The Seba library treats Gem in 9 passages, across 8 authors (including Huxley, Aldous, Nhat Hanh, Thich, Campbell, Joseph).
man’s otherwise inexplicable passion for gems and hence his attribution to precious stones of therapeutic and magical virtue. The causal chain, I am convinced, begins in the psychological Other World of visionary experience
Huxley argues that the human fascination with gems originates in visionary consciousness, where the inner eye perceives luminous, hyper-real stones that earthly gems only faintly echo.
, The Doors of Perception, 1954thesis
an infinite variety of brilliant gems, each with countless facets. Each gem reflects in itself every other gem in the net, and its image is reflected in each other gem.
Nhat Hanh deploys the Indra’s net of gems as the definitive image of interdependence and interpenetration, wherein each jewel both contains and reflects all others.
, The Sun My Heart, 1988thesis
the universe as a great spread-out net with at every joint a gem, and each gem not only reflecting all the others but itself reflected in all.
Campbell adopts the net-of-gems image from Buddhist cosmology to articulate the principle of universal mutual causation and non-hierarchical interdependence.
, Myths to Live By, 1972thesis
every child has a garland of five hundred million precious gems, the rays of which illuminate a hundred yojanas, as if a hundred million suns and moons were united.
Campbell cites a Buddhist meditative text in which gems function as icons of supernatural radiance, their proliferating light signifying the overwhelming luminosity of paradisiacal consciousness.
, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962supporting
Secretly, the King presented the Prince with the wish-granting gem, saying, ‘This will satisfy all thy wants’. The Prince handed it back, saying, ‘Whatever I behold is my wish-granting gem’
Evans-Wentz records the Tibetan motif of the wish-granting gem as an externalised symbol of inner sufficiency, which the enlightened Prince surpasses by recognising perception itself as the true gem.
, The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, 1954supporting
Gemma gemmarum, 116n gems, Gnostic, 8n, 9
Jung’s index in Mysterium Coniunctionis registers ‘Gemma gemmarum’ (gem of gems) as an alchemical epithet and records Gnostic gems as a distinct symbolic category in his comparative analysis.
, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955supporting
The design in Fig. 17 is from a gem, a carnelian now in the Berlin Museum. A bird, who for the moment sha
Harrison cites an engraved carnelian gem as an iconographic source for the archaic woodpecker-king motif, illustrating the gem’s role as a bearer of archaic religious symbolism.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting
Robert Fludd called the quintessence (often identified with the Stone) a ‘spirituall rock of pure transparent saphir’
Abraham documents Fludd’s identification of the quintessence with a transparent sapphire-like stone, placing the gem-as-Stone within the broader alchemical vocabulary of lapidary symbolism.
, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, 1998aside
jewel,
A passing index entry in Jung and Kerényi’s Essays on a Science of Mythology signals the jewel as a term requiring cross-reference, indicating its presence within the mythological and individuation discourse of that work.
, Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, 1949aside