Sapphire Blue, the Most Electric of All Colours

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Down to Earth Series · 7 pages

From Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, pages 264–65. The head-note records that the high priests of Egypt wore an image of sapphire on the neck, called Truth, the manifestation of truth being held to become evident in it.

The argument is that the respect paid to the sapphire rests on something more exact than groundless superstition. The stone was sacred to Luna in every country and marked out by the Buddhists, who ascribed to it a magical power that Blavatsky says any student of psychological mesmerism will understand, since its polished deep-blue surface produces somnambulic phenomena. She then brings in the science of her own day. The varied influence of the prismatic colours on the growth of vegetation, and of the blue ray in particular, had only lately been recognised; the academicians quarrelled over the unequal heating power of the prismatic rays until General Pleasonton's experiments indicated that under the blue ray — the most electric of all — animal and vegetable growth increased markedly. Amoretti's investigations of the electric polarity of precious stones are cited for the further point that the diamond, garnet and amethyst are negative while the sapphire is positive. From this she draws the conclusion the piece exists to make: that recent experiment corroborates what the Hindu sages knew before any modern academy was founded. The passage closes with the legend of Brahmā-Prajāpati and Ushas, and the terror of the gods who united their most fearful bodies to produce Bhūtavān.

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