This collection of sapphires draws inspiration from an ancient tradition that views gemstones as representations of spiritual truth, God, and the human soul. Each sapphire in this collection has been chosen to honor this meaningful tradition. Read more Sapphire Symbolism

All the sapphires come from Montana. Unlike sapphires sourced from many other places, Montana sapphires are responsibly sourced, ensuring environmental protection and the absence of child labor concerns.

Every sapphire is cut and polished in the USA to ensure quality and showcase their stunning brilliance. They are mostly free of imperfections, which enhances their shine and reflects the idea of purity and perfection.

The collection’s name is inspired by a verse from 2 Corinthians 3:18. In this verse, St. Paul explains that when someone sees the glory of the Lord, they can become like Him and share in His spirit, as also expressed in 1 Corinthians 6:17.

In Christian tradition, gemstones were seen as a way to glimpse the glory of the Lord. As St. Ephrem expressed, “One day, I took a pearl into my hands. In it, I saw the Kingdom – God’s majesty. It became a source from which I learned the mysteries of the Son. In its light, I recognized the light of our Lord.”

The “Behold the Glory” collection of sapphires is dedicated to this beautiful and blessed tradition. It carries the hope that it may inspire understanding of the mysteries of the soul.

The Cross of Light Diamond

What you are looking at is the only diamond faceted to symbolize the Christian faith. The Cross of Light design features three cruciform images faceted on the stone pavilion. It is from these cross facets that light is reflected so that every time you wear a cross of Light Diamond or gemstone, you are reminded that, in the way the light reflects off each facet, so we reflect God’s glory as He shines His face on us.

The Cross of Light Diamond is the trademark name of a patented, round brilliant 69-facet natural diamond. Distinguished by a unique pattern of 16 pavilion (mirror) facets arranged in three cruciform images, this design is not exclusive to diamonds but is also cut into our Montana Sapphire. This sixteen-sided Cross of Light design features 32 pavilion facets and 33 crown facets, making it a meaningful symbol. The most important crown facet, known as the table, serves as a spiritual window, revealing profound truths that enrich our spiritual understanding.

Symbolism of the Cross of Light Diamond

The table, with its eight sides, symbolizes the spiritual journey of baptism and the resurrection of God on the eighth day, which represents the first day of the new creation. The brilliance and light displayed in this design are reflections from the 32 pavilion facets. Four of these facets form an image of the Greek cross, a powerful symbol representing the four Gospels and the never-ending grace from heaven, extending equally in all directions throughout the created world.

Surrounding these four facets are eight facets that form an image of the Maltese cross. These facets symbolize the beatitudes, which reflect the attitudes and actions aligning with the mind of Christ. In turn, these are encircled by sixteen facets, highlighting the sixteen attributes of love described by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13.

The beauty reflected in this design embodies the essence of baptism, resurrection, the mind of Christ, sacred love, and more, as God is light and in Him there is no darkness.

Purpose of the Design

Diamonds are usually acquired, given, and worn to express the depth and importance of special relationships. Sometimes these relationships are experienced as “made in heaven” or “blessed by God,” and many believe they are sacramental. The Cross of Light Diamond was designed to help people experience this more sacred relationship with one another.

The scope of our art is to give wings to the soul St.Gregory of Nazianzen,4C.

Gemstone Design as Liturgical Art

We practice gemstone and jewelry design as a liturgical art. Unlike other liturgical arts—such as music, architecture, painting, sculpture, and the like—we focus on the inner sanctuary: the heart, so that He may dwell in us.

The Spiritual Role of Gemstones

The designs represent an effort to re-establish the spiritually significant role gemstones and jewelry played in the lives of religious men and women throughout history up until modern times. This traditional linkage of spirituality and jewelry flowed naturally from the important Christian belief that “Heaven and earth are full of Your glory.” St. Paul expressed this (Rom. 1:20): Since the creation of the world, invisible realities have become visible, recognized through the things God has made. He said that every visible thing in the naturally created world is a revelation of something in the invisible heavenly-spiritual world. This apostolic way of perceiving things continued for centuries. A sixteenth-century example is St Theresa’s perception of the diamond as an image of the human soul.

Because of their rarity, durability, and value, gemstones and precious metals were used quite naturally, and often, in biblical and other spiritual writings to express the eternal and more valuable nature of sacred truths.

