Collection: Opal

Opal misbehaves. Tilt it and the color moves; move the lamp and a green flash becomes red. It is the least predictable material we handle and the most rewarding to select in person, because no photograph tells the whole truth about an opal. Every piece here was turned in the light by hand before it earned its place.

What Opal Is

Opal is hydrated amorphous silica, written as SiO2 with a variable amount of water, typically between three and ten percent. It has no repeating crystal lattice, which is why it is classed as a mineraloid rather than a mineral. Hardness runs around 5.5 to 6.5, and opal is sensitive to heat and to sudden changes in humidity, so it wants gentler handling than quartz. Its famous play of color comes from diffraction: precious opal contains an ordered three-dimensional array of uniformly sized silica spheres, and light bending through that array produces the flashes. Common opal lacks that ordering and so shows color without fire. Major sources include Lightning Ridge and Coober Pedy in Australia, the Welo fields of Ethiopia, Mexico for fire opal, Brazil, and Peru for pink common opal.

Opal Meaning and Metaphysical Properties

Opal is traditionally associated with inspiration, creativity, and emotional expressiveness, and because its colors range so widely it is often matched to whichever chakra its dominant hue suggests. Many people work with it as an amplifier of feeling, and older sources describe it as a stone that reflects the mood of the person carrying it.

The Romans called it opalus and regarded it as a stone of hope. The later superstition that opal brings bad luck is traceable in large part to a nineteenth-century novel, Walter Scott's Anne of Geierstein, rather than to any older tradition. Contemporary practice regards opal as a stone for artists and for anyone whose work requires feeling something clearly before naming it.

How to Use Opal

• Keep a piece where you make things, and pick it up when you are stuck rather than when you are flowing.
• Hold it during meditation focused on creative direction rather than on stillness.
• Pair it with moonstone or labradorite for a layout centered on intuition and imagination.
• Avoid ultrasonic cleaners, solvents, and dry heat, and note that hydrophane opal from Ethiopia absorbs water and can temporarily change appearance.

You will find hand-selected opal at Healing Stone Beings across Welo, boulder, fire, and common varieties, in rough specimens, cabochons, and pieces still in host rock. Browse slowly and let one flash at you.