DIAMOND. The diamond, first of all, participates in the hierophany of stones signifying in religious consciousness that which is hard, rugged, and unchanging. Above all, stone is. Like all precious stones, the diamond also partakes of the general symbolism of treasures and riches, which in religious terms represent moral and intellectual knowledge.

As a symbol the diamond, as the hardest of all stones, has a wide range of meanings, among them indestructibility, constancy, the unyielding, and dominance. Because of its brilliance it also signifies unconquerable light, excellence, frankness, joy, life, and purity.

In Greek the word for "diamond" is derived from adamas, meaning "invincible, unconquerable." In some places, and especially on Greek emblems, it indicated the irradiant mystic center, a meaning discovered in the most obscure examples as well as in the most prominent. Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant (1982) point out that the German word Eckstein ("cornerstone") also...