Opal
Also Precious opal, Fire opal
A white, grey, black or transparent body carrying flashes of spectral colour that shift with the angle; fire opal is orange to red and may show no play of colour at all.
- Crystal system
- Amorphous
- Hardness
- 5.5-6.5 Mohs
- Handling
- Opal contains water, three to ten per cent of it and sometimes more, and can craze into a net of fine cracks if it dries out, is heated, or meets a sudden change of temperature. Keep it off sunny windowsills and radiators and out of ultrasonic and steam cleaners. It is soft enough to scratch. Doublets and triplets must never be soaked, since water gets behind the glue and lifts it.
- In water
- No
What it is held to be for
Opal is silica that never crystallised, holding water inside its structure. Its flashes come from the way that structure bends light, not from any colour in the stone. Pliny thought it the finest of gems and tells of the senator Nonius, who chose exile rather than surrender his opal to Mark Antony. Its reputation for bad luck is modern, and traces to a novel published in 1829.
Pliny, Natural History XXXVII (opalus, and the senator Nonius)
Correspondences
These are the tradition's ascriptions, not properties of the mineral.
- Planet
- Moon, Venus
- Element
- Water
- Signs
- Libra, Scorpio
- Chinese phase
- Water
- Year animal
- Snake, Pig
- Centre
- Crown Sahasrara
- Sephirah
- Netzach
How it is used
Worn set and protected, as a pendant or earrings rather than a ring that meets doorframes, and kept well away from windowsills, radiators and hot cars.
Today
Turn the opal until a colour appears that you were not expecting. Name one thing in your life that has changed without your permission.
A longer working
Take the opal out at dusk, in the half-hour while the light is going. Turn it slowly and watch the colours arrive and leave. For each one you catch, name something in yourself that was true a year ago and is not true now. Judge none of them. When the light has gone, put the stone away in a soft cloth, and look it over now and then for fine cracks.
Works with
- Herb
- Mugwort
- Incense
- Jasmine