The Spirituality and Beauty of Opals

Opals have been considered to be spiritual and mystical stones for many centuries now. Throughout history, opal has been considered to be an inspirational stone that improves one’s imagination, creativity, memory, and the willingness to express ourselves without inhibitions. It you are seeking a low profile in life this stone can help you succeed without causing you to stand out. It helps those suffering from nightmares and insomnia. This stone can also help you during major transitions and changes in life.

Opal helps resolving buried emotions and feelings, helps a person be more spontaneous and helps in communications with those around us. Fire opal is specifically believed to awaken inner passions and protect one from external dangers. It is a source of personal power, energy and calmness. If you happen to be carrying "baggage" in your life, this stone is said to help letting go of the past. Blue opal is a symbol of serenity, and has the power to help one move away from the immediate and see past the physical into the spiritual and metaphysical worlds. It inspires calmness and helps one commune with nature.

Green opal cleanses the aura, rejuvenates the personal emotionally and physically, and facilitates relationships. It helps giving a purpose for each day in life by maintaining the desired orientation of the mind, sorting through conflicting and sometimes disturbing information that bombards our psyche, and gives us a spiritual path in life. Pink opal is believed to help center and ground a person, cure headaches, and improve clairvoyance.

Black opal is said to be one of the luckiest stones that wards off fear and danger, and brings us optimism and a zest for life. The rare Peruvian blue opal has a soft gentle energy that helps one relax and relieve tensions from day to day living. It facilitates communications and allows a free flow of ideas and thoughts in an open and comfortable environment. It is a symbol of tranquility, and helps recover from emotional and psychological hurt. Opal is also believed to have physical benefits including healing of the endocrinal system and improving metabolism.

Opal is an amorphous form of silica. It consists of silica spheres that are arranged in different forms. If the stone has a regular and ordered arrangement, the stone has better optical properties and more valuable than if the spheres have a random arrangement. Opal generally contains 5 to 10 percent moisture by weight, and the water content can occasionally be as high as 30 percent. This high water content makes opal relatively light with a specific gravity of only 2 to 2.5. As a comparison, the specific gravity of quartz in on the order of 2.65 to 2.7. Because of the high water content of the stone, opal should not be exposed to extreme temperatures. The loss of moisture from the stone can lead to irreversible damage.

When seeking out opals for jewelry, designers prefer flawless stones that are brightly colored and have a high luster. More common lighter colored stones are quite cheap and typically used for fashion jewelry such as a sterling pendant or a pair of earrings. Brilliant, flashy stones with no noticeable flaws are rare and therefore expensive.

These high quality stones are generally reserved for fine jewelry. Of the various types of opals that occur in nature, black opal us the rarest, most prized, and by far – the most expensive variety. Fire opal from Mexico is another much sought-after variety of this stone. In jewelry applications where light colored opals are used, designers seek to enliven the piece of jewelry by adding other stones of color such as blue topaz or emeralds.