Published May 2014 • Updated August 2024 • Read Time: 9 minutes
Pink Opals can be precious, with a glittery iridescence, or they can be common opals with a flat color. Most Pink Opals are common opals from the Andes of Peru. They can be a bright bubblegum pink, as well as a soft pastel or a vibrant magenta. Sometimes they have black dendritic inclusions and are nicknamed “Peppermint Opals.” Opal has many traditions, both happy and sad, associated with it, but Andean Opals have a unique connection to Pashamama, the Incan Earth Goddess. Pink Opals have a very romantic and sensual energy. Their energy is highly recommended for lovers and for fertility rituals.
Pink Opal Healing Energy
Spiritual Healing Properties
Pink Opal opens our hearts so we can feel the love of the Divine and the presence of our Guardian Angels. It helps us to connect to our Highest Self and to feel oneness with all of creation. It encourages us to be more generous and community-minded, letting go of ego-driven attachments and instead striving towards a higher ideal. Pink Opal encourages us to stand up for social justice, using nonviolent means and by including others rather than fragmenting into groups. It asks us to love more and to see all of humanity as our family. Pink Opal can guide us along our true path, whatever that may be, and aid us during any spiritual awakening we might go through along the way.
Vibrations | Pink Opal |
---|---|
Chakra | Heart |
Element | Earth and Water |
Numerology | 6, 8 and 9 |
Zodiac | Virgo, Libra, Sagittarius, Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces |
Emotional Healing Properties
Pink Opal opens our hearts so we can feel the love of the Divine and the presence of our Guardian Angels. It helps us to connect to our Highest Self and to feel oneness with all of creation. It encourages us to be more generous and community-minded, letting go of ego-driven attachments and instead striving towards a higher ideal. Pink Opal encourages us to stand up for social justice, using nonviolent means and by including others rather than fragmenting into groups. It asks us to love more and to see all of humanity as our family. Pink Opal can guide us along our true path, whatever that may be, and aid us during any spiritual awakening we might go through along the way. Pink Opal is attuned to the Heart Chakra and linked to the astrological sign of Virgo, Libra, Sagittarius, Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces. It is connected to the elements of Earth and Water and vibrates to the numbers 6, 8, and 9.
Mental Healing Properties
Pink Opal has a dreamy, idealistic quality to it, encouraging us to think outside of the box. It helps us to suspend our rigid beliefs about how the world works and instead be open to new possibilities. This dreamy vibration can allow us to safely navigate the lower levels of our subconscious and discover hidden pain and old traumas that have been secretly holding us back from reaching our full potential and living with joy and peace. Pink Opal gently lifts those buried memories to the surface where we can calmly sort through them and resolve them. It can also help us to reach deeper levels of meditation and be more conscious in our everyday life.
Physical Healing Properties
Pink Opal is recommended for anyone who is healing from physical or sexual abuse. If the abuse was recent, Pink Opal’s energy wraps around us like a hug while our body recovers and our mind tries to make sense of what happened. If the abuse occurred in the past, Pink Opal helps us to reconnect with our body so that we can enjoy physical touch and nurture ourselves in healthy and safe relationships. It we suffer from nightmares or intrusive thoughts, Pink Opal can help us to relax our body and our mind. It reminds us that we did not deserve the horrible abuse, but we do deserve to be happy and safe. Pink Opal is also a sweet talisman for the heart.
Geology of Pink Opal
Where does Pink Opal come from?
Opals are found worldwide, but 90% of all Opals on the market are Australian in origin. Most Pink Opals come from Peru, but they are also found in France, Mexico, and the United States (Idaho and Oregon)
Mining and Treatments
Most Precious Opals are found in thin layers embedded in sandstone and are the primary focus for many mines. Some of the mines are small affairs, while others are huge operations that create vast tunnel systems through the sandstone. Precious Opals are found using UV lights. Common Opals, by contrast, are secondary stones found in a wide variety of mines and mining conditions.
Lab-created Precious Opals are available in the fine gemstone market. Common Opals, by contrast, are all fully natural, regardless of the shade of color, enhanced only by cutting and polishing.
Pink Opal
Mineral Family
Opal is a type of Common Opal and a Silicate mineral. Silicates are minerals which contain the elements Silicon (a light gray shiny metal) and Oxygen (a colorless gas). Together, these two elements form a tetrahedron – a shape similar to a pyramid – with a Silicon atom in the center and Oxygen atoms at each of the four corners. These tetrahedra connect with other chemical structures, in six different ways, to form various minerals and rocks. There are six main groups of Silicate minerals, and these main groups are further subdivided into secondary subdivisions, such as Quartz and Feldspars. Opal comes in two main varieties, precious and common. Precious Opals have a fiery play of colors sparking across their surface. Common Opals, by contrast, lack this fire and have an opaque, flat color.
Pink Opal’s energy works well with its family – other Silicate minerals. Try it in combination with Agates, Amethyst, Aventurine, Chalcedony, Citrine, Clear Quartz, Jasper, Prasiolite, Rose Quartz, Smoky Quartz, Tigers Eye. It also blends perfectly with other types of Opal such as Green, Purple, White, and Yellow.
