THE STONE OF ETERNAL LIFE—JADE.
Ric Polansky ă
The riddle persists. In ancient China the royal dead were buried with a piece of jade in their mouth. The same exact tradition existed in Pre-historic Mexico. More unlikely similarities exist too between continents worlds apart: three legged ceramics, lacquered boxes, red as the imperial color, dye coloring done the same exact way and using the same insects that the Chinese; in metallurgy the itinerant Mexicans at the time of the Spanish discovery were found to be separating impurities by the same method as the Chinese; mirrors always cut in the round with the back decorated with the same motifs. The renown professor Needham described more than thirty similar parallels between diverse cultures citing Mayan drums of exactly the same type, games, music (more than half the types of Mayan music are found in Laos and Burma) neck rest pillows, Asiatic chickens, and fish hooks.
Last weeks shocking announcement to the scientific community that an ancient Chinese world map dating back to 1418 showing both North America and South America is almost perfect longitude (some three hundreds years before that too was proven by the western world) suggests that Europe, the former seat of knowledge of the Western world might well be transformed into the “loud mouth dunce of pronounced learning”. (I wrote about this two full years ago).
Some 7000 years ago Jade was referred to as yu in China and was believed to be crystallized moonlight coming from the holy Mountains. Colors vary from white to green, but there are also red, yellow and lavender jades.
What we call today JADE is really two distinct stones: nephrite and jadeite. “Nephrite is a calcium and magnesium silicate with a tightly bonded, fibrous structure. It is usually white green or violet but can be other colors as well. Chemical structure, Ca2(MgFe)5(OH)2(Si4O11)2 .
Jadeite, a sodium and aluminum silicate, comes in more colors, ranging in tone from white to gray and in hue from yellow-orange to violet. Structure: Interlocking Granular; Chemical Composition: NaAl(SiO3)2 Jade is almost always referred to as “the bright green Imperial color” of the highly polished form that is favored for jewelry.
The Chinese simply called it the stone of heaven. “If a ruler perfectly observes the rites of the state, white jade will appear in the valley” so wrote Li Ji in his book of Rites 300 BC. The stone was that of pure moral integrity. Jade was the go between heaven and earth and all rites of passage were accompanied by the eternal stone. To the Chinese, it embodied qualities of nobility, perfection, constancy and immortality; and served as a symbolic link between man and the spiritual world.
In his dissertation on Jade Gary N Davis mentions what American authoress, Pearl S. Buck, penned in her autobiography "My Several Worlds", describing the jade carvers in Canton: "There are jade of every color, she writes: "yellow, or rust-red, blue, or green as spring rice, mottled as marble, or smooth and cold and white as mutton fat, every variety exquisite and put to exquisite use". In the esteem of the Chinese, jade outranks all other gemstones, including diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and pearls, “because jade is the most sumptuous jewel against a woman's flesh.”
Our word Jade is derived from the Mayan word that the Spanish learned
“piedra ijada” (the stone for the loins) and so it was rumored to have magical qualities for curing kidney ailments. None other than the famed Walter Raleigh (he of the cancer sticks) introduced jade to the English speaking world.
Jade has the characteristic of being cool to the touch even on the warmest of days, and, after being polished, a smoothness that is almost waxy and sensual.
An interesting historical footnote to the Meso-American search for the blue Jade of the Genesis culture of Mexico, the Olmecs, was never discovered until mother nature showed the way. It was primarily the “result of the devastating storm that hit Central America in 1998, killing thousands of people and touching off floods and landslides that exposed old veins and washed jade into river beds. Local prospectors picked up the precious scraps, which found their way into Guatemalan jewelry shops and, eventually, the hands of astonished scientists”.
The revered area still remains secret to but just a few who are studying the historical effects, not to mention of course calculating their imponderable wealth!
Nevertheless, it was China’s time immemorial sage Confucius that summarized JADE’S definitive meaning: “it’s fine close texture and hardness suggests wisdom; it is firm and yet does not wound, suggesting duty to one's neighbor; it hangs down as though sinking, suggesting ceremony; struck, it gives a clear note, long drawn out, dying gradually away and suggesting music; its flaws do not hide its excellences, nor do its excellences hide its flaws, suggesting loyalty; it gains our confidence, suggesting truth; its spirituality is like the bright rainbow, suggesting the heavens above; its energy is manifested in hill and stream, suggesting the earth below; as articles of regalia it suggests the exemplification of that than which there is nothing in the world of equal value, and thereby is Tao (the all encompassing God) itself."
