The Mixed History of the Opal
While the superstitions regarding many gemstones vary from one region to another, and in some of those circumstances a stone is considered lucky in one place and unlucky in another, no stone has quite the wide range of opinions on it as the opal.
The opal has a history as varied as the colors shown on its surface.
Picture can be found on its original page here.
Thanks to www.black-opal.co.uk for the picture.
In some regions the opal is considered among the best stones to have while in others it is avoided at almost any cost (even to this day). In earlier times there was an almost unanimous consensus that the opal provided wonderful benefits. "The early Greeks thought that opals gave their owners the powers of foresight and prophecy, and the Romans adored it as a token of hope and purity. Eastern people regarded it as sacred, and Arabs believed it fell from heaven" (United States Geological Survey). The opal was also thought to cure diseases of the eye and render its wearer invisible.
The question then becomes; where did the opal go wrong? There are two primary causes for the current belief throughout most of the western world that the opal is unlucky. The first comes from the novel Anne of Geierstein in which an enchanted character of unmatched beauty is in possession of an opal. Later in the story, the opal gets hit with holy water and dissolves with the character dying or disappearing shortly thereafter. Another explanation of the negativity towards the opal likely comes from gem cutters. Because of the opal's fragility, it is very easily broken when being worked. Because the cutters were responsible for the gem should something go wrong (and it often did) the cutters were quick to denounce the stone as unlucky and sometimes refused to work with them.
