White Opal
White Opal: Healing, Inspire, and Balance
These stones have been highly valued throughout history for their beauty, healing properties and their connection to angelic beings and heavenly spheres. White Opal is a gorgeous and iridescent stone that can be found naturally in places such as Australia, Mexico, Brazil, and Slovakia.
Opals come in a wide range of colours that includes Blue, black, yellow, orange, green and white. However, it’s the white variety that will be the centre of our focus.
White Opal is an interesting stone with a rich history. It was formed millions of years ago when water and silica combined in small cracks in the ground. Over time, this twosome hardened into the various kinds of opals that can be found today. Considering how opals were formed, it’s not surprising that White Opals have a high-water content. This makes them rather delicate and easy to scratch, which is why it’s so important to be careful with them during your healing practice.
The meaning of White Opal is all about balance, harmony, purity, and love. It is also highly valued by women because it’s said to bring the user closer to the divine feminine.
White Opal has also come to be associated with luck, wealth, and creativity. It’s regularly used in manifestation practices with the intention of encouraging these traits.
Not only is White Opal a stunningly beautiful stone that is a popular addition to jewellery settings, but it is also known for its many healing properties and benefits. Adding White Opal to a daily spiritual practice can bring important and far-reaching enhancements to your physical, emotional, spiritual, and metaphysical well-being.
Whether you use it with the goal of healing physical issues, bringing you closer to higher beings, finding harmony or letting go of old negative patterns, White Opal has the potential to enhance just about every aspect of your life. The healing properties of White Opal make it invaluable for promoting and maintaining overall emotional health. We recommend discussing any emotional issues you may have with a professional healer. They will be able to give you the best guidance for how to use White Opal for your journey towards long-term emotional healing. By being able to look inside yourself in a loving and forgiving way, you will have the opportunity to get rid of all the emotions and feelings that are not serving you. Once you are cleansed of these toxic emotions, then harmony and peace can fill the void.
If you’re finding it difficult to take the next step in your life, it may be due to fears caused by past trauma and bad decisions. Having White Opal in your emotional healing arsenal can help give you the ability to break free of old patterns and thoughts that are keeping you from making informed and beneficial choices. Working with the healing properties of White Opal can give you the courage it takes to forge ahead down the path of your next journey.
White Opal is also known for its ability to help with all kinds of love issues and challenges. This can be self-love, the love of a partner or the love for a difficult child. It is also thought to promote and nurture the kind of love it takes for new mothers to adjust to life with a demanding newborn.
Lastly, if you feel the need for a bit of creative inspiration, then you will want to have White Opal near you in your workspace. This beautiful healing stone is known to unblock the flow of creative thinking and inspiration.
Using White Opal as part of your crystal healing practice may also give you the ability to access your natural psychic powers in ways you never knew you could. It’s also known to be an effective aura cleanser. This stone can be a very helpful partner on your journey through dream work and exploration. In fact, it is thought that placing White Opal under your pillow at night can inspire and help with astral journeying. Into past life regression? White Opal can be a faithful protector during this type of work.
Practitioners of crystal healing know that White Opal is a powerful stone to have in their toolkit. This stone has been used through the ages with the intention of healing a myriad of physical conditions. While you may be tempted to try self-healing using White Opal or other stones, it’s always best to seek advice from a natural healing professional. They have the experience and knowledge that’s needed to help you make safe and helpful healing choices.
White Opal is often considered by individuals suffering from chest or respiratory issues. The theory is that using this stone can ease constricted breathing and alleviate chest heaviness.
If you’re suffering from fever, chronic illness, or infection, White Opal is regularly used to try and boost the immune system, thereby giving your body the chance to use its own powers of healing.
Other conditions that might be helped by using White Opal include PMS, liver disorders, water retention and the pain of childbirth. A very effective elixir is often made from White Opal, and this elixir is used to improve circulation, strengthen the nails, and give your skin a youthful glow.
As mentioned earlier, opals come in many different colours. Each colour seems to resonate more strongly with a corresponding chakra, and it seems that lighter colours tend to resonate with higher chakras. To strengthen and heal the crown and other associated chakras, we suggest introducing the meaning and properties of White Opal into your yoga or meditation work.
There are many potential ways to use White Opal, and you may feel drawn to some of them more than others. We recommend giving several methods a try. There is no right or wrong way to use this healing stone, and how you choose to use it may change from day to day.
