Early civilizations such as India and Babylon have attributed gemstones with magical properties. Over time, astrologers assigned gems of certain colors to the twelve signs of the zodiac to help people influence the planets in their favor.

Birthstones

A birthstone is a gift of a precious material (jewelry, mainly gemstones; themselves traditionally associated with various qualities) that symbolizes the month of birth in the Gregorian Calendar. It is sometimes also called birthday stone (cf. infra; but that word is, confusingly, sometimes used as a synonym for an anniversary gift, which is related to the recipient's age, that is, year of birth).

Traditional birthstones

Often combined with modern birthstone lists, traditional birthstones are older society-based birthstones. Since many different cultures had their own list, jewelers' lists are often inconsistent over what constitutes a traditional birthstone. The table below contains many stones which are popular choices, often reflecting Polish tradition.

The Gregorian calendar has poems matching each month with its birthstone. These are traditionally the stones in English-speaking societies. It is not known whether these verses below are of the originally Gregorian calendar or not. In fact Tiffany & Co. published these poems "of unknown author" for the first time in a pamphlet in 1870. Oliver Cummings was the Curator Geology of the Field (Nat. His.) Museum in Chicago

Three of the verses are repeats,

Modern birthstones

In 1912, in an effort to standardize them, the American national association of jewelers, Jewelers of America, officially adopted a list, shown in the "Modern" column in the table below. It is currently the most widely used list in the United States and many other locations, including Australia and Thailand. Some alternates have been adopted to be a less expensive substitute for a cut stone. Tanzanite was added to December by the American Gem Trade Association in 2002. Most organizationsWho: date=March 2009 do not recognize tanzanite as a December birthstone,Fact: date=March 2009 however, as lists of birthstones continue to be publishedFact: date=March 2009 that do not list it. AGTA's move to make it a December birthstone has generally been viewed as a marketing technique.Fact: date=March 2009 This hasn't been limited to tanzanite, however -- some birthstone lists incorrectly give blue topaz as being a birthstone for December. Some stores will simply list a blue stone for December, as a substitute, or a pink stone for October and call it "rose zircon". Still others give May's birthstone as the "shamrock spinel", when in reality, spinel does not occur green naturally.

Mystical birthstones

Mystical Birthstones are of Tibetan origin and date back over a thousand years.

Ayurvedic birthstones

The Ayurvedic birthstone list is from the ancient Indian medicine and philosophy dating back to ancient India (1500 BC).