after the fact. Scorpio and Aquarius were given it for its reputation as a stone of change, Leo for the drama of its flashes. Rock crystal is handed out to everybody, and this is the one point where the reference books do not argue. There is little here to argue about, though.

The stones were not named by astrologers

All four stones have names older than any horoscope table, and they were given for other merits. The Greek krystallos meant ice, and ancient authors seriously took rock crystal for frozen water, set so hard that it could no longer be melted. Labradorite took its name from the peninsula in Canada where it was described in the 1770s, and before that European mineralogy did not know the stone.

Moonstone was named for the milky glow that floats up out of the depth and leaves as you turn it, and the scientific name of the effect, adularescence, appeared much later and comes from the Alpine Adula deposit. Rose quartz managed without a legend, it was named simply for its color. It hardly appears in the old European lists, because it became a mass commodity only in the twentieth century, when Brazilian and Madagascan material came onto the market.

From the table to an actual object

We do not make anything to fit the zodiac signs, and a row from the table can be pinned to a piece only after the fact. The table deals in the names of minerals, but what you put on is one particular stone, with its own pattern and its own depth of color. None of our four stones repeats twice: a bracelet is assembled around the strand of beads that arrived, and there will be no second one like it in the workshop. So the “Scorpio stone” turns into a labradorite with a particular sweep of blue, which you either like or you do not.

Rose quartz makes up the substantial KHALISI sunrise bracelet (25,900 ₽) and the My princess necklace (22,000 ₽). The same stone looks quieter and costs less in the stainless steel Viviana bracelet (6,500 ₽). Moonstone sits in the Spheres ring (5,500 ₽), where three spheres rest on a steel base, with rose quartz and labradorite beside it. Labradorite is given twelve rows in the Dragon Wing necklace (39,000 ₽), and in the KHALISI majestic bracelet (22,000 ₽) it goes together with moonstone. Rock crystal is gathered in the Night dew stud earrings (5,900 ₽), where beads of rose quartz are added to the flower.

A photograph conveys a stone only roughly, and it is more interesting to look at in the hand. Delivery within Russia is on us, free for the buyer, and there are two weeks for a return. That is enough to see the stone in daylight, under a lamp, and next to the clothes it was bought for.

What to weigh besides the sign

A piece of jewelry is seen every day, and nobody sees a birth date, so in that sense the color of the stone decides more than any table does. The cold blue of labradorite and the dusty pink of quartz behave differently with a wardrobe, and that is settled in a minute at the mirror, not by comparing three books that contradict each other anyway.

The second argument is practical, and it is about the way you live. The hardness of each of the four stones and what is bad for them is set out in the care section, and the properties of the three main ones are covered in separate journal articles: on rose quartz, on moonstone and on labradorite.

When a stone is chosen as a gift, the sign of the woman receiving it works very badly as a guide, since you know her taste better than the compiler of a reference book does. What does help in that situation is gathered in the guide to choosing jewelry as a gift.

Can you wear a stone that is not your sign's

There are no prohibitions inside the tradition itself, there are recommendations, and they differ from book to book. Not one of them will check what you finally put on. The question “which stone suits a woman by her zodiac sign” usually means something else: you want something to lean on, because there are many stones and the choice is yours alone. A table makes a poor support, but a simple test works: the stone you want to pick up is the one you will wear tomorrow, while the one that is “correct” by the calendar will stay in the box.

If you do want to take the sign into account, let it be a starting point and not a verdict: look at your row, pick out two or three stones and choose the rest with your eyes. Jewelry with natural stones is gathered in the catalog, laid out by section into bracelets, rings, necklaces and earrings.

Common questions

How do I work out which stone suits my zodiac sign?

There is no single answer: the list printed on tags was approved in 1912 by the American association of jewelers, which then added tanzanite in 2002 and spinel in 2016. The boundaries of a sign also do not coincide with a calendar month, so the “stone of the month” and the “stone of the sign” give different answers for one and the same date. The correspondence is a cultural tradition, not a property of the mineral, so it is wiser to take the row from the table above as a starting point and choose by color from there.

What if I like a stone but it is not my sign's?

Take the one you like: the correspondences were compiled by theologians, translators and merchants, and they do not agree with each other, since one reference book gives Scorpio opal, a second labradorite, a third topaz. Tradition hands rock crystal to all twelve signs at once, and there are only four stones in our workshop, so the arithmetic will not add up whichever way you go.