Opals

In my recent channeling experiences I have found my spirit guide. It is an interesting journey, and one that I am learning a great deal from.

To aid me with channeling my guide I was gifted some pieces of Australian Opal, from the Coober Pedy mines.

Properties of Opal

Element – Storm
Chakras – Root and Crown

Australian opal contains a very spiritual energy that can help the holder meet their guides and totem animals. It connects the world of the conscious to that of the subconscious and can help the holder to understand themselves fully. Opal offers energy for progress and personal development and can balance and calm the mind and emotions. Used in the auric field it can bring balance and healing. It is also fantastic for spiritual warriors who do soul retrieval or those who work in dark situations where light is needed. It can also help when helping spirits move to a higher plane. Emotionally opal can encourage us to face and get over our darkest fears.

Opal is good for emotional and mental balance, psychic development, shamanic journeying, spiritual warrior work, calming, progressions, personal development, communication, meeting guides, brings purity, stabilizes energy, auric balancing and healing, facing fears.

Opal is an emotional stone and reflects the mood of the wearer. It intensifies emotions and releases inhibitions. Encourages both freedom and independence. Opal enhances cosmic consciousness and induces psychic and mystical visions. It stimulates originality and creativity. Helps to release anger and claim self-worth, aiding in accessing and expressing one's true self. Opal strengthens memory. It encourages an interest in the arts. Wearing Opal jewellery brings loyalty, faithfulness and spontaneity.

Opal strengthens the will to live and treats infections and fevers. Purifying the blood and kidneys, Opal also regulates insulin. It eases childbirth and alleviates PMS.

The name opal is actually means “to see a change in color”. These Australia's national gemstones are also given to commemorate a 14th wedding anniversary. The word “opalescense” was coined to describe opal’s iridescent play of colors.

Opal is a hydrated amorphous silica that refracts light and reflects it in a play of colors. The stone comes in a vast range of patterns and vivid color combinations, making it the most dramatically varied of gemstones. One of the primary ingridients in opal is water (between 3 and 10%, but can be as high as 20%).

Opals formed at low temperatures from silica-bearing waters and they can occur in fissures and cavities of any rock type, usually sedimentary rock. They are formed when the sediment is laid down, pressed and buried to make rock. Water carries silica into the cavities and it is left behind when water evaporates. Silica collects into spheres of uniform distribution and size, they packed together efficiently thus creates precious opal. Sometimes fossils become opalised, which is the formation takes the place of a bone, teeth, shell or other organic matter, preservng a record of the object as it decomposes away.

Precious opals have a rich iridescence and remarkable play of changing colors. This is due to the regularly packed uniform spheres of amorrphous silica a few tenths of a micron in diameter in the internal structure of the stone. The colors displayed is determined by the sphere diameter and the refractive index. Spheres packed together leave gaps. Light passes and bounces around through the spheres and the gaps among them. It enters some of the material and bends then diffracted, rainbow colors appear when light split. When light comes back out of the opal, what you see is the colors the opal and light have created. When the stone is moved, light hits these spheres from another different angles and bring about a change in color. The largest spheres produce the red colors, while the smallest ones produce blue. They must be smaller than 1400 angstroms for violet and blue color, but no larger than 3500 angstroms to produce reds and oranges. The more uniform the spheres are placed, the more brilliant, intense and defined the color will be. It is the orderliness of these spheres which separates common opal (opal which do not possess the play of light) from precious opal. If they are random in shape and arrangement, what we have is a common opal. The way in which colors change witthin a particular stone as it is tilted and rotated is called the stone’s play of color. Common opal is also known as potch.

Sources:
http://www.heavenlycrystals.com
http://www.squidoo.com/healing-gemstones
http://www.list-of-birthstones.com

Tansy
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