Ancient Crystals: 3 Mindblowing Myths To Make You Gasp

The ancient Greeks were fascinated by crystals, often believing they had mystical powers and incorporating them into their mythology and lifestyles. As a result, there are several fascinating, outta-this-world myths describing the origins and creations of different gemstones. Here are three Greek origin myths for crystals that might just make you see your favorite pretty rock in an entirely new light.

Amber
To start us off we’re going to talk about how the beautiful sunlight colored crystal, amber, came to be (even though it’s technically fossilized tree sap, not a crystal. Same difference.) 
 
 

 
So the story starts with Phaeton, the son of the sun. By that I mean he’s the son of the sun god, Helios. After being called an illegitimate child, Phaeton asks his mother, the nymph Clymene, about his true heritage. She tells him that his father is, in fact, the god Helios, but Phaeton is still unconvinced so he goes to Helios and asks to ride the sun chariot for one whole day to prove that the sun deity is actually his dad. Helios is really against this idea, but Phaeton insists. He starts to ride the chariot, or maybe it’s more like he kind of, sort of, maybe keeps it from crashing? The horses are impossible to control, and so the chariot rises and falls rapidly, freezing and burning the earth in the process. Seeing this disaster, Zeus decides to strike the chariot down with his lightning bolt, killing Phaeton. 
Helios and Clymene have five other children, Phaeton’s sisters, the Hiliades. Understandably, they’re a little upset about their brother being struck by a lightning bolt and plummeting to earth and his untimely death, so they sob and grieve for four whole months. Seeing this, the gods decide to turn them into Poplar Trees, and their tears into amber. I still have no idea why they thought this would help.
 
Amethyst 
The amethyst is one of the most recognizable crystals there is, often being symbolically tied to the supernatural, but what did it symbolize to the ancient Greeks? To figure that out, let's look at what the word amethyst means. It comes from the word amethustos, meaning “not drunken”. The ancient Greeks would often create their chalices out of it due to the belief that it had the power to keep people sober. Ironically, I’m sure that this superstition lead to a lot of people getting a lot more drunk than they otherwise would have. But where did this idea come from anyway? Well in full honesty, I cheated a little on this one. See, there isn’t exactly any myth originally from Ancient Greece which explains the amethyst’s mythical ability to ward off drunkenness. However, in the 1500s, a French poet by the name of Remy Belleau wrote a poem in which he fabricated a tale to explain that very thing. 
 
 

 
 
In the original version of the myth as written in Belleau’s “Les Amours de Bacchus et d'Améthyste”, a beautiful young girl is making her way down to a temple to pray to the gods. On the way, however, Dionysus, the god of wine, starts persistently hitting on her. The issue is that Amethystos has made a vow to stay chaste, and so she prays to the gods pleading that they help her do so. The gods see this and figure that the best way to ensure that she doesn’t have sex is to turn her into a rock. Was that the only thing they could think of? Because I can think of a few other solutions that wouldn’t involve killing the poor girl. Anyway, she's a white rock now, and Dionysus is so touched by her dedication to staying chaste that he cries tears of wine, staining the white rock purple. 
If this version of the story has too much uncomfortable subtext for you, there is an alternative. In the other version of this myth, Dionysus has been royally pissed off by a disrespectful human, so he does the only reasonable thing and swears that the first person he sees that day is getting mauled by tigers. Unfortunately, that person happens to be our girl Amethystos, who again in this version is on her way to pray at a temple. An additional fact given this time though is that she’s specifically going to the temple of Athena, the goddess of wisdom. 
Now Dionysus doesn’t really want to kill her, because she’s really pretty, but a promise is a promise so he sics his tigers on her. When Athena sees this happening to one of her followers, she draws the at least somewhat reasonable conclusion that death by being turned to stone is marginally better than death by being mauled by tigers, and so she works her magic. Because she was just so pretty, Dionysus is overcome with regret for what he’s done, and so like in the original he cries wine tears and stains the stone purple.
 
Onyx
Alright, guys, I’m going to level with you for a second. Between all of the people turning into things and dying, and people crying things other than tears because of all the dying, I’m kind of tired. Here's a tame, pleasant and simple story about fingernails, which is not so coincidentally what the word Onyx means. 
 
 

 
 
So one day Aphrodite is taking a nap by the Indus river, when her son Eros (who is kind of cupid but not really) comes upon her and decides to give her a hand with her personal grooming by trimming her fingernails with his bow and arrow. Her nail clippings fall to the river are transformed into the crystal Onyx. So you might be wearing fingernail clippings right now, but hey . . . at least they’re the fingernails of the goddess of love and beauty.
Found any of these myths particularly inspiring? Why not visit a local esoteric shop? Or, if you don’t really feel like moving you can order something from the Kosmazebra Webshop.

Written By Brynn T for KOSMAZEBRA