Topaz

History and lore

Few gem names have travelled as far from their first stone as topaz. Pliny the Elder, in Book 37 of his Natural History, describes topazos as a greenish stone from an island in the Red Sea called Topazos, which he says took its name from a local word meaning "to seek", because sailors often lost it in the mist. Most scholars identify the island with Zabargad (St John's Island) off the Egyptian coast and the stone with peridot, which was mined there for centuries. The mineral we now call topaz therefore inherited a name that originally belonged to something else.

Through the Middle Ages "topaz" meant almost any yellow to golden stone, including yellow quartz and yellow sapphire. Marbode of Rennes, in his verse lapidary of about 1090, and Hildegard of Bingen in her twelfth-century Physica both include the topaz among stones of beneficial virtue, and later lapidaries repeated claims that it could cool boiling water and calm anger or lunacy. In the eighteenth century the golden-orange to pinkish crystals of Ouro Preto in Minas Gerais, Brazil, became prized as "imperial topaz", a name often linked with the Portuguese and Brazilian court. The great colourless "Braganza" stone among the Portuguese crown jewels, long called a diamond, is widely suspected to be colourless topaz, though it has not been examined publicly.

In the traditions

The King James Bible gives topaz as the second stone of the first row of the High Priest's breastplate: "a sardius, a topaz, and a carbuncle" (Exodus 28:17). The Hebrew word is pitdah, and the book of Job speaks of "the topaz of Ethiopia" (Job 28:19). Revelation 21:20 names topaz as the ninth foundation of the heavenly Jerusalem. As with most breastplate stones, the identification is uncertain: the ancient pitdah and topazion were probably yellow-green stones such as peridot, since the hard modern mineral was rarely worked in the ancient Near East.

In Renaissance magic, Agrippa lists topaz among the stones of Mercury, alongside agate and emerald. In Indian gem practice the yellow gem of Jupiter (Guru) in the Navaratna is yellow sapphire (pukhraj), but yellow topaz is very widely sold as a less costly substitute stone (uparatna), which is why modern tables often give topaz to Jupiter. As a birthstone, topaz holds November in both the older Gregorian lists and the American list of 1912; citrine was added as an alternative in 1952.

Meaning and symbolism

Golden topaz has generally been read as a solar stone of warmth, clarity and calm. Medieval writers who allegorised the twelve foundations of Revelation attached each stone to an apostle or a virtue, though the pairings differ from author to author. Modern birthday lore associates the November stone with constancy, generosity and friendship; these are sentiments of the jewellery trade rather than ancient doctrine, and no scientific study has shown that a gem shapes its wearer's character.

The mineral

Topaz forms in granite pegmatites and in cavities of rhyolite, sometimes as enormous, beautifully terminated crystals weighing many kilograms. Principal sources include Brazil, Pakistan (pink topaz from the Katlang area), Russia (the Urals), Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Myanmar and the United States, where Utah's Topaz Mountain yields sherry-coloured crystals.

At hardness 8 topaz is the reference mineral for that step of the Mohs scale, but it has perfect basal cleavage: a sharp knock can split a stone cleanly. Almost all blue topaz on the market is colourless topaz that has been irradiated and heated, and "mystic topaz" owes its rainbow colours to a thin surface coating. Yellow quartz is still sometimes sold under misleading names such as "Madeira topaz"; true topaz is noticeably denser (specific gravity about 3.5 against 2.65) and has a higher refractive index. Clean with warm soapy water, avoid steam and ultrasonic cleaners, protect it from blows, and keep some brown stones out of strong sunlight, which can fade them.

Sources and further reading

• Exodus 28; Job 28; Revelation 21 — King James Bible, 1611
• Natural History, Book 37 — Pliny the Elder, c. 77 CE
• De lapidibus — Marbode of Rennes, c. 1090
• Physica — Hildegard of Bingen, c. 1150
• Three Books of Occult Philosophy — Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, 1533
• The Curious Lore of Precious Stones — George Frederick Kunz, 1913
• Gems: Their Sources, Descriptions and Identification (6th ed.) — Michael O'Donoghue (ed.), 2006