PIETRA, CULTO della. — The cult of the stone is universal and is found either in active form or in a survival state under every latitude.
A stone may assume a mystical, and therefore sacred, value for primitive peoples, depending on its form and quality, and may be regarded as the embodiment of powerful spirits, capable of producing, if skillfully provoked, the most wondrous effects. Stones are therefore employed as a magical instrument of the first order. They may bring rain in time of drought if thrown into water, as the Samoans do, or if sprinkled with water, as the Romans did with the lapis manalis in the ceremony of the aposeletium; alternatively, they may procure fertility for trees, fields, and persons. Megalithic stones are regarded as a fertilizing medium for young couples who approach them
and rub themselves against them because they believe the spirit of their ancestors to be enclosed within them. Among the Bhils of central India, stones of a megalithic type are considered a temporary dwelling place for the souls of the dead and are usually found at some distance from the tomb; but if the buried person died there a violent death, by lightning or through an animal bite, the megalith is erected precisely at the place of death and has the significance of fertilizing the fields because of the dead person buried there. The stone, with its character of stability, is a symbolic guarantee that promises and agreements will be upheld; hence oaths are pronounced upon II. Thus the Brahman novice, keeping one foot on a stone, swears to remain steadfast in his purpose; and in Athens the archons swore before a stone to safeguard the laws of the city. In Rome, the sacred stone (lapis silex) was taken from the temple of Jupiter Feretrius; the fetiales carried it with them when going to conclude treaties, and by locem lapidem the oath was sworn. The stones (termini) marking the boundary of property were also sacred: worship was offered to them during the Terminalia.
The cult of the stone is documented as early as the prehistoric period, as the megalithic monuments demonstrate. The cult that prehistoric peoples had for the axe is well known (and is also extensively documented in Minoan civilization); this cult is likewise demonstrated by folklore, in which stone axes and points from Greece are considered to have come from heaven and are called “thunderstones.” The black stone set into the head of the simulacrum of Cybele and the stone worshiped by the pagan Arabs in the Ka‘bah at Mecca are to be regarded as meteorites; its cult has been perpetuated in Islam. The cult of the stone, whether aniconic (in the form of a cylinder, cone, or square) or roughly sculpted, is found throughout the East even in the historical period (v. BETILO). Among the Canaanites, the cult of the “high places” was widespread; sacred stones (maisébah) stood upon them, and despite the prophets’ protests, the worship of the Hebrews was directed toward them. The simulacrum of Aphrodite at Paphos was a conical stone, as was the black stone of Emesa. A conical stone with an ovoid tip was also the omphalos of Delphi. The herms erected in Greece to protect crossroads were likewise sacred stones; these stones later assumed the appearance and significance of the god Hermes. Pausanias attests to the abundance of stone simulacra in the sanctuaries of Greece.