Perhaps one of the most common and aesthetically pleasing ways to use White Opal is to wear it in a piece of jewellery. Whether you choose to wear it in a bracelet, necklace, ring or earrings, the idea is to keep the stone as close to your body as possible. For example, a necklace will place the White Opal close to your heart, a bracelet sits next to your pulse and earrings are near your third eye.
Some people choose to keep their White Opal in a purse, pocket or backpack. This is along the same principle as wearing the stone in jewellery. The important thing is to have your White Opal where you can consistently benefit from its healing properties.
White Opal can also be an especially powerful tool in Reiki healing, crystal grids, auric work and during meditation and yoga.
If you need to build harmony and positive energy in a workspace or living environment, then White Opals placed in strategic areas may help to create the happy and loving atmosphere you desire. Place it in areas where you would like to feel more creative flow.
Combining the healing properties of White Opal with other stones is a powerful way to enhance its effectiveness, so we think this method deserves its own special section. Some of the healing stones that pair well with White Opal include Moonstone, Blue laced Agate, Rose Quartz, Black Tourmaline, and Carnelian. The best combination to choose depends on which chakra you want to target. Need to feel a bit more grounded? Pair White Opal with Black Tourmaline. Boost your creative side and liven up your love life by combining it with a stone such as Carnelian, Garnet, or Sunstone.
Cleansing your White Opal is an excellent way to forge a deeper connection to your stone and truly appreciate its meaning. In the same way that you must learn to trust your stone, your stone needs to feel taken care of and appreciated in order to “trust” you.
There are a few ways that you can go about cleansing your stone, and you can feel free to utilize any of the methods mentioned here. There is no certain method that must be used every time, and you should let your stone guide you toward the way it wants to be cleansed at the time. This may sound strange if you are new to healing stones, but as you develop a stronger relationship with your White Opal, you will become more open and sensitive to the needs of your stone.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the most common ways to cleanse your White Opal.
1. Since opals have a high-water content, using water to cleanse them works very well. Just remember that White Opal is a delicate stone that should never be placed in salt water or in hot water. A quick rinse under cool water usually does the trick. Make sure to dry it well with a soft, clean cloth.
2. Many people prefer to smudge their White Opal in sacred smoke. The most common sacred plant used to smudge this stone is Sage. Briefly passing your White Opal through the smoke from a sage bundle will help to cleanse your stone from negative energy.
An effective and simple cleansing method is to use a quartz cluster. Simply place your White Opal on the cluster for about six hours. It’s totally fine if it’s left on for longer. In fact, lots of people do this type of cleansing before going to bed and leave it overnight. This method can be safely used every day.
Using quartz chips is another method for cleansing a White Opal. Place the chips in a small dish or bowl. If you have enough of the chips, it’s best to bury your White Opal in them. Placing your White Opal on top of the quartz chips will work as well. Use this method for at least six hours, and like with the quartz cluster, it can be done daily.
Did you know that sound can be used to cleanse healing stones? Using a tuning fork to remove negative energy is an effective and beautiful way to both cleanse and connect with your White Opal.
To cleanse this stone with sound, hold your White Opal in your non-dominant hand. With the tuning fork in your dominant hand, very gently strike the healing stone with the tuning fork. Hold the fork close to your White Opal, so it can get the most benefit from the lovely tones of the fork.
If you notice that the sound is not as resonant as you expect, this will improve as the tuning fork clears away the negative energy from the stone. The whole cleansing process can take up to around five minutes, so you’ll need to be patient. Just relax and enjoy the experience. Remember that you are strengthening your connection to your White Opal.
In addition to cleansing your stone, you are going to need to charge it as well. In the same way that a battery will weaken with use, so too will your White Opal. Doing this will ensure that you fully benefit from its healing properties daily.
The most common methods are gently rubbing it in the palms of your hands, or you can place it in moonlight. Leave it in the moonlight for at least four hours, but we strongly recommend leaving it bathing in moonlight all night. Never leave your White Opal in the sun because it is very sensitive to high temperatures.
Opal, the birthstone for October, is a very powerful healing stone for these two October signs. Libras and Scorpios are both prone to positive and negative character traits, and using White Opal as part of a healing practice can really help bring these traits into alignment.
The meaning of White Opal is all about balance, serenity, and harmony. As a Stone for Libras, White Opal can provide a much-needed sense of balance. A Libra’s need to control situations, their indecisiveness and a tendency towards vindictive behaviour can be brought into balance using the White Opal as part of a spiritual practice. Positive traits such as a love of fairness, family loyalty, confidence and generosity may be greatly enhanced by White Opal.
