Garnet is most commonly thought of as only being red. If you are lucky enough to have Garnet as your birthstone you can boast that there are in fact 17 varieties of Garnet.
Garnet comes from the Latin ‘granatus’ meaning seed.
I won’t list them all here, but one example is Hessonite Garnet, also known as cinnamon stone for its brownish-red colour.
There is also a colour-changing variety, a mix of Spessartite Garnet and Pyrope Garnet. It changes from brown or orange in daylight to rose-pink in incandescent light!
Garnet has been enjoyed and admired as a gemstone, for centuries. In fact Aristotle mentions it over 2,000 years ago. He described it as being red like a flame; he obviously hadn’t discovered the other varieties back then!
There are many variations of the legends surrounding the origins of Garnet.
One such story tells that Persephone (the Greek Goddess of sunshine) was stolen as a bride by Hades (the God of the underworld) but would be released so long as she didn’t eat anything while in the underworld. Just before she left, Hades put a pomegranate seed in her mouth, hence the ‘granatus’ or seed of the pomegranate associated with Garnet because of its likeness in colour. As Persephone had broken the agreement not to eat anything while in the underworld, Hades demanded that she return to the underworld for six months in every year. As Persephone was the Goddess of sunshine, for the months that she had to return to the underworld became winter.
The different types of Garnet range between 6.5 and 7.5 on the Mohs Scale.
