🎃✨ October Babies, You Got TWO Birthstones!
If you were born in October, congratulations! 🎉
While some birth months get one gemstone and call it a day, October said, “Nah. Give us two.”
Very October of you. 😂
Your birthstones are opal and tourmaline, and they couldn't be more delightfully different. One looks like someone trapped an entire rainbow inside a gemstone. The other basically looked at the colour wheel and said, “Yes. All of it.”
Both have fascinating histories, colourful legends, supposed mystical powers, famous admirers and enough drama to make them perfectly suited to spooky season. Let's get nerdy about October's birthstones!
🌈💎 Opal: October's Original Drama Queen
Let's talk about opal.
Opal has fascinated humans for centuries, largely because it does something that makes it look almost supernatural: play-of-colour.
Depending on the stone, you can see flashes of blue, green, yellow, orange, red and pink seemingly moving across its surface. The effect has been compared to everything from fireworks to galaxies and even volcanoes.
Basically, opal looked at ordinary gemstones and said:
“Static colour? How quaint.” 😂
🌈✨ What Makes Opal Look Like a Rainbow?
The famous rainbow effect isn't actually the stone changing colour. It's an optical phenomenon caused by the way light interacts with the microscopic structure inside the opal, creating that spectacular play-of-colour.
And every opal does it a little differently.
Which means your opal can feel incredibly personal because there really isn't another one that looks exactly like it.
🏺⚡ Opal Has Some Seriously Wild Lore
The ancient world had some pretty fantastic ideas about where opal came from.
In ancient Greece, opal was believed to grant prophecy and protect its wearer from disease. Arabic legends claimed opals came from the heavens in flashes of lightning. European traditions associated opal with hope, purity and truth.
And here's one of my favourite bits: for much of history, opal was actually considered extremely lucky.
It was even believed to embody the virtues and powers of all the other coloured gemstones because it could display so many colours at once.
Pretty impressive for a little rock.
😈💧 Wait… Isn't Opal Supposed to Be Unlucky?
Ah yes.
The Great Opal Reputation Disaster.™
You've probably heard that opals are unlucky. But here's the hilarious part: that reputation isn't some ancient curse that followed opal through history.
A major source of the superstition was Sir Walter Scott's 1829 novel Anne of Geierstein, which featured an enchanted opal connected with tragedy. The story became hugely influential, helping cement the idea that opal was unlucky.
So basically…
A gemstone had thousands of years of good press and then one extremely successful novel showed up and ruined everything.
Almost too relatable.
💎🌈 Tourmaline: The “Yes, That Colour Too” Gemstone
If opal is October's magical shape-shifter, tourmaline is October's colour maximalist.
Tourmaline comes in an absolutely ridiculous range of colours — pink, red, green, blue, yellow, black, purple and combinations of several colours in the same crystal.
And those famous neon blue-green Paraíba tourmalines? They're particularly prized for their vivid colour and rarity.
Its name comes from the Sinhalese word toramalli, meaning roughly “stone with mixed colours.”
Accurate. 😂
🍉💗💚 Tourmaline Can Literally Be Watermelon-Coloured
One of the most famous varieties is watermelon tourmaline, where pink and green appear together in the same crystal.
Nature basically made gemstone watermelon. 🍉
There are also gorgeous pink tourmalines, green tourmalines, rubellites, indicolites, Paraíba tourmalines and black tourmalines.
⚡💎 The Gemstone That Can Make Electricity
Here's where tourmaline gets REALLY geeky.
Tourmaline is pyroelectric and piezoelectric.
In simple terms, changes involving heat or pressure can cause electrical charges to develop in the crystal.
Historically, Dutch traders noticed that heated tourmaline could attract bits of ash and lint. 😂 They even used it to clean their smoking pipes, earning it the nickname “ash puller.”
October's birthstone is literally a tiny crystal that can generate an electrical charge.
Geek points: +100. ⚡🎮
👑💗 One Very Famous Tourmaline Fan
If you like your jewellery history with a little royal drama, let's talk about Empress Dowager Cixi of China.
She was famously fond of pink tourmaline, and huge quantities were shipped from California's San Diego County mines to China during the early 1900s to satisfy demand for the vibrant gemstone.
Demand from China was so important to California's tourmaline industry that Cixi's influence became part of the gemstone's mining history.
So if you're wearing pink tourmaline, you are participating in a gemstone tradition with serious royal-level appreciation.
🔮✨ So What Are October's Birthstones Supposed to DO?
Now we get into the fun stuff.
Throughout history, gemstones have been surrounded by beliefs about mystical and symbolic properties. These are folklore and traditional beliefs, not scientifically proven effects, but they're still fascinating.
Opal has historically been associated with hope, purity, truth, protection, prophecy, luck and inspiration. Because opal displays so many colours, it was once believed to contain the virtues of all coloured gemstones.
Basically, opal is the gemstone equivalent of:
“Why choose one magical power when I can have the whole skill tree?” 🎮😂
Tourmaline has developed its own folklore depending on colour. Pink tourmaline has traditionally been associated with love, compassion and gentleness, while green tourmaline has been linked with courage, strength and stamina. Black tourmaline has often been associated with protection and confidence.
Again, these are traditional beliefs rather than medical or scientific properties — but they're a fun part of the stories people have built around gemstones over the centuries.
🕯️🌙 The Final Verdict?
October babies got lucky.
Literally.
You get a gemstone with centuries of magical lore, rainbow flashes and one of the most ridiculous “this stone is unlucky because of a novel” stories in jewellery history… AND a gemstone that comes in practically every colour imaginable and can generate an electrical charge.
Whether you're celebrating an October birthday, shopping for someone special, or simply looking for an excuse to add another gemstone to your jewellery collection…
I'm certainly not going to stop you. 😉
Thanks for reading,
