Opals RE: [HPforGrownups] CHAPDISC: hbp12, Silver and Opals

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 149567

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Karen" <kchuplis at ...> wrote:
>
> 
>   ----- Original Message ----- 
>   From: Tiffany Black 
>   To: HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com 
>   Sent: Monday, March 13, 2006 2:09 PM
>   Subject: Opals RE: [HPforGrownups] CHAPDISC: hbp12, Silver and Opals
> 
> 
>   Lyarofjordan:
>   6) Is there any particular symbolism or meaning to the opal 
>   necklace (or to opals or necklaces), or is it simply a 
>    convenient McGuffin?
> 
>   Tiffany:
>   I can't remember where I've read it, but it seems that there 
> are some RL opals that have a story about a curse associated with 
> them, because anyone who has owned them has died. I read about it 
> something like 20 years ago, so my memory might not be all that 
> accurate.
>   Tiffany
> 
> 
> 
> 
>   kchuplis:
> 
>  REally? I know my mother won't have them around, considering 
> them unlucky because her sister who died at 14 was named Opal 
> and her brother (who died fairly early at 64) loved them. I 
> didn' t know they were more widely considered unlucky.
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>


bboyminn:

To read more about the legend and lore of the 'cursed Opal' here is a
link -

http://www.tucsonshowguide.com/stories/sep01/opal.cfm

Here I think is the most relevant curse. It seems there was an Opal
ring that was passed through the Royal Family of Spain. Everyone who
owned it died an early death. It was later surmized that the stones of
the ring were contaminated with one of the many plagues that ravaged
Europe. As each new own took possession, he/she became infected.

- - - Quoted in Part  - - -

"Many centuries later, a Spanish king would sully the opal's already
sordid reputation further still. In the late 19th Century, Alfonzo XII
fell madly in love with a beautiful aristocrat named the Comtesse de
Castiglione. The Comtesse reciprocated the King's affection, but
months before the pair were to wed the faithless Alfonzo married
another woman, the Princess Mercedes. Vowing to get even, the Comtesse
sent the couple a wedding present in the form of a magnificent opal
set in a huge ring of the purest gold. The princess was immediately
smitten by the gift and insisted that her husband slip it on her
finger. He obliged, and two months later the princess mysteriously died.

"After the funeral Alfonzo gave the ring to his grandmother, Queen
Christina, who almost immediately thereafter also expired. After that
the ring passed to Alfonzo's sister, the Infanta Maria del Pilar.
Maria died as well, apparently victim to the same weird illness that
had taken the other two women. The ring was up for grabs yet again,
and when Alfonzo's sister-in-law expressed an interest, he let her
have it with the usual result. 

"Deeply depressed by then, the King decided to end it all by slipping
the ring on his own finger, just as Cleopatra had embraced the asp to
terminate her own misery. In little over a month, the ring did to
Alfonzo what the snake had done to the Egyptian Queen. The ring was
finally attached to a gold chain and strung around the neck of a
statue of the patron saint of Madrid, the Virgin of Alumdena. That put
an end to the incredible chain of tragic circumstances, but was the
gem really responsible for the calamities besetting this royal family?
According to Kozminsky, it seems pretty unlikely.

"At this time it must be remembered that cholera was raging through
Spain," he writes in The Magic and Science of Jewels and Stones. "Over
100,000 people died of it during the summer and autumn of 1885. It
attacked all classes from the palace of the king to the hut of the
peasant, some accounts giving the death estimate at 50 percent of the
population. It would be as obviously ridiculous to hold the opal
responsible for this scourge as it was to do so in the previously
noted plague at Venice. All that may be said is that in this case the
opal was not a talisman of good for King Alfonzo XII of Spain and to
those who received it from his hand, and that in the philosophy of
sympathetic attraction and repulsion man, stones, metals and all
natural objects come under the same law." 

- - - - - - - - - - - 

Just passing it along.

Steve/bboyminn