Sapphire: September's Stone of Many Colors

September arrives and the light changes before the weather does. Gold and pink goes long and low across the afternoon, the mornings turn blue at the edges, and everything you own suddenly wants to be worn with a sweater... even in Arizona although we aren't quite there yet.  It is the month that asks you to think again about what you actually want to carry into the rest of the year.

Its stone is sapphire. And the first thing worth knowing about sapphire is that most people have only ever met one of them.

The stone

Sapphire is corundum. So is ruby. They are the same mineral, formed the same way, and the only thing that separates them is a trace of something else caught inside; chromium makes a ruby, iron and titanium make a blue sapphire, and small shifts in that recipe make sapphires that are pink, orange, yellow, green, violet, or the soft peach gold that collectors call padparadscha after the lotus flower. Every color of corundum except red is a sapphire. Red is the one that gets its own name.

There is a second thing worth knowing, and it is the practical one. On the hardness scale sapphire sits at 9, with only diamond above it. That is not a small detail for something you intend to wear constantly. A sapphire strand can live in your daily rotation, ride around in a bag, get put on in a hurry, and still look the way it looked the day it arrived.

The lore is old and mostly about clarity. Medieval clergy wore blue sapphire because the color was understood to draw the eye and the mind upward. Persian writers described the sky itself as the reflection of an enormous sapphire the earth rested upon. Across many very different traditions the stone kept getting handed the same jobs: honest speech, clear thinking, and keeping a promise. Sapphire is traditionally associated with the throat chakra, the seat of saying the true thing out loud, and it is said to steady a scattered mind rather than excite it. Sapphires still turn up in engagement rings for exactly this reason, centuries after the reason was first written down.  Princess Diana's being the most famous; it now belongs to Princess Kate.

None of that is medicine. It is inheritance. You wear the stone and you inherit what people have been asking of it for a thousand years.

Wearing it

September is a good month for an intention that fits in one sentence.

If you are setting one with sapphire, let it be about clarity rather than change. Not I will become someone else this autumn, but I will be clearer about what I already want. Put the piece on in the morning, hold the stone for the length of one slow breath, and say the sentence to yourself once. That is the whole practice. The stone is not doing the work; the stone is the reminder that you decided something.

For styling, sapphire behaves differently depending on which one you have. Deep blue reads as a neutral, and it will sit against camel, oatmeal, charcoal, and every shade of denim without asking for permission. The warm sapphires are the opposite; pink, orange and yellow want to be the loudest thing you are wearing, so give them a plain neckline and let them speak.

A 16 inch choker layers beautifully over a crewneck. An 18 inch strand is the one to reach for with an open collar. And a pair of drop earrings in warm stones will carry an entire outfit that is otherwise just a good sweater.

Three pieces we are obsessed with:

Blue Sapphire Necklace with Labradorite and Blue Topaz Pendant ~ $325. A hundred faceted rounds of genuine blue sapphire in the near black blue of deep water, closed with a gold filled toggle at 16 inches. The pendant is labradorite with a bezel set blue topaz at its center; turn it toward the light and the blue comes up out of the dark stone like something switching on. This is the September piece.

Ombre Ruby, Sapphire and Citrine Drop Earrings ~ $350. Proof of everything above. Ruby, pink sapphire, orange sapphire and yellow sapphire graduate down two inches of yellow gold filled wire, with a faceted citrine briolette floating at the bottom of each. One mineral, four colors, one pair of earrings.

Ruby and Pink Sapphire Ombre Om Necklace ~ $395. Ruby and pink sapphire together on one 18 inch strand, faceted at 3.5mm so the whole thing catches light as it moves. The Om pendant is micro pave cubic zirconia backed with mother of pearl. Pink sapphire is associated with the heart chakra; ruby with passion. The two stones are, as ever, the same stone.

Before you go

Every piece here is one of a kind. When one finds its person there is not another exactly like it, so if something is already gone and you keep thinking about it, send me a message. Custom work is how a lot of my favorite pieces have started.

However you wear September, I hope it brings you a clearer intention than the one you started the year with.

Namaste ~Lisa