Pink Opal Formation and Crystal Associates
Common Opals are fairly widespread and can be found in most types of rocks, wherever silica-bearing waters are found. Opals are especially abundant near hot-springs and Opal often is part of the fossilization process for Petrified Wood as well as fossilized seashells and bones. Precious Opals, by contrast, are much more rare and can only be found enclosed within a rock, where over time the water is slowly removed from the silica gel, a process which can take thousands of years. The silica left behind settles down and, if it settles in the correct formation, it results in the iridescent color which plays across the gem’s surface.
Pink Opal’s energy works well with its “friends” – crystal associates formed in the same geological environment. Try it in combination with Fluorite, Snow Quartz, Topaz
What gives Pink Opal its color?
All Opals are colorless/white, unless they have additional inclusions. In Peru and Mexico, Pink Opals get their color from quinones, an organic plant material that mixed in with the silica during the stone’s formation. In Australia, France and the USA, the color is due to Manganese.
Mineralogy | Pink Opal |
---|---|
Chemical Formula | SiO2 nH2O |
Cleavage | None |
Color | Pink |
Crystal System | Amorphous |
Form/Habit | Massive |
Fracture | Conchoidal |
Hardness – Mohs Scale | 5-6 |
Luminescence | Green (long and short wave) |
Luster | Vitreous |
Mineral Family | Tectosilicate |
Specific Gravity | 1.9-2.3 |
Streak | White |
Transparency | Translucent to opaque |
History of Pink Opal
Opal is included in virtually every known lapidary, texts which describe gemstones and their powers. Most of the legends associated with Opals refer specifically to the Precious Opals that contain a flashing “fire” of color inside them. Tumbled Opals, by contrast, are known as Common Opals, and have a flat color. The name Opal most likely derives from the the Sanskrit upala, meaning “precious stone.” It has also been suggested that the name may also come from Ops, a Roman Earth Goddess associated with fertility and the harvest.
At one time, Opals commanded a higher price than any other gemstone, far higher than Diamonds or Rubies. Pliny the Elder (CE 23-79), a Roman author, naturalist, and philosopher described Opal in his lapidary, The Natural History of Precious Gemstones. He related that a generation before him, there had been an enormous Opal, as big as a hazelnut, which was worth more than a villa. It was owned by a Roman Senator named Nonius. Marc Antony, the most powerful man in the Roman world at that time, demanded that the Senator give the gemstone to him. Nonius refused and fled, leaving all his worldly possessions behind, taking only the Opal.
Today, the vast majority of Opals come from the outback of Australia. The “Opal Capital of the World” is the small desert town of Coober Pedy, in Southern Australia. Opals were discovered in the desolate Stuart Mountain range in 1915, by a 14-year-old boy named Willie Hutchinson. He and his father were searching for gold but instead found a mother-lode of pale white sparking gems. An Opal Rush began, and hundreds of men seeking their fortune poured into the “Stuart Range Opal Field.” This name was deemed too boring, and was replaced with kupa piti, Aboriginal words that meant “the boy’s watering hole,” a nod to Willie Hutchinson. In a bizarre turn of events, Willie died in 1920 while swimming in a water hole. Kupa piti gradually become Coober Pedy, which local residents now claim means “white man in a hole.”
Australia occasionally produces Precious Pink Opals, and also has a unique variety of common Opal. Instead of being pure Opal, however, the Australian variety is actually opalized radiolarite. When this stone is red and/or yellow, it is called Mookaite Jasper. Mixed in with those two colors, its not unusual to see pinks, purples, and even white stones. Normally, they’d all be called Mookaite Jasper, but occasionally, the pink ones are marketed as Pink Opals instead.
Sunrise over the Coober Pedy “golf course”
There are stories found online that Pink Opals are associated with the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt. Supposedly, the information comes from a National Geographic article, but that article doesn’t appear to exist. Likewise, claims that Pink Opal, or any shade of Opal, are one of the ‘Seven Sacred Stone of the Cherokee’ is suspicious since the only sources for this information are new age websites as well as the simple fact that Opals are not found in Cherokee lands.
Most of the common Pink Opals on the market from the Andes mountains of Peru. They are famous for their vibrant bubblegum pink hue, but can also be a paler pastel pink or a vivid fuchsia. Peruvian Opals also come in shades of blue and green, and it is the only South American country that has these pretty gems. Opals are the national gemstone of Peru.
Very little is known about the religion and culture of the Incan Empire, but in the late 20th century, a new practice of worshiping the Incan goddess Pachamama has become popular in the Andes. Pachamama is an Mother Earth goddess, sometimes represented by a bowl of dirt or by a stone. Rituals to this goddess are usually performed using Quechua, the Incan language, although some parts may be in Spanish. They often involve offerings of potatoes, coca leaves, and flowers but may also include stone figurines of ancestors and encaycho (personal spirit stone). Rituals occur weekly, often taking place on Sunday to replace Christian worship, and can be seen at Incan sites such as Machu Pichu. Pachamama is a benevolent goddess who brings forth abundant harvests and healthy children. During the first week of August, there is a Pachamama festival in Cusco. Since 1949, the oldest woman in the community is elected as the “Pachamama Queen of the Year” and is shown respect as a living symbol of wisdom, fertility and life.
There are numerous myths associated with Opal, some romantic and others gruesome. For more information, please see the longer history article on White Opal.
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