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The Wizard of Oz Day
"When Morning arrived, the travelers were filled with high spirits as they continued to follow the Yellow Brick Road. Soon they saw before them in the distance a beautiful bright green glow in the sky. "That must be the City of Emeralds!" said Dorothy to her companions."
~ The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Frank L. Baum, 1900
Happy Birthday to all born in the merry month of May with a tartan tribute to May's birthstone, the emerald.
The gemstone emerald, forever linked in literature with the Emerald City, capital of the Land of Oz, was first described in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in May 1900. Unlike the film adaptations, although the city’s walls are green, Baum reveals in the original story that the city itself is not truly emerald at all.
Upon entering, every visitor is required to wear green-tinted eyeglasses, supposedly to protect their eyes from the city’s dazzling “brightness and glory.” In reality, the glasses create the illusion that everything is green, when the city is actually “no more green than any other city” — a fitting deception in the realm of the humbug Wizard of Oz.
Apart from the children's story, a famous later interpretation — especially popular in academic circles — argues that the book is also a political allegory about the economic struggles of the 1890s in the United States:
Dorothy represents the ordinary American citizen,
the Yellow Brick Road symbolizes the gold standard,
the silver shoes symbolize the free-silver movement,
the Scarecrow represents farmers,
the Tin Woodman industrial laborers,
and the Cowardly Lion may represent populist polititical views.
Under this interpretation, the Wizard represents hollow political leadership and the Emerald City symbolizes money, power, and illusion.
Emeralds have long been associated with vision and perception. Emeralds were prized not only for their beauty, but also for the powers they were thought to bestow upon their wearer: insight, foresight, and hindsight.
It was also long believed that the green color of emeralds could soothe the eyes and even restore failing eyesight simply through contemplation. This belief endured into the 18th century, when some of the first tinted lenses were also made green!
Perhaps that is why emerald green has so often symbolized not merely beauty, but the hope of seeing the illusory world — and ourselves in it — a little more clearly. 💚 💙 💚 💎 💎 💎
One of the most prized of gemstones for their beauty and rarity, emeralds in ancient times were thought to imbue the possessor with special qualities and to cure a wide variety of ailments. Scholars and orators wore emeralds to strengthen their memory and to become more eloquent. Another common belief was that emeralds had the power to give insight, foresight, and hindsight.
The word "emerald" is derived (via Old French: esmeraude) from the Latin and original Greek for "green gem."
The oldest known finds of emeralds were made near the Red Sea in Egypt by Egyptian pharaohs around 1500 BC. Cleopatra valued emeralds so tremendously that the historic mines in Egypt are now referred to as Cleopatra’s Mines, though they were exhausted of their supplies by the time they were rediscovered in the 19th century.
Emeralds are a variety of the mineral beryl and receive their colour by trace amounts of chromium and sometimes vanadium. These varying shades of green are reflected in this emerald-hued tartan.
For more information about this precious stone, click the emeralds!