Why Does the Cross of Light Diamond Include Three Cruciform Images?

Tradition has associated different forms of the cross with different ways of understanding spiritual experience. The Greek Cross expresses a divine love for the world. It is a symbol of sacrifice and passion, associated with the color red.

The Star Cross symbolizes the nativity. It represents a divine presence in the world. Just as the sun is the source of all physical life, the divine presence is the source of all spiritual blessing. Its color, like the sun, is yellow.

The eight-pointed Maltese cross has traditionally been associated with the eight beatitudes described in the Sermon on the Mount, and is a model for growing a sacred disposition characterized by a stillness and peace that transcends the ordinary. This divine transformation of the heart is associated with the color green.

Diamond Symbolism: Pre-Modern and Modern Traditions

Polished diamonds and gemstones have traditionally been highly symbolic. Exactly what they have symbolized has not remained constant, but has changed over time, “reflecting” the underlying beliefs and values of a particular age.

In pre-modern times, diamonds were often associated with divine realities and on that account, became spiritual symbols. Evidence of this can be found in a Christian visionary tradition that dates back at least one thousand years. The tradition typically consisted of visionary experiences wherein God and/or the human soul was seen as a brilliant diamond or some other transparent crystal that looked like a diamond.

The Pre-Modern Visionary Tradition

An early example of this tradition are the 11th century visions attributed to Symeon the New Theologian. Www.monachos.net/patristics. “In the way that light shines thru crystal (diamond), so He revealed Himself to me as light”. [John Anthony McGuckin, The Book of Mystical Chapters, Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boston (2002) pp. 166-167.] In another place he writes, “Come true light…shining crystal…whom my soul longs for still.” [McGuckin, Ibid.]

A better known example is from the sixteenth century. It is provided by St. Teresa of Avila www.catholic.org/saints. She writes in her well-known book, Interior Castle, “I saw the soul as a castle made of a single diamond containing many rooms.” [Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, (trans. E Allison Peers) Doubleday, New York, (1989) pp. 28-43.] The vision of the soul as a single diamond containing many rooms provided the framework for the entire book and she used this vision to illustrate many important points about the interior life as she had experienced it.

For example, she thought it most tragic that while God sees the soul of each person, at all times, as a brilliant diamond, we humans seldom, if ever, do, and “so we trouble little about preserving the soul's beauty. All of our interest is centered in the setting—that is to say, in these bodies of ours.” [Teresa of Avila, Ibid.]

However, because her experience was otherwise, she believed like Symeon before her, that everyone is as capable of seeing the soul's brilliance “and His presence there…as is the crystal of reflecting the sun.” [Teresa of Avila, Ibid.] For her, His presence there is a Divine Spouse. The soul has the appearance of a diamond because a divine marriage has taken place within it. This sacred nuptial union radiates a brilliant light that gives it (the soul) a magnetic “splendor and (irresistible) beauty”. [Teresa of Avila, Ibid.]

The pre-modern diamond visionary tradition clearly saw, used, and consciously experienced diamonds as spiritual symbols. In this context, diamond design was a form of sacred art.

The Modern Tradition

There is no modern visionary diamond tradition, but there is a modern diamond tradition. It is quite different from the one described above because it reflects our more scientific way of experiencing things, and the fact that millions of people can afford to wear them. Partly for these reasons, the sacred symbolism of the past is notably absent. In its place are new themes whose character is mostly secular. The art of diamond design is an exclusively aesthetic art whose sole purpose is to improve the physical appearance of the diamond.

Today, diamonds are identified with romantic love, which for the most part, is characterized as self-sufficient and unrelated to divine love. Thanks to their abundance and an active long-term promotional campaign, diamonds have become the primary symbol of love and its commitments leading to engagement and marriage. Curiously, both traditions use this diamond/marriage symbolism, but with a difference that is both clear and profound. In the pre-modern view, the association is with the marriage of a human soul to a divine spirit. In the modern view, at least as far as diamond symbolism is concerned, the marriage is between two individuals (souls) without reference to a sacred dimension.

Diamonds are also used for reasons unrelated to romantic love. They are often thought of as an ideal means by which one can, as the need arises, either conceal or display wealth. When set in beautiful and well-designed jewelry, they are experienced as a source of great aesthetic pleasure, beautiful in themselves but also enhancing the physical appearance of the person wearing them.

