Amethyst stands for purity, piety, temperance because of its origins in Greek Mythology.
Purple dyes have historically been the most expensive and thus only used by the highest levels of societies. Royal Purple is a symbol of royalty and majesty. The best grades of Amethyst are a deep purple hue. Amethyst has also been highly regarded as a symbol of royalty throughout the centuries.
Aaron, the high priest of the Hebrews, wore an amethyst on his breastplate to represent the prophet Math, who was filled with the desire to please God.
Wearing Amethyst in gold or sterling silver jewelry represents an individual's desire to attain a high spiritual state, to please God, to exercise the highest levels of purity and temperance.
Amethyst was born amidst passion, gods and goddesses, jealousy, love, worship--and drunkenness. In Greek mythology, Dionysus, the god of fruitfulness and wine, fell in love with a young woman. She, however, shunned his drunkenness and choose to worship the goddess Diana instead. The young woman was then given the name "Amethyst," which in the Greek literally means "not drunk."
In his rage and jealousy, Dionysus ordered two voracious tigers to devour Amethyst. But Diana rescued her, turning her into white quartz so the tigers could not eat her--the quartz being a symbol of clarity and purity. Dionysus was heartbroken. His lovely Amethyst was lost to him forever. In his sadness, he shed tears into his goblet of wine. Some of the wine spilled on the white quartz, and it absorbed the wine's color. Thereafter, the lavender-to-deep-purple variety of Quartz has been called Amethyst.
The ancient Greeks also believed that drinking wine from an Amethyst cup would make them immune to intoxication. It's more likely that those who wished to avoid drunkenness would drink water from the Amethyst cup, which would look like wine in the purple crystal.
In the early Christian Church, Amethyst was also believed to have properties to keep one sober. It was adopted as a symbol of the high spiritual state of purity and temperance the Bishops strove to attain. An Amethyst gold or sterling silver ring was part of the Bishop's costume. Today the highest grade of Amethyst is called "Bishops Grade."
Leonardo Da Vinci said "Amethyst dissipates evil thoughts and quickens the intelligence."
In India, meditation upon Amethyst is believed to lead to union with the universal consciousness. Amethyst is associated with the crown chakra, or energy center, of the body. In Tibet, Amethyst is sacred to Buddha and is used to make rosaries. Amethyst is a lavender-to-purple-colored natural quartz crystal. Crystals are symbols of perfection, transparency and clarity. They are solid substances in which atoms arrange themselves in geometric patterns with smooth planes, called faces. The word "crystal" is derived from the Greek word, krystallos, which is derived from kryos, meaning icy cold. Thousands of years ago, people thought crystals were ice that had frozen so hard that it could not melt.
Color, habit and cleavage define the properties of crystals. Amethyst is transparent in color, meaning it reflects nearly all light. It is prismatic in habit, meaning the crystals are longer in one direction than the other. Crystals do not cleave easily but show a rounded, concentric fracture known as conchoidal. Amethyst mineral specimens are most often found in geodes (cavities in volcanic rock). Finding amethyst is lots of fun! Look for an agate base lined with colorless quartz, with the amethyst crystals on top.
Amethyst is a variety of Quartz, which is in the Silicates group, where silicon and oxygen form a tetrahedral silica radical that combines with various metals or semi-metals. Amethyst's violet, purple, red-purple hue comes from iron.
In the United States, Amethyst is found in Colorado, famous for its gold and sterling silver jewelry--and for being the home base of Silver Messages, the world's premier sterling silver jewelry site.
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