Cult of Stones

CULT OF STONES. - The cult of the stone is universal and is found either in practice or in a state of survival in every latitude.

A stone can assume for primitive peoples a mystical, and therefore sacred, value depending on its shape and quality, and be regarded as the embodiment of powerful spirits capable of producing, if skillfully provoked, the most wondrous effects. Stones are therefore used as a magical means of the first order. They can bring rain in times of drought, if thrown into water, as the Samoans do, and if sprinkled with water, as the Romans did with the lapis manalis in the ceremony of the aposeletium; or they can procure fertility for trees, fields, and persons. Megalithic stones are regarded as a fertilizing means for young couples who approach them and rub against them because they believe the spirit of the ancestors is enclosed within them. Among the Bhil of central India, megalithic stones are regarded as the temporary abode of the souls of the dead and are usually found at a distance from the tomb; but if the buried person fell there by a violent death, or by lightning or the bite of animals, the megalith is erected right at the place of death and has the meaning of fertilizing the fields by reason of the dead person who lies buried there. The stone, with its character of stability, is a symbolic guarantee of the keeping of promises and pacts; for this reason oaths are sworn upon it. Thus the Brahman novice, holding one foot on a stone, swears to remain firm in his resolve; and in Athens the archons swore before a stone to safeguard the laws of the city. In Rome, from the temple of Jupiter Feretrius the sacred stone (lapis silex) was taken, which the fetiales carried with them when going to conclude treaties, and by locem lapidem oaths were sworn. Sacred too were the stones (termini) that marked the boundary of property: they were worshipped at the Terminalia festivals.

The cult of the stone is documented from prehistoric times, as the megalithic monuments show. The cult that prehistoric peoples had for the axe is well known (and is amply documented also in Minoan civilization), a cult also demonstrated by folklore, in which stone axes and the points of Greece are considered to be of celestial origin and called "thunderstones." The black stone set into the head of the simulacrum of Cybele and the stone worshipped by the pagan Arabs in the Ka'bah at Mecca, whose cult has been perpetuated in Islam, are to be regarded as meteorites. The cult of the stone, whether aniconic (in the form of a cylinder or cone or squared) or roughly carved, is found widespread throughout the East even in historical times (v. BETILO). Among the Canaanites the cult of the "high places" was widespread, on which sacred stones (maisébah) were erected, toward which, despite the protest of the prophets, the worship of the Hebrews was directed. The simulacrum of Aphrodite at Paphos was a conical stone, and such was the black stone of Emesa. A conical stone with an ovoid tip was also the omphalos of Delphi. Sacred stones were also the herms erected in Greece for the protection of crossroads; stones that later assumed the appearance and meaning of the god Hermes. Pausanias testifies to the abundance of stone simulacra in the sanctuaries of Greece.

Nicola Turchi