Oracular and Speaking Stones

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Mystic Verse and Insights Series · 2 pages

Two pages drawn from The Secret Doctrine, volume II page 341, with supporting references to de Mirville in the footnotes, arranged under the heading "Oracular pagan and biblical stones."

The opening sentence sets out the tradition being examined: that stones walked, spoke, delivered oracles and even sang. From there the passage turns to the Christian use of the same imagery, following the Christ-stone or spiritual Rock that followed Israel in 1 Corinthians into its pagan counterpart, the Jupiter lapis swallowed by Saturn under the shape of a stone. The text declines to argue at length about what it calls the evident misuse and materialisation of biblical metaphors for the sake of proving idols satanic, though it notes a good deal might be said. What it offers instead is two numbered propositions, put as conclusions the evidence is meant to support. First, that had there been no giants to move such colossal rocks about, there could never have been a Stonehenge, a Carnac in Brittany, or the other Cyclopean structures. Second, that were there no such thing as magic, there could never have been so many witnesses to oracular and speaking stones. A footnote adds a characteristic aside on Saturn as Kronos or Time: Peter, Kephas, is the stone on which the Church of Rome is built, and Kronos is as sure to swallow it one day as he swallowed Jupiter-lapis and greater things than that.

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