The curious lore of precious stones : being a description of their sentiments and folk lore, superstitions, symbolism, mysticism, use in medicine, protection, prevention, religion, and divination, crystal gazing, birthstones, lucky stones and talismans, astral, zodiacal and planetary / by George Frederick Kunz, with 86 illustrations in color, doubletone and line.

  • Kunz, George Frederick, 1856-1932.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The curious lore of precious stones : being a description of their sentiments and folk lore, superstitions, symbolism, mysticism, use in medicine, protection, prevention, religion, and divination, crystal gazing, birthstones, lucky stones and talismans, astral, zodiacal and planetary / by George Frederick Kunz, with 86 illustrations in color, doubletone and line. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    80/536 (page 46)
    There is sorcery among the Jews and their sorcerers think: “If we succeed, it is well for us; if we fail, a Christian is the sufferer; what care we for that ? ” . . . But Duke Albert of Saxony acted shrewdly. When a Jew offered him a button, inscribed with curious characters and signs, and asserted that this button gave protection from cuts, thrusts, and shots, the Duke answered: “ I will test that upon thyself, 0 Jew.” Hereupon he led the man to the gate, hung the button at his neck, drew his own sword, and thrust the fellow through the body. “ The same fate would have happened to me,” said the Duke, “ as has happened to thee.” “ Ruskin, with his keen poetic insight into the working of natural laws, saw in the formation of crystals the action of both “force of heart” and “steadiness of pur- pose.” He thus found himself, consciously or uncon- sciously, in agreement with the old fancies which attrib- uted a species of personality to precious stones. Just as the Hindu regarded an imperfectly shaped crystal as a bringer of ill luck to the owner, so Ruskin sees in such a crystal the signs of an innate “immorality,” if we may use this expression. Of a crystal aggregation of this type he writes as follows: Opaque, rough-surfaced, jagged on the edge, distorted in the spine, it exhibits a quite human image of decrepitude and dishonour; but the worst of all signs of its decay and helplessness is, that half-way up, a parasite crystal, smaller, but just as sickly, has rooted itself in the side of the larger one, eating out a cavity round its root, and then growing backwards, or downwards, contrary to the direction of the main crystal. Yet I cannot trace the least difference in purity of substance between the first most noble stone, and this ignoble and dissolute one. The impurity of the last is in its will or want of will. There is established a very pretty custom of assign- ing to the various masculine and feminine Christian ” Giidermann, “Das jiidische Unten-ichtswesen,” Wien, 1873, p. 225. ” “ Ethics of the Dust,” New York, 1886, p. 96.