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Magic Stones and Electric Gems: Expanding

In the rock of St. Gowan's chapel in Wales was a natural cavity upon which the name of the Expanding Stone was bestowed by popular tradition, because the strange fancy prevailed that this stone automatically adapted itself to the size of anyone who entered the cavity. The legend ran that once, during the Pagan persecutions, when a fugitive Christian, hotly pursued, reached this rock it opened up of its own accord so that he could slip into it, and then closed about him so as to hide him effectually from his enemies. This Expanding Stone was believed to manifest its magic power by bringing to pass the wish expressed by anyone who entered it, provided he did not change his wish while he turned around within it.

The natives of the French colony of New Caledonia in the southern Pacific, attach special importance to the fortuitous shape of stones in using them for talismans or amulets. According to their form such stones are considered to procure favorable effects against famine, madness, or death; to induce sunshine or rain, or else to bring good luck in fishing or in sailing, each special use being suggested by some different form, the color also being in some cases a determining factor. For the purpose of securing a better yield from fruit-trees a stone having the approximate shape of the fruit or with markings similar to those on fruit or tree is the one indicated by nature as the appropriate talisman, as in the case of the cocoa-nut palm, where a stone marked with black lines is the one chosen. Sometimes two different talismanic stones are used in this practice, a smaller one figuring the unripe fruit; when the tree begins to bear, the small stone is buried at its foot, and as soon as the fruit begins to mature, the small stone is removed and the larger one, representing the ripe fruit, is buried in its place. The Scotch of a century or more ago are said to have considered that an isolated stone or boulder, firmly fixed in the earth, possessed powers of a peculiar sort, and some such stones were used to cure bruises and strains and reduce swellings. As it was also thought that a blow from a stone of this type was especially hurtful, this would be another case of homoeopathic treatment of which so many and various examples are afforded by the superstitious use of stones and gems, as well as of other objects to which certain advantageous qualities were attributed.

Small stone boulders have been made use of by ejected peasants in Fermanagh, Ireland, in a magical incantation designed to draw down a curse upon a merciless landlord. For this purpose the peasant would collect a number of such stones, pile them up on his hearth as he would have piled turf sods, and then put up a petition that all manner of bad luck and misfortune might befall the landlord and his descendants to remote generations. Hereupon he would gather up the stones again, and, carrying them off, would scatter them about in bog-holes, pools or streams, so that they should never be brought together again. This was evidently done in the belief that the curse could only be raised if a counter-invocation were pronounced over the same collection of stones. An allusion to a custom of turning stones about while reciting a formula of malediction is contained in the following lines by Dr. Samuel Ferguson:

They hurled their curse against the King, They cursed him in his flesh and bones, And even in the mystic ring, They turn'd the malediction stones. Of all "magic stones" none seem better to deserve this designation than those mysterious and fascinating mineral specimens, veritable lusus Naturoe, bearing imprinted upon them by nature's hand some likeness of the human face or form. The grandeur and the overwhelming power of the material world are probably as much or even more felt in our prosaic age than they were in the earliest times, but this sentiment is sometimes coupled with a sense of distrust--happily neither general nor permanent--as to the presence in this tremendous and inspiring aggregate of forces of any distinct and definite evidence of the working of an intelligence closely similar to our own. It seems not unlikely that to this half-distrust is in great part due the fascination exercised by these naturally designed stones. We know, indeed, that when examined critically by the mineralogist, their strange markings become explicable as the results of fortuitous stratifications and juxtapositions, but to our instinctive appreciation they offer so close and startling an analogy to the artistic reproductions consciously made by the hand of man, guided by his experience and intelligence, that we are almost invariably impressed with a keener sense of our kinship with nature. Some very characteristic and interesting specimens of these natural designs were at one time in the possession of Queen Victoria, many of them having been formerly among the treasures in the valuable and extensive collection of pearls and precious stones carefully gathered together by the famous banker and connoisseur, Henry Philip Hope. Quite recently (April 20, 21, 1914) these objects, which had passed into the J. E. Hodgkin Collection, were sold at Christie's in London. Perhaps the most remarkable is thus described by B. Hertz in the Hope Catalogue:

No. 62. A very beautiful lusus, in white and brown agate, representing a miniature face and neck, with light brown hair and white chaplet, surrounded by a dark brown ground colour.

So singularly natural and artistic is this strange gem, that it is difficult to banish the conviction that we are not gazing upon a fine example of a miniature done by an impressionist. Another interesting, though somewhat less notable example, was a polished flint, of a brownish-gray hue, bearing a half-front miniature of an aged head and face marked in a light brownish-white; still another offered the representation of a human head, the face half turned away; this was also a flint, the groundwork of a light horn-color, the design being of a still lighter shade of the same color. While nearly all these natural designs are in the flat, occasional examples of relief or intaglio are recorded. As an instance may be noted a remarkable double gem or medallion said to have been revealed on splitting open a clump of copper ore from the Bottendorf copper mines. On each of the two halves was marked the image of a male human head, dressed with a peruke, but while on one side the representation was in relief, on the opposite half it was in intaglio.

