Ruby

Element

Fire

Ruby’s deep red associates it with the element of fire and with the heart. It’s a stone that engages the creative spirit within us, that lights the flame of our desires and passions, and helps us use our internal fire to spur us forward toward love, wealth, and abundance.

Although fire moves with speed and fury and will at some point always burn itself out, Ruby’s essence of fire feels like a slow burn- a simmering crockpot, a volcano brewing deep beneath the ground, a woodstove that’s tended to keep you warm all winter long. It’s the fire of devotion, of love, of life-force energy.

The same fire that propels us can also burn us when it becomes anger, agitation, and resentment. Ruby brings balance to that internal heat when it starts to rise too high, and can also re-light your flame whenever you feel low, lost, dark, or tired.

Element

Earth

The intense strength, stability, and durability of ruby align it with the earth element. It’s a stone you can use to ground into your body, into your innate power, and into the wisdom you carry in your bones.

Ruby is solid, sturdy, and supportive. It lifts you up when you fall down, it strengthens you when you feel weak, and it can rejuvenate your physical energy and vitality to help you keep moving toward all you want to accomplish in life.

When you need to focus on what’s in front of you, put in the practical action, and do whatever it takes to see things through, ruby is a beautiful stone ally to have by your side that will arm you with courage, confidence, and self-trust.

Chakra

Root

The root chakra is where we feel security, safety, and strength. It’s our connection to the earth and our bodies. It’s where our physical power lies. Ruby’s deep red color activates your root, opening and amplifying its energy to help you feel at home and empowered in your body.

Ruby builds your sense of strength and stability in who you are and who you want to be. It helps you better understand and fulfill your needs, to claim space in the world, and ground into the worthiness that you were born with. It can transmute the fears that lie here, the unconscious and instinctual wounding and pain, and early childhood experiences of trauma and confusion.

This potent stone has very deep, penetrating power that sinks to the root of your being and beneath it, down into the root of your struggles, into your bones, into your DNA, into your ancestral lineage, clearing through time and space until you find solid, safe ground to stand on.

Chakra

Sacral

Ruby is also a beautiful stone for sacral chakra healing, which is the seat of our emotional awareness, instincts, and where our life force energy resides, known as “the sea of qi.”

Our sacral chakra connects to our desires, sensuality, and passion, our creative energy and urges, all of which ruby has the power to stoke within us. It’s a stone that activates and empowers your sacral to retain its life force energy for your benefit, rather than fully exhausting it on external situations, struggles, and feeling the emotional energy of everyone around you.

Ruby is emotionally and psychically protective, like a shield around your “sea of qi” to hold in all that beautiful creative, life-force energy to fuel you forward into doing what makes you feel good, what empowers you, what helps you feel strong and purposeful.

It can also help burn away any dense, heavy energies in the sacral, where sexual trauma and shame are often held, transmuting it into personal power to grow your self-worth and trust in yourself and others.

Chakra

Heart

In Traditional Chinese Medicine where ruby has been used as a medicinal stone for thousands of years, red is associated with the heart, and ruby is one of the preeminent heart stones.

It stimulates circulation in the heart, gets it pumping, balances its energy, and moves the blood. For any blood-related disorders or issues, or anything where you need to build up more internal energy or get things circulating again, physically or emotionally, ruby is a great crystal ally to choose.

It builds strength and stamina in the heart chakra, fostering your resilience, your faith in yourself, and your ability to get up again after heartbreak, loss, or pain. Like in the other chakras, ruby does its slow burn to go deep into old wounds held here to transmute them into strength.

It also is a love stone, for stable, steadfast love that’s loyal and true. It opens you to understanding the kind of love you’re truly worthy of, and to attracting the kind of love you desire and deserve.

Energetic Qualities

Yang

Masculine, invigorating, and direct, Ruby carries a yang energy that stimulates physical vitality and strength. Its vibration is slow, deep, and penetrating. It moves into the heart of the problem, into the root of the situation, all the way down into the DNA.

Building

Ruby has a slow-building energy that increases progressively and steadily over time- it builds the health and vitality of the blood, it builds up your strength and confidence, and it builds passionate, loving energy.

This building effect carries a foundation of stability beneath it. Rather than a sudden increase in energy, it’s a slower, more sustainable increase that builds upon itself. It creates a very strong structure within you that will be much harder to break or knock down when faced with trauma, struggle, upset, or any big upheaval in life.

Circulating

This intense red stone stirs up energy and circulates it all around the body. It moves the blood, moves the qi, and stimulates and shifts stagnant, stuck energy. It also helps to circulate out the past, clearing old wounds and bringing fresh new life-force energy in.

Physical Properties

Appearance

Ruby is found in a range of shades from pale pink to blood red to cabernet. Its rich, vibrant coloring is said to contain the “fire of life,” linked to the blood in our veins. When you think of ruby, you can think of blood, the heart, and the aliveness of being.

Its intense red color and strength are what has made it one of the most coveted and prized gemstones throughout history. Red is a color of nobility, courage, and impenetrable strength. Red is satisfaction, enthrallment, and action, it’s the rosy cheeks of health and happiness, and ruby embodies all of these beautiful qualities.

Composition

Ruby is aluminum oxide + chromium.  It’s a rare type of corundum that is basically tainted by chromium during the crystalization process, which turns it red. All other shades of corundum are what we know as “sapphires.”

A 9/10 on the Mohs scale of hardness, second only to diamond, rubies are incredibly strong. They’re formed under great pressure and heat and only in rare conditions, which not only adds to their allure and value but also imbues them with the energetic qualities to support you when you feel under intense pressure or are moving through hardship or struggle.