Gold, Silver and Color Stones: Some Examples of Medical Amulets

Abstract

  The medical properties attributed to metals and stones were connected to a series of  aspects that mingled with each other in a perfect harmonic fusion: astrology, religion, magic and alchemy, mineralogy and color that, besides to transmit energy and fascination, for some magical-sympathetic correspondences, it referred to parts of the human body and to specific diseases. This incomparable harmony, however, does not allow us to recognize the borders or prevalences of one or the other of these aspects without getting lost in the labyrinth of symbols of the vast world of Graeco-Roman magic. From the reading of Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia, ancient Lapidari and some of the many studies on the magical-medical aspect of the amulets, it is a brief synthesis, privileging as far as possible, the color and symbolic aspect of the stones, without however being able to completely neglect the epigraphic-lexical and mythical-religious references.