amorphous
Opalite
- Also known as
- sea opalopal moonstoneTiffany stoneargenon
- Crystal system
- amorphous
- Hardness
- 5–6 on the Mohs scale
- Lustre
- vitreous
- Colour
- Milky white with a blue sheen and an orange glow through transmitted light
- Where it forms
- Made in a furnace.
- Chiefly from
- manufactured, chiefly in China
Why it is that colour
Opalescent glass. Fine particles suspended in the glass scatter short wavelengths, so it looks blue in reflected light and orange when light passes through — the same phenomenon that makes the sky blue and sunsets orange.
Safety
Safe to handle. It is glass.
Where it comes from
Manufactured glass, very cheap, sold widely online and in shops as a natural stone.
Historical use
None. The name is confusing by design: it resembles opal, and the trade names sea opal and opal moonstone compound the impression. Some sellers do disclose that it is glass; many do not. To add to the confusion, Tiffany stone is also the name of a genuine Utah material, and the two are sold under the same label.
Recorded as history and attributed where possible. That a stone was used for something establishes that people used it, not that it worked.
What is attributed to it, and since when
No history and no attribution. It is a manufactured product given a mineral-sounding name and a set of meanings, and it is one of the clearest cases in the trade of properties being attached to a material that is not a material.
Described, not endorsed. Dating a claim is not the same as assessing it — but an association that first appears in a book published in 1985 is not an ancient inheritance, whatever the label says. A sincere account of feeling better is compatible with the stone doing nothing — see the placebo effect.
Sold as this, but not
Worth knowing
Opalite is the endpoint of the naming problem this collection keeps circling. It is manufactured glass, made cheaply, given a name that sounds like a mineral, marketed under further names that sound like two more minerals, and sold with a description of its metaphysical properties.
There is no deposit, no formation, no locality and no history. The Sold as this, but not field on most entries in this collection lists what gets substituted for the stone. Here there is no stone to substitute for.
The glass itself is fine. It is the same opalescent glass used for lampshades and light fittings, and it works the way it does for a genuinely nice reason: Rayleigh scattering, the same physics that makes the sky blue.
Identity checked against IMA-CNMNC master list, June 2025.