STONSWORSHIP
Encyclopedia Masonica
This was, perhaps, the earliest form of fetishism. Before the discovery of metals, men were accustomed to worship unhewn stones. From China, whom Sanchoniathan calls the first Phenician, the Canaanites learned the practice, the influence of which we may trace in the stone pillar erected and consecrated by Jacob. The account in Genesis (xxviii, 18, 22) is that "Jacob took the stone that he had put for his pillows and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it; and he called the name of that place Bethel, saving, This stone which I have set for a pillar shall be God's house." The Israelites were repeatedly commanded to destroy the stone idols of the Canaanites, and Moses corrects his own people when falling into this species of idolatry. Various theories have been suggested as to the origin of stone-worship. Lord Kames' theory was that stones erected as monuments of the dead became the place where posterity paid their veneration to the memory of the deceased, and that the monumental stones at length became objects of worship, the people having lost sight of the emblematical signification, which was not readily understood.
Others have sought to find the origin of stone-worship in the stone that was set up and anointed by Jacob at Bethel, and the tradition of which had extended into the heathen nations and become corrupted. It is certain that the Phoenicians worshiped sacred stones united the name of Boetylia, which word is evidently derived from the Hebrew Bethel, and this undoubtedly gives some appearance of probability to the theory.
Out a third theory supposes that the worship of stones was derived from the unskilfulness of the primitive sculptors, wily unable to frame, by their meager principles of plastic art, a true image of the God whom they adored, were content to substitute in its place a rude or scarcely polished stone. Hence the Greeks, according to Pausanias, originally used unhewn stones to represent their deities, thirty of which, that historian says, he saw in the City of Pharoe. These stones were of a cubical form, and, as the greater number of them were dedicated to the god Hermes, or Mercury, they received the generic name of Hermac. Subsequently, with the improvement of the plastic art, the head was added.
So difficult, indeed, was it, in even the most refined era of Grecian civilization, for the people to divest themselves of the influences of this superstition, that Theophrastus characterizes the superstitious man as one who could not resist the impulse to bow to those mysterious stones which served to mark the confluence of the highways.
One of these consecrated stones was placed before the door of almost every house in Athens. They were also placed in front of the temples, in the gymnasia or schools, in libraries, and at the corners of streets, and in the roads. When dedicated to the god Terminus, whose Special province, was held to be boundaries, they were used as landmarks, and placed as such upon the concurrent lines of neighboring possessions.
The Thebans worshiped Bacchus under the form of a rude, square stone.
Arnobius says that Cybele was represented by a small stone of a black color. Eusebius cites Porphyry as saying that the ancients represented the Deity by a black stone, because His nature is obscure and inserutable. The reader will here be reminded of the black stone, Hadsjar el Aswad, placed in the southwest corner of the Kaaba at Mecca, which was worshiped by the ancient Arabians, and is still treated with religious veneration by the modern Mohammedans. The Mussulman priests, however, say that it was at first white, of such surprising splendor to be seen at the distance of four days journey, but that it has been blackened by the tears of pilgrims. The Druids, it is well known, had no other images of their gods but cubical or Sometimes columnar stones, of which Toland gives several instances.
The Chaldeans had a sacred stone, which they held in great veneration, under the name of Mnizuris, and to which they sacrificed for the purpose of evoking the Good Demon. Stone-worship existed among the early American races. Squire quotes Skinner as asserting that the Peruvians used to set up rough stones in their fields and plantations, which were worshiped as protectors of their crops. And Gama says that in Mexico the presiding god of the spring was often represented without a human body, and in place thereof a pilaster or square column, whose pedestal was covered with various sculptures Indeed, so universal was this stone-worship, that Godfrey Higgins, in his Celtic Druids, says that "throughout the world the first object of idolatry seems to have been a plain, unwrought stone, placed in the grounds as an emblem of the generative or procreative powers of nature." And Bryant, in his Anallysts of Ancient Mythology, asserts that "there is in every oracular temple some legend about a stone. "
Without further citations of examples from the religious usages of antiquity, it will, we think, be conceded that the cubical stone formed an important part of the religious worship of primitive nations. But Cudworth, Bryant, Faber, and all other distinguished writers who have treated the Subject, have long since established the theory that the Pagan religions were eminently symbolic. Thus, to use the language of Dudley, the pillar or stone was "adopted as a symbol of strength and firmness—a symbol, also, of the Divine Power, and, by a ready inference, a symbol or idol of the Deity Himself." And this symbolism is confirmed by Phurnutus, whom Toland quotes as saying that the god Hermes was represented without hands or feet, being a cubical stone, because the cubical figure betokened his solidity and stability.
The influence of this old stone-worship, but of course divested of its idolatrous spirit, and developed into the system of Symbolic instruction, is to be found in Freemasonry, where the reference to sacred stones is made in the Foundation-Stone, the Cubical Stone, the Corner-Stone, and some other symbols of a similar character. Indeed, the stone supplies Masonic science with a very important and diversified symbolism.
As stone-worship was one of the oldest of the deflections from the pure religion, so it was one of the last to be abandoned. A Decree of the Council of Aries, which was held in the year 452, declares that "if, in any diocese, any infidel either lighted torches or worshiped trees, fountains, or stones, or neglected to destroy them, he should be found guilty of sacrilege." A similar decree was subsequently issued by the Council of Tours in 507, that of Nantes in 658, and that of Toledo in 681. Charlemagne, of France, in the eighth century, and Canute, of England, in the eleventh, found it necessary to execrate and forbid the worship of stones.
Even in the present day, the worship has not been altogether abandoned, but still exists in some remote districts of Christendom. Scheffer, in his Description of Lapland, cited by Tennent, in Notes and Queries (first series, v, 122) says that in 1673 the Laplanders worshiped an unhewn stone found upon the banks of lakes and rivers, and which they called kied kie jubmal, that is, the stone god. Martin, in his Description of the Western Islands (page 88) says: "There is a stone set up near a mile to the south of Saint Columbus's church, about eight feet high and two broad. It is called by the natives the bounng stone; for when the inhabitants had the first sight of the church, they set up this, and then bowed, and said the Lord's Prayer." He also describes several other stones in different parts of the islands which were objects of veneration. Finally, in a work published years ago by the Earl of Roden, entitled Progress of the Reformation in Ireland, he says (page 51), that at Inniskea, an island off the coast of Mayo, "a stone carefully wrapped up in flannels is brought out at certain periods to be adored; and when a storm arises, this god is supplicated to send a greek on their coasts."
Tennent, to whom we are indebted for these citations, adds another from Borlase, who, in his Antiquities of Cornwall, says (book iii, chapter ii, page 162), that "after Christianity took place, many (in Cornwall) continued to worship these stones; coming thither with lighted torches, and praying for safety and success." It is more than probable that in many remote regions of Europe, where the sun of Christianity has only darted its dimmest rays, this old worship of sacred stones still remains.
