oxides
Bloodstone
SiO2
- Also known as
- heliotropeblood jasper
- Crystal system
- trigonal
- Hardness
- 6.5–7 on the Mohs scale
- Lustre
- waxy
- Colour
- Dark green with red flecks
- Where it forms
- As jasper, where silica-rich fluid impregnates fine volcanic sediment carrying both green silicate minerals and iron oxide.
- Chiefly from
- Gujarat, IndiaBrazilAustralia
Why it is that colour
The green is chlorite and amphibole inclusions; the red spots are iron oxide. The resemblance to blood on foliage is the whole of its historical significance.
Safety
No hazard from handling.
Where it comes from
Chiefly from India, where it is cut alongside carnelian and agate in the same workshops and carries the same silicosis problem.
Historical use
Used for Roman seals, then extensively in medieval and Renaissance Europe for devotional carvings, where the red inclusions were deliberately positioned to fall on the wounds of carved figures. A number of these survive in European collections.
Recorded as history and attributed where possible. That a stone was used for something establishes that people used it, not that it worked.
What is attributed to it, and since when
Known classically as heliotrope, with Pliny recording a belief that it turned water red in sunlight. The specifically Christian legend — that it formed when Christ's blood fell on green jasper at the crucifixion — is medieval, and it is that story rather than the classical one that carried the stone through European use. Its modern reputation as a stone of courage and purification descends from the medieval reading.
Described, not endorsed. Dating a claim is not the same as assessing it — but an association that first appears in a book published in 1985 is not an ancient inheritance, whatever the label says. A sincere account of feeling better is compatible with the stone doing nothing — see the placebo effect.
Worth knowing
Bloodstone is a clean illustration of sympathetic magic — the principle that like affects like. A green stone spotted with red was read as blood on leaves, and the medicinal role that followed was, predictably, stopping bleeding. It was carried by soldiers and by anyone worried about haemorrhage, and it appears in medieval medical texts for exactly that purpose.
The Renaissance carvers understood what they had. In devotional pieces the craftsman orients the block so that the red inclusions land where blood should be. It is a small, precise piece of craft — using the stone's accident as an argument for the stone's story.
Identity checked against IMA-CNMNC master list, June 2025.