Birthstone Chart by Month and Zodiac

Free Printable Birthstone Chart

One sheet, twelve months. Each month shows its stone with a watercolor illustration, the stone’s color, the chakra and element crystal practice files it under, the two zodiac signs the month spans, and the extra official stones for the six months that carry them.

The printable birthstone chart is sized for A4 and US Letter, so it prints without scaling on either. Take the PDF for a clean print or the PNG to drop into a document. Free, and no email required.

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Birthstone Quick Guide

Each birthstone carries a distinct meaning rooted in centuries of cultural tradition. Here is a one-line summary for every month of the year.

Zodiac Birthstone Chart

Zodiac signs cross two calendar months, so a zodiac birthstone chart needs a stated method. On this site, the modern sign stone comes from the standardized month containing most days of that sign. The traditional column records a separate historical zodiac association; it is not part of the 1912 monthly standard.

AriesDiamond · traditional BloodstoneTaurusEmerald · traditional SapphireGeminiPearl · traditional AgateCancerRuby · traditional EmeraldLeoPeridot · traditional OnyxVirgoBlue Sapphire · traditional CarnelianLibraOpal · traditional PeridotScorpioTopaz · traditional AquamarineSagittariusTurquoise · traditional TopazCapricornGarnet · traditional RubyAquariusAmethyst · traditional GarnetPiscesAquamarine · traditional Amethyst

How Sign, Stone and Month Connect

Read it left to right. Each sign sends a solid thread to its modern stone, and that stone runs on to the month it belongs to, which is exactly the derivation rule stated below. The dashed threads are the older zodiac tradition, and they cross. Taurus reaches for sapphire, the September stone. Capricorn reaches for ruby, the July stone. Three signs reach for agate, onyx and carnelian, which no month list has ever carried, so those threads stop at the stone. The chart is the visible version of the point the Pavitt table makes below: the two systems were never one list.

Where This Site's Modern Zodiac Column Comes From

The rule is mechanical, and worth stating plainly because it explains every mismatch below. Each sign straddles two calendar months. This site's modern zodiac stone is the modern birthstone of the later of those two months, every time, for all twelve signs. Aries runs into April, so Aries gets April's diamond. Capricorn runs into January, so Capricorn gets January's garnet. That column is therefore a restatement of the 1912 American month list, read through a zodiac lens. It was never a record of what any older tradition assigned to a sign, and Pavitt's chapters are a record of exactly that. Two different questions, two different answers, and the table below is what happens when you lay one over the other.

Where Does This Chart Disagree With Pavitt’s 1914 Zodiac?

Line this site's zodiac columns up against Pavitt's 1914 chapters and the two columns behave very differently. 11 of 12 traditional-stone entries here already match Pavitt's own chapter gem for gem, word for word in most cases. The modern column tells a different story. Only 2 modern-stone entries, Aries's Diamond and Libra's Opal, appear anywhere in Pavitt's book under the sign this site lists them for. The other 10 are not simply absent from the old record. In 9 cases they turn out to be Pavitt's stone for a completely different sign. The tenth sign, Leo, only drifted to a period name; no clean one-for-one swap happened there.

A Diamond, an Empire, and One Writer's Hope

Pavitt did not stop at listing Aries's stones. In 1914 he wrote that England itself sat 'under the influence of the Zodiacal House of Aries, the house of the diamond,' and said he hoped the empire would prosper because of it. He had just finished telling the story of the Koh-i-Noor: seized during the annexation of the Punjab, handed to Lord Dalhousie, and presented to Queen Victoria in 1850. Brahmin belief, he adds, blamed the stone for the Crimean War and for the Sepoy Mutiny seven years after it arrived in London. A gem chart, in his hands, was never only personal reading. It was a claim about the fortune of a country.

A Gem Trader Born in Paris in 1605

Pavitt's other diamond story starts smaller and ends darker. Tavernier, a French traveller born in Paris in 1605, spent years trading gems across the East before selling what became the Hope Diamond in 1668. Pavitt frames the chain of misfortune that supposedly followed later owners as a warning about large diamonds taken by force, not diamonds in general, a distinction the chart's own Aries entry, Diamond paired peacefully with Bloodstone, carries no hint of.

The History of Birthstone Charts

The idea that specific gemstones belong to specific months is ancient, but the first formal birthstone chart is surprisingly recent. Jewelers of America traces the official U.S. list to 1912, when its predecessor, the American National Retail Jewelers Association, established a standardized set of calendar-month stones. It did not create an official zodiac list.

The U.S. list changed as the jewelry trade changed. Alexandrite was added as a June option in 1952, tanzanite joined December in 2002, and spinel joined August in 2016. That history is why current charts can show more than one accepted modern stone for a month.

The Traditional Birthstone System

Before the 1912 standard, birthstone lists varied by region, religion, and century. The most influential tradition traces back to the first-century historian Josephus, who connected the twelve gems on the High Priest’s breastplate (described in the Book of Exodus) with the twelve months and the twelve zodiac signs. By the Middle Ages, European lapidaries, books cataloging stones and their supposed virtues, had adapted the list to local gems and local beliefs.

Some traditional associations are very old: garnet for January appears in fifteenth-century German texts. Others reflect regional customs that the modern list replaced. Bloodstone for March, for example, was standard in Britain but unfamiliar in America. The traditional list was never standardized by a single authority, and sources sometimes disagree on one or two months.

Throughout this site, we present both systems side by side. Where the modern and traditional stones differ, we note both and explain the historical reason for the difference. There is no “right” list, only older and newer conventions, each with its own story.

Birthstone Colors and Symbolism

Each birthstone carries distinctive colors that have driven its cultural associations for centuries. January’s garnet ranges from deep red to orange, connected in medieval texts to vitality and safe travel. April’s diamond throws a prismatic fire that lapidary writers turned into a symbol of clarity and of a promise meant to outlast the people making it. August’s peridot holds one olive green that the Egyptians named for the sun. December’s tanzanite shifts from blue to violet as the light moves, and its folklore is barely fifty years old, which makes it the easiest tradition on the chart to trace.

Color also matters practically, because a stone’s hue decides how it sits against a metal setting and against your own skin. The chart above lists each month’s associated color alongside the stone name for quick reference. If color matters most to you, compare the modern and traditional columns. March’s aquamarine (pale blue) and bloodstone (dark green with red specks) offer very different looks for the same birth month.

How to Choose Your Birthstone

If your birth month has more than one listed stone, the choice is personal. Some people take the modern stone because it stands up to being worn every day, and diamond, ruby and sapphire all do. Others take the traditional stone for the older story attached to it. March is the clearest case. Bloodstone carries millennia of warrior symbolism that aquamarine, its modern replacement, never picked up.

A practical approach: browse both columns for your month, check the durability and care requirements of each stone, and pick the one that suits your lifestyle and personal connection. The zodiac sign column may suggest a third option drawn from astrological tradition. Read the individual zodiac birthstone guides for care advice, wearing tips, and deeper meaning for each stone.