This stone is excellent for Scorpios because it can help them bring their often-contradictory natures into better harmony. White Opal is also thought to enhance a Scorpio’s traits of bravery, honesty, and loyalty.
Common Opal
Besides the gemstone varieties that show a play of colour, the other kinds of common opal include the milk opal, milky bluish to greenish (which can sometimes be of gemstone quality); Resin opal, which is honey-yellow with a resinous lustre; Wood Opal, which is caused by the replacement of the organic material in wood with opal; Menilite, which is brown or grey; Hyalite, a colourless glass-clear opal sometimes called Muller's glass; geyserite, also called siliceous sinter, deposited around hot springs or geysers, and diatomaceous earth, the accumulations of Diatom shells or tests. Common opal often displays a hazy-milky-turbid sheen from within the stone. In gemmology, this optical effect is strictly defined as opalescence which is a form of adularescence.
Variations of Opal
A fire opal is a transparent to translucent opal with warm body colours of yellow to orange to red. Although fire opals don't usually show any play of colour, they occasionally exhibit bright green flashes. The most famous source of fire opals is the state of Querétaro in Mexico; these opals are commonly called Mexican fire opals. Fire opals that do not show a play of colour are sometimes referred to as jelly opals. Mexican opals are sometimes cut in their rhyolitic host material if it is hard enough to allow cutting and polishing. This type of Mexican opal is referred to as a Cantera opal. Another type of opal from Mexico, referred to as Mexican water opal, is a colourless opal that exhibits either a bluish or golden internal sheen.
"Girasol opal" is a term sometimes mistakenly and improperly used to refer to fire opals, as well as a type of transparent to semitransparent type milky quartz from Madagascar which displays an asterism, or star effect when cut properly. However, the true girasol opal is a type of Hyalite opal that exhibits a bluish glow or sheen that follows the light source around. It is not a play of colour as seen in precious opal, but rather an effect from microscopic inclusions. It is also sometimes referred to as water opal, too, when it is from Mexico. The two most notable locations of this type of opal are Oregon and Mexico.
A Peruvian opal (also called blue opal) is a semi-opaque to opaque blue-green stone found in Peru, which is often cut to include the matrix in the opaquer stones. It does not display a play of colour. Blue opal also comes from Oregon and Idaho in the Owyheeite region, as well as from Nevada around the Virgin Valley.
Opal is also formed by Diatoms. Diatoms are a form of algae that, when they die, often form layers at the bottoms of lakes, bays, or oceans. Their cell walls are made up of hydrated silicon dioxide which gives them [structural coloration] and therefore the appearance of tiny opals when viewed under a microscope. These cell walls or "tests" form the “grains” for the diatomaceous earth. This sedimentary rock is white, opaque, and chalky in texture. Diatomite has multiple industrial uses such as filtering or adsorbing since it has a fine particle size and very porous nature, and gardening to increase water absorption.
Category
Mineraloid
Formula
(repeating unit)
Hydrated silica. SiO2·nH2O
IMA symbol
Opl
Crystal system
Amorphous
Color
Colorless, white, yellow, red, orange, green, brown, black, blue, pink
Crystal habit
Irregular veins, in masses, in nodules
Cleavage
None
Fracture
Conchoidal to uneven
Mohs scale hardness
5.5–6
Luster
Subvitreous to waxy
Streak
White
Diaphaneity
opaque, translucent, transparent
Specific gravity
2.15+0.08
−0.90
Density
2.09 g/cm3
Polish luster
Vitreous to resinous
Optical properties
Single refractive, often anomalous double refractive due to strain
Refractive index
1.450+0.020
−0.080
Mexican opal may read as low as 1.37, but typically reads 1.42–1.43
Birefringence
none
Pleochroism
None
Ultraviolet fluorescence
black or white body color: inert to white to moderate light blue, green, or yellow in long and short wave, may also phosphoresce, common opal: inert to strong green or yellowish green in long and short wave, may phosphoresce; fire opal: inert to moderate greenish brown in long and short wave, may phosphoresce
Absorption spectra
green stones: 660 nm, 470 nm cutoff
Diagnostic features
darkening upon heating
Solubility
hot salt water, bases, methanol, humic acid, hydrofluoric acid
This is not medical advice, it is only guidance with the stone itself, for medical problems please seek a professional.
