Opal may be beautiful, but it just can't shake its reputation for bad luck.

By D. Douglas Graham

 

Related Links

• Gemstone Lore & New Age Meanings • The Curious Lore of Precious Stones

The folklore connected with crystals, gems, and precious stones is as old as it is varied. Much of this tradition dates back to the beginnings of civilization, when jewelry was worn not only as adornment but also as protection against occult forces and human foolishness.

Amethyst, for example, was thought to sober drunks, quell sexual passion, and cure baldness. Aquamarine was believed to protect seafarers, while emeralds increased fertility and intelligence, imparted prophetic ability, and other wild talents. Rubies provided defense against every kind of misfortune, made hostile neighbors friendly, and promoted one's stature in the community.

 

ABOVE LEFT AND ABOVE: Some blame opal’s maligned reputation on the difficulty that lapidaries had with cutting and setting them. Opals courtesy AGTA, photo by John Parrish.

While many stones were prized for their positive magical qualities, others were denounced as vessels of evil. No gem was more vilified than the poor opal. Witches and sorcerers supposedly used black opals to increase their own magical powers or to focus them like laser beams on people they wanted to harm. Medieval Europeans dreaded the opal because of its resemblance to "the Evil Eye," and its superficial likeness to the optical organs of cats, toads, snakes, and other common creatures with hellish affiliations.

The opal's nasty reputation has troubled folklorists for centuries. Fantastic legends have grown up around this harmless stone, cautionary tales designed to discourage those who might otherwise find themselves mortally attracted by its fiery brilliance. To this day, the odd prejudice against opals remains alive and well in some corners of the world, especially in the backwaters of southern Europe and the Middle East, where jewelers won't carry opals and customers won't buy them.

Opal’s vibrant colors make it a perfect stone for jewelry, despite its reputation for bad luck. Boulder opal courtesy AGTA, photo by John Parrish.

Opals are supposed to be bad luck. They are also thought to have teleportation powers. A piece of opal jewelry might suddenly disappear from some obvious place, only to turn up weeks or months later in a refrigerator freezer, the breast pocket of a T-shirt, the glove compartment of the family car, or some other absurd location.

An opal completely contaminated with evil is believed capable of maiming or even killing a person foolish enough to wear or own it. Tales alleging to prove this are few in number, but the belief persists nevertheless, like those old but curiously tenacious admonitions about walking under ladders, stepping on a crack in the sidewalk, or allowing a black cat to dart across one's path. Popular superstitions such as these will be with us always, but however fanciful they may be, most have prosaic origins.

"A possible explanation of the superstitious dread that opal used to excite some time ago may be found in the fact that lapidaries and gem-setters to whom opals were entrusted were sometimes so unfortunate as to fracture them in the process of cutting or setting," wrote George Frederick Kunz in The Curious Lore of Precious Stones. "This was frequently due to no fault on the part of the cutters or setters, but was owing to the natural brittleness of the opal. As such workmen are responsible to the owners for any injury to the gems, they would soon acquire a prejudice against opals, and would come to regard them as unlucky stones. Very widespread superstitions have no more foundation than this, for the original cause, sometimes quite a rational one, is soon lost sight of and popular fantasy suggests something entirely different and better calculated to appeal to the imagination."

Medieval Europeans shunned opal because of its likeness to the eyes of several “evil” animals, such as cats. Photo by Morgan Beard. LEFT: Black opal (left) and boulder opal (right), courtesy AGTA, photo by John Parrish.

Evil Ties
Fear of the Evil Eye, common to cultures the world over, was and remains especially acute in the Mediterranean. Simply defined, the term signifies a covetous or malicious glance meant to bring harm. Witches were thought to possess this awful power in great abundance, though common people with unrealized magical talents could also wield it, albeit unconsciously. The Eye did its stuff directly and indirectly. It could strike its intended victim sick or dead on the spot, or kill family members, blight crops, sicken livestock, or summon a storm with the muscle to level a house, a village, or an entire town.

The Evil Eye's association with the opal probably originated in Elizabethan England. There the stones were called "ophals," a shortening of the word ophthalmos, which referred to the human eye. The Evil Eye was accepted as fact in 16th Century Britain, as was belief in omens and auguries. In the minds of superstitious Elizabethans, the occult link between ophals and ophthalmos was both obvious and ominous.

White opal, courtesy AGTA. Photo by John Parrish.

Fear of the Eye crossed the Atlantic with European settlers. In Puritan New England, colonists wore heart-shaped pendants with prayers inside to protect themselves from the godless gaze of Satan's servants - witches, sorcerers, and magic workers who could be found in every forest clearing, every abandoned barn, and under every bed.

