shop what's new gem journeys
wishlists my shopping bag
 

fossilized shell - ammon's stone
The vast majority of fossils are of animals that lived in the sea. Fossilized shell has traditionally been used as a powerful symbol of ritual, value (currency) and adornment.
Ammon -- represented by the head of a ram with twisted spiral horns reminiscent of an ammonite's twisted shells -- was the god whom Alexander the Great's mother claimed was his true father.
Recently, fossilized coral from Madagascar, highly polished and bezel set with other colored stones, has become a popular addition to Nature's palette of inventive organic gems.
 ancient adornment and worship

alexander wearing the horns of "his divine father ammon"
photo: livius

A fossilized shell and bone necklace 30,000 years old from the Czech Republic reveals early humans used beads for the same reasons people use them today: for personal adornment and to distinguish oneself from others through unique ornamentation.
A fossilized mollusk related to squid, octopus, cuttlefish and the chambered nautilus, ammonite was first called "Ammon's Stones" due to its resemblance to the ram's horns of Ammon, Egypt's chief deity of the Middle Kingdom and god of life and procreation.
Today, these fossils, often used in jewelry, are one of the most compelling reminders of earth's long and diverse geological and biological history.

fossilized shell; solomon islands grave ornament
photo: bc galleries

In India, a fossilized shell of a mollusk, with a lot of whorls inside resembling a galaxy in motion, is worshipped as a symbol of Vishnu.
Devotees of Vishnu believe God can be worshipped as formless (Unmanifest Brahman) or in any form, including idols, icons, statues, pictures (Bimhas) or even fossilized shell (Salingram), in the firm belief God will present Himself in the form the devotee desires.
Chinese archaeologists recently (2002) unearthed a fossilized shell 13,000 years old in the shape of female genitalia which they believe was used as money.
Throughout history, fossil shells have frequently served as powerful protective amulets.
For Hindus, ammonite symbolizes the duality of all existence: masculine, feminine; light, dark; good, evil; wrong, right.
The Blackfoot were a powerful buffalo-hunting society of the northern plains, living in what is now Montana, near the western Dekotas on the Great Plains. By 1900, white settlers had wiped out the buffalo herds and hundreds of Blackfoot starved to death. They now live on a reservations of 1.5 million acres located in the northwestern part of Montana where their north border is Alberta, Canada.
 the buffalo stone
The sacred buffalo stone, or iniskim, is a major medicine object of the Blackfoot, signifying wealth and abundance. Oftentimes a fossilized shell that was found on the prairie -- that was once an ancient sea -- in the old days these stones were ritually used in times of famine to call the buffalo. The stones were said to call attention to themselves by making a faint chirping sound.
the buffalo stone

holy man of the blackfoot; howard terpning, artist
photo: point south

Many years ago, a Blackfoot woman discovered the [buffalo] stone while searching for firewood during a particularly harsh winter when the buffalo had disappeared and the tribe was starving. While searching in the deep snow, the young women heard beautiful singing and followed the voice to an ammolite stone under a cottonwood tree.

The stone told her it was powerful medicine and that if she took it back to the tribe it would provide food for the Blackfoot. She did so and the next morning a large herd of buffalo was seen outside the camp, enabling the Blackfoot to survive that particularly harsh winter.

Ever after, the Blackfoot used the stone they referred to as the buffalo stone in bison hunting ceremonies - wrapping it in a medicine bundle of buffalo hide.
Called draconites , or "serpent stones," during the Middle Ages, people believed ammonites came from the heads of dragons.
Saint Hilda, or Hild (meaning "battle" in Anglo Saxon) was born in 614 AD into the royal house of Northumbria. Founder of Streaneshalch (now Whitby) Abbey, she was one of the foremost abbesses of Anglo-Saxon England.
St. Hilda's emblem was a fossil consisting of whorled chambered shells, symbolizing petrified coiled snakes.
An ammonite appears on the coat of arms of St. Hilda's College, Oxford -- thecollege being named in her honor.
Even today, some believe the ammonite can grant miracles.
 serpent stones
A belief associating ammonites with miracles came about in 656 CE when St. Hilda supposedly prayed for the people's protection from the snake infested River Esk.

the famous snakestone of St. Hilda
photo: les ammonites du cretace

As the story is told, when St. Hilda -- given the task of founding an Abbey on the plains of Whitby (on the River Esk) -- used her whip to drive the snakes before her, they coiled up and rolled off the cliffs, instantly turning into stone, thereby ridding the area of the devil.
The early seventeenth century treatise, Lives of Women Saints of our Contrie of England, may have been one of the first to explain the association of "petrified stones" in the shape of coiled snakes" with St. Hilda:

"In that monasterie of Whitbye, there were such aboundance of serpents, what throughe the thicknes of bushes, and the wildernesse of the woods, that the virgins durst not peepe out of their Cells, or goe to draw water.

But by her prayers she obtayned of god, that they might be tourned into stones; yet so as the shape of serpents still remayned; which to this day, the stones of that place do declare, as eye-witnesses haue testified."