Drives off these woes and keeps her blessed.
October, with its sharp contrasts, is the month of the opal. This gem may be white, or black, or of that rare and precious kind, the fire opal. In its dark greyish background are imbedded the most luminous colors of red, yellow, green, blue, and purple, that seem to shoot forth rays. The opal does not refract light, being an opaque stone; but its own colors make fine interplay with light.
The Roman historian Pliny called the opal “the captive rainbow.” The wearer of the stone, the same authority assures us, not only will be urbane and courteous but will be free from the spleen of those around. An opal, like a soft answer, turneth away wrath.
For a while, especially in the early nineteenth century, the opal was considered a stone of bad luck; it fell from favor like one dismissed by royalty. Two stories, one from life and one in legend, helped produce this aberration; human credulity completed the work.
The true-life story is that of Alphonso XII of Spain. He gave a ring, bearing a magnificent opal, to his bride. Shortly after, she succumbed to a mysterious malady. His sister, who next wore the ring, died a few days later. His sister-in-law next put the precious opal on her finger; within the month she died. Hoping to end the series of sudden deaths, Alphonso took back the ring and gave it to no one. Alphonso died. The chain was broken when his heirs placed the ring upon a statue of the Virgin.
The legend is a gruesome one recited by Sir Walter Scott in his poem Anne of Geierstein. With mystic shadowings and eerie intimations, it unfolds the story of the wearer of an opal, who shuns pious references and avoids all contact with holy water. One night a watchful person delivers an aspersion of the holy water, and the next day, where the opal-wearer had slept, there rested only a pile of ashes.
Only the unthinking, however, and the wood-knockers shrink from the beautiful opal because of such old wives’ tales. The stouthearted Empress Victoria of England, for example, was extremely fond of opals, and bestowed upon many of her friends jewels in which opals were set. There are no records of sudden deaths at her court. In 1925, at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, Queen Mary, passing a booth tended by a miner’s wife, bought a black opal. It is a stone worthy of queenly favor.
Far from being a sinister omen, the opal is a stone of good fortune. It is especially sought, indeed, by fortunetellers. Some of them gaze upon it to induce that trance-like state in which the future spreads before one like a great mirage; better than a crystal ball are the incessant interplay of colors and the endless iridescence of the stone. An opal on a ring increasingly gives the wearer a view of the future. Unlike the man who considered augurs boring, I confess to a keen interest in what makes them tick, or click. Usually their powers are linked to a special stone, which, like as not, is an opal. The famous European telepath, Eric Jan Hanussen, for example, believed implicitly in the prognostic power of the stone. “Anyone could do what I do,” he once said to me, “if he had my opal.”
Certainly the opal is auspicious for the October-born.
Light the fire; roast the crab.