A remarkable find of three of these naturally marked stones is stated to have been made in the river Theiss, near the town of Winterhut, in 1556, "on a Monday after the festival of St. Gall." On one of these flint pebbles was depicted a cross, a sword and a rod; the two others bore respectively a cross and the Burgundian arms, all being as clearly defined as though the work of the human hand.

These smaller natural pictures were, however, greatly surpassed in effectiveness by some most extraordinary representations on slabs of stone, frequently on marble slabs, the strange arrangement of the veinings constituting veritable pictures of considerable extent and marvellously deceptive quality. Thus in the church of San Lorenzo in Florence was to be seen a natural marble on which were depicted two men bearing a bunch of grapes on a rod. Another marble slab, preserved in the Danish Collection in Copenhagen and originally owned by James I of England, presented in most beautiful colors an image of a crucifix.

To the natural image found in a specimen of copper ore may be added a much more remarkable picture discovered in a piece of iron-ore. This was found on October 8, 1669, by a miner of the Innesberg mines. The clump of ore weighed about two pounds and when the miner split it open with a blow of his hammer, he was startled to see on the upper half a strange and marvellous designs. Calling up a companion, he exclaimed: "Look here! Here is the Blessed Virgin on this stone!" On examining the other half, the same design appeared there also. This remarkable find is said to have been recorded in the book of the mine, the stone itself having been delivered to the German imperial inspectors.

It is well to bear in mind that the number of these lusus naturoe seemed very much larger in the eyes of writers of a few centuries ago than to us to-day, for the numerous petrifactions, showing a great variety of animal and vegetable forms, were for a long period included in the same category with the stones bearing curiously deceptive markings or veinings. Much ingenuity was expended by early observers in the attempt to explain the cause of these phenomena. The learned Jesuit, Athanasius Kircher, for example, after having proved experimentally that designs treated with certain chemical agents could be made to impress figures upon stones, took refuge in the strange hypothesis that pictures made on wood or some soft material by primitive miners had been left in the mine and with the lapse of time had slipped down into crevices in the rock, and, becoming tightly wedged in, had impressed the design on the contact-rock; or else he suggested that the original material on which the design had been made might in process of time have, by some unknown means, been converted into marble. As a striking example of a picture of this class, Kircher notes and figures an image naturally designed on a stone slab in St. Peter's in Rome and bearing a remarkable likeness to the Blessed Virgin of Loreto.

The electric or magnetic gems, tourmaline, amber, and loadstone, possess not only great scientific interest, but demonstrate the fact that a certain energy really does proceed from some of these fair, ornamental objects, an energy that produces a positive action from without upon the human body. This may well serve to make us less resolutely sceptical as to the possible presence in gem-stones of some other forms of emanation not as yet susceptible of scientific determination.

The supersensitiveness of the innocent child-soul to the most delicate impressions, and hence to the radiations or emanations from precious stones, is well brought out in the pretty tale by Saxe Holme (Helen Hunt Jackson), entitled "My Tourmaline." The particular specimen here immortalized was one of the finest from the famous Mount Mica deposits in the State of Maine. One day, while on a country ramble, the little heroine's eye is caught by the color and sparkle of a brilliant crystal lodged in the gnarled roots of an old tree. In springing forward to secure this pretty treasure the girl trips on the outstanding roots, falls, and sprains her leg very seriously, so that she is laid up for six weeks. However, the beautiful crystal is her great consolation through the long, dreary weeks, and, strange to say, she comes to feel that it has a kind of life in it. This is manifested to her and also to some others, on touching the stone, by a pricking or tingling sensation in the hand; but to the child the sensations excited by the wonderful crystal, as perfectly formed as though cut by a lapidary, red at one end, green at the other, with a separating band of white, are much more pronounced. When it is placed in the little silken bag that has been made to hold it, and is laid against her cheek, her feverish restlessness gradually disappears and gives place to tranquil sleep. More than this, she is aware of a species of subconscious sympathy with the tourmaline. So intense is this sympathy that although the child consented to part with her crystal that it might be offered as a unique specimen to a foreign museum, and was heart-broken to learn that through some carelessness it had been lost while being taken thither, she recognized its presence long years after, when, travelling in Europe as a young bride, she entered the cabinet of an enthusiastic collector to view his specimens, and was in no wise surprised when she really found her "Stonie" there among his prized tourmalines.