conversation: gemstones to spirituality

[brightlotusmoon]

I had a fascinating conversation last night with my mother about semi-precious gemstones. She's acquired a few years' worth of knowledge by working with Lee and other jewelers. According to her, the best semi-precious stone out there, next to high-quality white diamond, is ruby. Pure, clear, red, pigeon's blood ruby. She also said that rubies and sapphires are pretty much the same stone, just different chemicals and minerals to make different colors. Rubies are, essentially, red sapphires. Which I found very interesting. She loves lapis lazuli, thinks it's an amazing color, but warns that it can crack and chip easily. She doesn't have much to say about the rare and beautiful stones like tourmaline and alexandrite, although she likes them and thinks they're certainly worth a lot. Her favorite stones, as I learned, are baltic amber and freshwater pearl. She likes them because they're "living gemstones" and because they have so much history.
When I mentioned the metaphysical and spiritual aspects of stones that many people believe in, we wound up in a discussion about faith, belief, and spirituality. Mom, being an atheist, doesn't think gemstones hold any metaphysical power, but she won't ever put down anyone who does think so. She likes to say, "Whatever people need to believe in will work for them." She says faith is powerful, and a great source of strength and hope; but it should never be abused, forced, or misguided. She's fine with me being pagan and everything, she just wants me to make sure I know what I'm doing.
Dad would probably enjoy talking about things like that. He's more agnostic than atheist, a born witch like me (rather, we were born with a natural talent for harnessing magic), and in the sixties and seventies he used to read tarot cards and astral project and have precognitive dreams, until something personal happened that made him stop doing it. He's still a witch, still has power, but he is extremely subtle. He knows Mom doesn't believe in it but she accepts and respects it.

Comments

[todabrilla.livejournal.com]

It sounds like you have an interesting family and were fortunate to have a supporting and open environment. That's wonderful. Personally I am an atheist like your mom, but like her I respect the faiths of others as long as they cause no harm to me or others.

My dad occasionally will say he feels guilty for not "exposing us" to enough religion. I find that very odd. My siblings and I are all happy with our nice secular upbringing and we made informed decisions. We didn't need regular church attendance to help us decide. I don't know what he would have to be guilty about, particularly because he's never been religious himself.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

That is an odd thing to feel guilty about. You don't need exposure to religion in order to understand the world, obviously.
Heck, I didn't even know what religion was for until I was eleven and got teased at school for not having a religion, worse for not even knowing what an actual religion was.
When I asked my parents about it, they gave me lots of books on world mythology and told me about my Jewish heritage (Mom's family) and Dad's Catholic family, and explained why we observe Hanukah and Christmas without any of the religious aspects. I knew I was hooked on paganism from age six when I got obsessed with Greek mythology, but didn't understand the actual religious parts of anything.

[todabrilla.livejournal.com]

And compared to one of my friend kids I had a lot of exposure to religion. I LOVE the story of the one easter when her kids asked her what the holiday was all about. She explained the Christian beliefs to them, and they paused digesting the information. Then out of the blue her elder child says, "So does that mean Jesus was a zombie?" :)

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

HAH! Oh, I love it.

I once babysat a little girl who was raised by Wiccan parents, and she thought that Catholicism involved cannibalism of a magical zombie. Thankfully, they set her straight. The mother's parents were Catholic and they didn't want a four-year-old asking Grandma and Grandpa about magical zombie cannibalism.

my favorite description

[threnodyeris.livejournal.com]

Christianity:

"The belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbollically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree."

Re: my favorite description

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

And that sums it up beautifully.

[ronin-lethe.livejournal.com]

actually, rubies and sapphires are far "better" gems than diamonds. diamonds are as common as they come and there is pretty much nothing at all special about them except light refraction, which loads of other minerals can do much better. diamonds are only considered special because the diamond cartels work so hard to keep them so.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

Mom mentioned that as well -- she said that if you really wanted to impress, you got the highest quality rubies and sapphires, which are much more expensive than low-quality and medium-quality diamonds.

That reminds me; I'll have to find out how "precious" Adam's ruby ring is. You've seen that one, right? He made it himself with a good hunk of really deep red ruby set in silver.

[ronin-lethe.livejournal.com]

no. even the best quality diamonds are far more common than medium quality rubies or sapphires. price is a different story b/c diamonds prices are fixed in the market (see: diamonds, blood) but as far as rarity... diamond mines spit up high quality stuff by the bucketload. amazing super high quality. but the diamond cartels suppress them lest they flood the market and drive down the price.

basically, even the best diamonds are pretty much crap, while even relatively low quality rubies are more "precious" because they are more rare. they are WORTH less because the price of rubies isn't set the way the price of diamonds is, but cost is a stupid way to quantify the quality of a gemstone.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's actually what I learned. I didn't know you knew all that. :)

[ronin-lethe.livejournal.com]

*indignant sniff*
i'm a lot more well-learned and well-rounded than i get credit for. i know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff....just not a lot of USEFUL stuff *grin*

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

*giggle*
It's like Adam... or Yakko.

***
And now, it's time for another Useless Fact.
A shrimp's heart is located in its head.
"Headache?"
"No, heartburn."
This has been another Useless Fact.
***

Seriously, though, I like what you know. It is useful to me, at least.

[ronin-lethe.livejournal.com]

for a brief course in diamonds:

http://www.wisebread.com/the-greatest-story-ever-sold-is-a-fantasy-covered-in-blood