According to the Hindu people of India, many of the gemstones and precious materials that we love today come from the body parts of deity known as Vala…
In those days, Indra ruled the universe from a thrown high in the heavens until he was overthrown by a power hungry Asura (a demon-god) now called Vala. Unlike Indra, Vala was very unpopular and as a result he had to hold the throne by force, subduing all of the demi-gods and lesser beings, even Indra himself.
‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’
Rites and sacrifices were part of life in those times but often the rite of sacrifice was enough such that the full sacrifice wasn’t always necessary. So when the demigods came to Vala and asked him to pay the part of the sacrificial animal in a mock-ritual he agreed – but once they had him tied down the demigods knew that Vala was captured and they murdered him viciously, chopping up his body into many bloody parts. Then they rejoiced and called him ‘demon’, reinstalling Indra as the Lord of Heaven.
Although Vala was may have been a tyrant, he had allowed himself to be killed in a sacrificial setting and this gave his remains a good power of their own sort. When the demigods dismembered his dead body the various parts transformed into the seeds of many different precious gems and fell to earth where they scattered and grew. Some of them fell into oceans and rivers, becoming water-gems; others fell into mountains, caves and forests, becoming land gems. As a result of their divine origins, all of these precious gems have their own intrinsic strength and potency:
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Toenails: where-ever they scattered, Vala’s divine toenails turned into tiny red garnet seeds.
- Droplets of Vala’s blood became precious rubies.
- When Vala’s teeth fell in the oceans they landed in oysters and because the seeds of beautiful pearls.
- Vala’s skin fragmented and fell to earth, becoming precious yellow sapphires.
- Vala’s bile scattered and became emerald-seeds wherever it landed.
- Vala’s fingernails transformed into the rare hessonite gems.
- Vala’s bones fragmented and fell in different areas in different shapes and kinds, becoming diamonds in various hues.
- As he was killed, Vala let out a terrible war cry that shook the heavens and then it rained on the oceans where it agitated the waters so much that huge waves formed to carry the cry to the shores where they were planted as the seeds of the cats eye stone.
- The demon god Vala’s eyes were blue and shaped like the lotus-flower before they scattered to earth and became the sparkling sapphires.
- Vasuki was one of the kings of the snake-gods and he took Vala’s intestines and put them in the oceans around the world, where they germinated and grew into coral.
- Vala’s fatty cells fell particularly in the East of the world, where they grew into the famous jade mines of Asia.
- When his body was destroyed, Vala’s semen was let loose and hardened where it scattered as clear crystal quartz.
- Bizarrely, even Vala’s complexion was powerful enough in its own right to geminate on earth as the seeds of the bloodstone.
