The Many Colors of Jasper
The word Jasper means, “spotted or speckled stone”, it comes from the Greek word iaspis, and Latin iaspidem. Jasper is one of the oldest known gemstones, and was very popular in ancient times. It has been written about in Greek, Hebrew, Assyrian, Persian and Latin prints, as well as in the Bible. But in those ancient times, what was referred to as jasper was a totally different stone from what we call jasper today; it referred only to the green transparent varieties. Jasper is one of the birthstones for the Sun Sign of Virgo and the Mystical birthstone for the month of October. There are many varieties and names for jasper; they make reference to its patterns or to its locations of origin.
Jasper is as an opaque and fine-grained variety of Chalcedony. Some scientists put it in a group by itself within the quartz group because of … Read more