Diamonds have also become a means of expressing personal vanity in all its many forms. Diamonds are preeminent symbols of wealth, success, high fashion, and a glamorous lifestyle.

Diamonds: The Scientific Perspective

As stated, our modern diamond traditions “reflect” both our scientific way of looking at things and the values we hold dear. By the same token, our naturalism causes us to be unsurprised by the pre-modern association of diamonds with the spiritual world. Have we not been told that “diamonds are forever”? Diamond is one of the hardest elements and is relatively indestructible. [Eternal and unchanging are adjectives used to describe the sacred most everywhere.]

Diamond has a very high refractive index, is transparent, and can be polished to an extraordinary luster. These features cause it to reflect a uniquely brilliant light.[One of the most common descriptions of God in many different religious traditions, including Christianity, is that of a uniquely brilliant light.]

The high refractive index of diamond also causes it to be very dispersive. Dispersion is a gemological term that means the breaking up of white light into its spectral components.

When cut properly, white diamonds display bright flashes of every color of the rainbow. There are almost no other gemstones that have this quality in such abundance. [The rainbow is one of the earliest images of divine blessing, and in the Christian era, color is understood as symbolizing the incarnation. (a view most famously expressed by St. Bernard of Clairvaux) www.catholic.org/saints. Invisible white light (Father) becomes visible as colored light (Son). Whoever has seen the Son has seen the Father. [Millard Miess, “Light as Form and Symbol in some Fifteenth-Century Painting”, Art Bulletin, vol.27 (1945) pp. 125-81.

Although our scientific way of looking at things may help us understand why diamond appears as it does, and why it may have been used as a spiritual symbol in the past, it may not help us see diamond as seen in the pre-modern tradition. In fact, it may preclude it. To see it as seen in the visionary tradition requires that it be seen once again as a spiritual symbol. This is always challenging for the scientific disposition and may feel unnatural. A special effort may be needed to bring it about. One of the most obvious ways to do this is through the intentional use of design. Although diamond design is generally regarded as a purely aesthetic art form, there is no reason it could not be employed as a form of sacred art. [Philip Sherrard, The Sacred in Life and Art, Denise Harvey (publisher) Evia, Greece (2004) pp.1-22.] One very recent example of this kind of intentional design is the Cross of Light Diamond.

Spiritual Symbols: Integration and the Eye of the Soul

The modern tendency is to experience the physical and spiritual worlds as distinct entities. We generally take it for granted that this is the way things are. The pre-modern view was otherwise. Saints Teresa and Symeon saw a more beautiful diamond because they saw a beauty that was spiritual in nature, a beauty that Dostoevski later described as “the beauty that will save the world”. They could look deeper into a diamond and see a light that “knows no evening”, or look deeply into the soul and see a brilliant diamond reflecting that same light. [Interior Castle, Ibid. Pp 28-43]. They had a more integrated experience of what is above and what is below.

With that mysterious “single eye of the soul,” they could see more holistically a light St Augustine called “the light that never changes”. [Margaret Miles, “Vision”, The Journal of Religion, vol. 63 (1984) pp. 125-44. They saw transcendent reality in a diamond because they could experience a diamond as a spiritual symbol. This came more naturally to them because they tended to see all physical reality as symbols that expressed spiritual reality. It is primarily through symbols that the “eye of the soul” sees. [ Richard Smoley, Inner Christianity, Shambhala Publications, Inc Boston (2002) pp. 195-225.] St Paul described the phenomenon as “clearly seeing invisible things of Him, by understanding things that are made”. Rom. 1:20. Wm Blakeâ€™s famously simple sentence strikes a chord. “Everything that lives is holy.”

Conclusion

In the natural world, few objects can display the brilliance and beauty of light like a well-cut and polished diamond. Perhaps it is for this reason that they have been so heavily invested with symbolism. The nature of that symbolism has changed because the customs and values of the culture in which they were worn have changed.

Diamond symbolism need not simply reflect prevailing values and customs. It can be influenced through the intentional use of design. The Cross of Light Diamond was cited as an example of this design use. In this illustration, other spiritual symbols were designed into the faceting pattern to augment its perception as a symbol of divine life. None of the aesthetic values that are so important to secular art were compromised in the process.

This work is authored by Arlan Abel

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