Ironically, they had it all wrong. The word opal had actually descended from the Roman "opalus," an ancestor of the modern opal that was thought to heal the blind and make a person invisible to his enemies. Opalus was among the most virtuous of stones. To the Romans, who in their own way were even more superstitious than the Elizabethans, it was certainly no kin to the Evil Eye.

Opal also has unfortunate ties to the Black Plague, an affliction that struck in the middle of the 14th Century, ultimately eradicating more than a third of Europe's population and much more in neighboring territories. As the plague put Europe under siege, desperate people searched for a scapegoat. They found several in the persons of Jews, heretics, and, of course, the much-maligned opal.

"The year 1348, an astrological Martial sub-cycle, saw Venice assailed by destructive earthquakes, tidal waves and the Plague," wrote Isidore Kozminsky in The Magic and Science of Jewels and Stones. "The epidemic in a few months carried off two-thirds of the population of the city sparing neither rich nor poor, young nor old. It is said that at this time the opal was a favorite gem with Italian jewelers, being much used in their work. It is further said that opals worn by those stricken became suddenly brilliant and that the luster entirely departed with the death of the wearer. Story further tells that the opal then became an object of dread and was associated with the death of the victim."

A historic, 594-gram opal from the Vienna Collection, found in 1672. Photo courtesy Naturhistorisches Museum Wien and ExtraLapis.

Many centuries later, a Spanish king would sully the opal's already sordid reputation further still. In the late 19th Century, Alfonzo XII fell madly in love with a beautiful aristocrat named the Comtesse de Castiglione. The Comtesse reciprocated the King's affection, but months before the pair were to wed the faithless Alfonzo married another woman, the Princess Mercedes. Vowing to get even, the Comtesse sent the couple a wedding present in the form of a magnificent opal set in a huge ring of the purest gold. The princess was immediately smitten by the gift and insisted that her husband slip it on her finger. He obliged, and two months later the princess mysteriously died.

After the funeral Alfonzo gave the ring to his grandmother, Queen Christina, who almost immediately thereafter also expired. After that the ring passed to Alfonzo's sister, the Infanta Maria del Pilar. Maria died as well, apparently victim to the same weird illness that had taken the other two women. The ring was up for grabs yet again, and when Alfonzo's sister-in-law expressed an interest, he let her have it with the usual result.

 

BELOW: Matrix opal set in a decorative box from the Huber Collection, circa 1790. Photo by Peter Huber, courtesy ExtraLapis.

Deeply depressed by then, the King decided to end it all by slipping the ring on his own finger, just as Cleopatra had embraced the asp to terminate her own misery. In little over a month, the ring did to Alfonzo what the snake had done to the Egyptian Queen. The ring was finally attached to a gold chain and strung around the neck of a statue of the patron saint of Madrid, the Virgin of Alumdena. That put an end to the incredible chain of tragic circumstances, but was the gem really responsible for the calamities besetting this royal family? According to Kozminsky, it seems pretty unlikely.

"At this time it must be remembered that cholera was raging through Spain," he writes in The Magic and Science of Jewels and Stones. "Over 100,000 people died of it during the summer and autumn of 1885. It attacked all classes from the palace of the king to the hut of the peasant, some accounts giving the death estimate at 50 percent of the population. It would be as obviously ridiculous to hold the opal responsible for this scourge as it was to do so in the previously noted plague at Venice. All that may be said is that in this case the opal was not a talisman of good for King Alfonzo XII of Spain and to those who received it from his hand, and that in the philosophy of sympathetic attraction and repulsion man, stones, metals and all natural objects come under the same law."

Black opal, probably the most popular variety. Opal courtesy AGTA, photo by John Parrish.

Fear and loathing of the opal did not discourage the development of a counter folklore which cast the stone as a symbol of hope, innocence, and purity. The Arabs of Mohammed's time were quite enamored of the gem, and were convinced they were carried to earth on bolts of lightning. European writers and poets of the Middle Ages also sang the opal's praises, claiming it had curative effect on bad eyes, protected children from predatory animals, banished evil, and made entertainments, friendships, and romances much more intense and enjoyable. Fair-haired girls in Germany and Scandinavia were encouraged to wear opal pins in their hair, as they were thought to add magical luster to their golden locks and protect them from freezing rain, wind, and other vicissitudes of the Nordic climate.

Despite all of this and more, the bad rap against opals has stuck through the ages. This can be partially explained by human nature. For most people, a bad opal will always have more appeal than a good one, a cursed opal more fascination than an opal that brings good luck, wards off wicked influences, or cures. We humans love a mystery, and the darker the mystery, the better we like it.