Is Opal Jewelery Good or Bad Luck?

Somehow, opal jewelery got associated with the idea of bad luck. There are some stories in history that substantiate this but of course most of the time the bad luck can also be attributed to circumstance and not the gemstone.

The fact that opal jewelery boasts at least two colors somehow gave it the mythical reputation of being the two-faced stone. The Romans believed that the stone granted invisibility to witches and other deceptive types. In the eleventh century, it was condemned by a French Bishop for being the stone of thieves, gossips, spies and liars.

For many years jewelers in France would refuse to create opal jewelry thanks to the cruelty of Louis XI who lopped off the hands of a goldsmith who broke one of his precious opals. Somehow this removal of the jeweler's limbs translated to being the opal's fault rather than the emperor's!

Sir Walter Scott's novel, Anne of Geierstein, which was written in 1829, also gave the opal its bad reputation. In the novel the heroine has an opal necklace is bewitched. When the opal touches holy water, she dies. Unfortunately this was based on the life of a real woman and opal jewelry dropped in price for decades as a result.

However there are also plenty of instances from history that identify opal jewelery as being good luck. For instance the Greeks believed that the stone bestowed an individual with second sight. The Arabians believed it to be a symbol of purity and hope that fell from heaven in a flash of lightening. In China the opal was considered to be the "anchor of hope" and was used as a Feng Shui cure to bring good energy to a person and his home.
 

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