The Name of Stone
To receive the true name of a thing is a gift beyond measure and without comparison. It is a show of ultimate and absolute trust, as the mystics knew, that to know the true name of a thing gives one power over it, just ask old Rumpelstiltskin. Of course as we all know too well, those in positions of power can very easily find themselves corrupted by it, as the saying goes, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” and I believe this to be a response, or better to say a reaction, to the other well known saying “With great power comes great responsibility.”
But what truly is responsibility, I feel it’s a word we hear often, but what is its true meaning, if responsibility is the name, what is the energy, entity, or power behind it? Well if we look at the etymology of the word, it comes from the Latin “responsum,” meaning “to respond,” I once also heard responsibility described as “our ability to respond” which to me suggests our duty to answer for a situation involving us, or answering for our actions or our obligations. For me this also brings to bear and awakens the word accountability, if we look at that in the same sense it can be traced to the Old French word “acomptable,” meaning “reckonable,” which for me emphasises and confirms that feeling of being answerable or liable for our conduct.
To me this juxtaposition between these concepts of power and responsibility, when considered in this way, highlights how incredibly delicate the balance is between them. If having power over something suggests having a kind of authority over it, it also suggests an interwoven and inescapable accountability for the consequences of its use. This interplay reflects a fundamental aspect of human relationships with the natural world and with each other, where trust, stewardship, and ethical conduct are essential for maintaining harmony and integrity.
More often than not however, I find responsibility is a thing we can find thrust upon us before we are necessarily ready to carry it, or even at times, and in my experience, when others around us are less able to carry it themselves, everyone wants the prizes that come with power and authority, few want the costs that come with accountability and consequence. Perhaps more on this in my future writings.
So then in simple terms, to me, holding such a responsibility rightly is to be held truly accountable for having a thing's best and highest interests and purpose at heart, and so this is the direction from which I am approaching my practice.
In the half decade I have been working with stone it has blessed me with many gifts, I’d even say it’s not so much of a hazard to suggest more than I’m necessarily aware of. This in itself has instilled in me a sense and feeling of deep responsibility towards working with it, and doing justice to it whenever, wherever, and however I am presented with the opportunity, and I have been rewarded in its revealing of true beauty to me.
Stones are individuals just like you or I, no two are identical, they may have similar shape, size, patternation, or colour, but each has a character and personality entirely unique to it, and just like ourselves each has its individual set of gifts, and its individual beauty to share with us, and the more you pay attention, the more they reveal.
A rough surfaced and dusty piece of rhombic porphyry for example, may at first glance, look like a blotchy piece of unremarkable stone to the uninitiated, but take the time to gently wash away the dust, or laboriously over many hours polish the surface to reveal the aspects of colour beneath, it may reveal to you a sea of rich colour, from which stare many lidless and unblinking eyes, within each is held a shimmering ocean of flashing and flickering depths.
These features to me, depending on the porphyry, might speak of the watchfulness of the natural world and even other realms, leviathans waiting beneath the surface of incalculable depths, those feelings we get of being watched when all on our own, or even a commentary or reflection on my own ability to not just look, but to truly see, and even be seen.
In this sense they all also carry and hold different names, not the scientific names applied to them in response to their material makeup, or their place of finding when noted and discovered by geologists, but their truer more universally magical names. The Seanchaì Martin Shaw speaks on the twelve secret names of things, and the importance nay the necessity of allowing things to name themselves through our imaginal. The advice and guidance he offers to enter this relational practice is as follows…
“You’ve got to keep showing up, the big move from the living world is fidelity, fidelity is what it seeks from you.”
“If you can keep rocking up to the same tree, week in, week out, year in, year out, it may finally disclose something to you. There’s no goddess of the river, there’s just the river that is the goddess, actually enjoy a river for what it is, for how it smells, for how it looks, it’s display.”
“Find something in the living world that has claimed you and give it twelve secret names. Names that you don’t tell anybody, that you don’t put on social media, and that you don’t write down, you have to memorise them. In other words you look at a beech or you look at an elm, or you look at a little copse of trees or hills, and you find twelve different ways of making it blush. Make it blush, speak to it as if your words have a degree of pathos to them, a degree of consequence to them, love it, and keep showing up for it, and then possibly something may happen.”
If you would like to hear Shaw speak more on this a good place to start would be his book Courting the Wild Twin, which I may review here at some point in the future.
As Shaw suggests, I am not going to lay out the names that the stones I work and have worked with have revealed to me here, not in some gatekeeping power play, no, but in the sense that I wouldn’t want to rob you of the opportunity of hearing them tell you themselves for the first time, and I wouldn’t want to betray their trust as I am indeed accountable for those gifts they have bestowed upon me. Yet consider the utter magic that the same unspoken names may exist between us, in relation to a stone we were to both hold dear. This relational practice that Shaw steers us toward is something that connects us on a level far far deeper than the surface connections we have grown used to, it reconnects us to the cthonic realms of the earth, the realms where myth makes its home, in the language of pebbles chattering in chorus under waves on a lonely beach, the groans of old growth wood standing fast in a howling gale, or the sounds of crows fighting.
And so I have elected to title the collections of the stones I display here inspired by my imaginal work and collaboration with the images and figures that have walked right out of those mythological realms of my ancestors, and who have laid claim to them as gifts from their troves. I will dive deeper into those relationships and figures in my writings to come. I name different collections in this way not just out of practicality, to distinguish one group from another, but to sign post towards different energies and realms that I believe these stones inhabit. Not only this, but also as a devotional, votive practice to those cthonic, cosmic and universal beings and energies that have shown up for me as the work has been done.
You see that’s the funny thing about these myths, more often than not these figures have been waiting for you to step into the story and meet them where you left them before you can remember you had even been there, some may welcome you with open arms, though one or two may have grown a bit hostile towards you in their neglect, all the more reason, and all the more important, we should reconnect, and reconcile. For they, all of them, have your best interests at heart.
So I invite you to take pause here. Cast your eye over the works displayed here on my site, and tune in to see if you feel a pull towards any particular pieces, if you do, I ask you to consider that it may not be yourself doing the choosing, but the chosen choosing you. If this is the case, please don’t just dismiss the importance of these feelings, reach out, to the stone or myself, we would love to make your acquaintance and connect.
Images
Martin Shaw, ‘Courting the Wild Twin’
Martin Shaw, ‘Mystery School Storyteller’
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Morley’s North, Ouseburn,
Newcastle Upon Tyne,
England, NE6 1PQ
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