Magical Adder Stone And Its Immense Power

David Tee - AncientPages.com - Ancient people have been described as being very superstitious people. How widespread that superstition was is unknown. If the modern world is any example, it can be held that some ancient people believed the legends and superstitions about the adder stone while many did not.

This lack of belief did not stop writers from including the adder stone in the many myths and legends found in Celtic, Welsh, Irish, and even Russian countries.

What Is An Adder Stone?

These adder stones are believed to be magical stones that hold immense power. They are also known as a fairy stone. Their appearances are quite similar to each other. There is a glassy finish to the body of the stones, which can be produced in any number of ways.

The finish is said to be made by the snakes themselves. Then each stone has a hole in them. This hole does not have to be in the center of the stone to make the rock an adder stone. Ancient records say that the tongues made the holes of the snakes as they hissed and licked away.

How these stones are made is irrelevant. Their worth is in the value people place on them through their various beliefs.

Ancient People Believed Adder Stones Had Magical Properties

The ancient world is not so much different from the modern one. People suffered from many different diseases, injuries like their modern counterparts. This led many of them to seek alternative medical cures when they found that their doctors could not cure those who were ill.

Those searches led the ancient people to believe those people who promoted the mystical arts and claimed that the adder stone held vast power. These stones were said to hold the power to cure diseases, protect against evil charms, stop nightmares, identify disguised elves and witches as well as cure illnesses due to snakebites.

These claims were powerful and hard to resist. Who wouldn’t want a personal source of health and well-being and not have to pay for it?  Soon, the prowess of these stones and the magic they did became somewhat famous, and soon they were added to the different myths and legends to help make those stories work better.

Pliny, a well-educated man, could have convinced his fellow Romans and his readers that the adder stones were nothing more than just rocks. But in his Natural History book 29 and chapter 12 he discusses these stones.

After describing how one is to find these stones and how the fortunate stone hunter is to escape, Pliny describes their magical power. He said, it is held in high estimation among the Druids. The possession of it is marvellously vaunted as ensuring success in law-suits, and a favourable reception with princes…

Flintstone with a hole (hagstone) discovered in Dänholm, Germany. Credit: Public Domain - CC BY-SA 2.0

In other words, the person who possessed these adders tones would find a happy life and be protected from financial ruin. Pliny also alluded to the idea that a person would be killed just because he possessed an adder stone and the murderer wanted it.

How true that was is unknown although Pliny did say that it was highly unlikely that such a motive was true. But people have been killed for less so the validity cannot be ignored here.

There are several theories as to how these adder stones come into existence. One theory has it that the stones are made from the saliva of entwined serpents. Another theory says that these adder stones are made from the heads of snakes or that they originate in the head of the snake.

A final theory holds that it is the sting of an adder that creates the stone. A more modern story for the existence of these stones is that water creates them just by pouring over any variety of rock lying in its path.

Whatever their origin, some of the people of the ancient world valued them so highly that they sought their help when calamity struck. Their superstitious beliefs led them to use the stones to protect themselves and their families.

Updated on December 3, 2023

Written by – David Tee AncientPages.com Staff Writer

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