Only 5% of all the Opals mined are black. This makes them very mysterious and mystical to the shaman and healers. They are harder to source, and less is known about them. Black Opals are bringers of good fortune, success and wealth. They are playful, profound and secretive.
Healing properties of Black Opals
Like most Opals, Black Opals protect ones aura and are emotional healing crystals, but they work differently from White Opals. Use Black Opals to help clear karma and remove negative emotional bubbles that are carried in the aura. Black Opal helps one deal with the energy of fear and the unknown. Use Black Opal to calm the emotions and balance the chakras. Simply by touching the Black Opal, you can program it to engage your logic and reason whilst quietening your emotions of uneasiness and stress. Black Opals will help by overriding the anxiety and worry churning around in the solar plexus that prevents one from doing the things they want or need to do.
Black Ethiopian Opals
In 2013, in the province of Wollo, about thirty miles away from the white Opal mine discovered in 2008, an exciting find of Black Opal was unearthed. This find was at the Stayish mine. This discovery has been awe-inspiring as the Opal is naturally very dark with distinctive green and red flashes.
This Opal bearing seam is in a layer of volcanic ash and ignimbrite (pumice-dominant pyroclastic flow from the volcanic eruption).
These rare and valuable specimens are naturally gorgeous, dark, and dreamy. Some display clouds of white/grey Opal floating in the matrix of the black Opal. These are not ‘smoked Opal’ but genuinely beautiful natural rare non-hydrophane Opal.
Chemical makeup
The formula on the periodic table is SiO2.nH2O and is a Hydrated Silica. White Opal does not have a crystalline structure and contains a variable amount of water. The water content can be between 5-10% or more.
Boulder Opal and Black Opal generally contain less water. The formula is SiO2H2O with a water content of 5-6% or less.
Interesting Facts
Opal is the birthstone relating to October and the star signs of Libra and Scorpio.
