Opal

Opal is one of the "official" birthstones for October. Popular opal jewelry you can buy today includes rings, earrings and pendants.

What Is Opal?

Opal is an amorphous form of hydrated silicon dioxide which is found a wide variety of colours, many of these having specific names. Examples include white opal (more accurately a milky grey), fire opal (various shades of red, the most well known being Mexican), hyalite (colourless), prasopal (apple green - literally leek green), and hydrophane (cloudy due to lack of water).

Ordinary opal is an abundant stone, much of it being Australian in origin. Precious opal is far less common and much sought after. It has a distinctive iridescence of various hues.

Opal isn't a very hard stone and can be damaged or dry out if not cared for properly.

Symbolism and Lore

The name opal derives from the Sanskrit upala via the Greek opallios. Pliny the Elder called precious opal opallus or "precious stone".

If some stones such as peridot suffer from a lack of ancient lore, opal has the opposite problem - there's almost too much myth associated with it! Opal has been known for many things both fortunate and less so.

In Greek mythology, opal was formed from the tears of joy that Zeus wept after defeating the Titans. In Indian lore opal was formed when the Goddess of Rainbows was turned to stone whilst fleeing the romantic advances of the other gods. In the Arabic world it was believed that opals fell from the skies in lightning flashes which gave them their fire.

Traditionally opal has been considered a stone of fortune. The Romans thought opals were symbolic of hope and purity, the Greeks that they gave the gift of prophecy. It has also been said to confer invisibility and hence to be favoured by thieves.

More recently it has been considered unlucky to wear opal if it isn't actually your bithstone. This idea appears to trace back to Sir Walter Scott's novel "Anne of Gierstein" where the protaganist has her life force (soul?) trapped in a cursed opal.

And perhaps most bizarrely of all, opal was believed to prevent blonde hair from losing its colour!

With all these different symbolic attributions of opal it's perhaps not surprising that Shakespeare used it as a symbol of unpredictability and inconstancy:

"Now, the melancholy god protect thee, and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal" - Twelfth Night, Act 2 Scene 4

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