Opal stone meaning and properties

The traditions

1. Rome, 1st century

   Pliny ranks opal only after the emerald and gives India as its sole homeland. He sees in it the subtle fire of the carbuncle, the purple glow of the amethyst and the sea green of the emerald, blended together. He tells how the senator Nonius, proscribed by Antony, took nothing with him in his flight but his opal ring. Kunz doubts that this stone is our opal.

   Pliny the Elder, Natural History, XXXVII, 21–22 (Littré translation, from the Latin)
2. Middle Ages

   Kunz cites Albertus Magnus, who names ophthalmus lapis the stone often called opal. It was credited with the power to make its wearer invisible, hence its nickname “patron of thieves.” Kunz adds that for centuries it passed for a talisman of the first rank, and that the mines of Cernowitz, in Hungary, employed more than three hundred men around 1400.

   Albertus Magnus, as cited by Kunz (1913), chap. “The Opal”
3. 19th century, a recent reputation

   According to Kunz, the belief in an unlucky opal comes largely from Walter Scott’s novel Anne of Geierstein, misunderstood: nothing in it actually singles out the stone as an ill omen. He also offers a simple explanation: opal, being fragile, sometimes broke under the lapidaries’ tools, and they kept a prejudice against it.

   Kunz (1913), chap. “The Opal,” Gutenberg 57978
4. The 1912 list

   In the table adopted in 1912, opal is the stone of October, with tourmaline as the alternative stone. Kunz himself would have preferred beryl for that month. He describes opal as the jewel of October, whose colors recall the bright autumn days in the countryside.

   Kunz (1913), Kansas City list (1912) reproduced in his work

Opal: your questions