Because of their pointed shapes, it was once
believed that belemnites were cast down from the
heavens during thunderstorms. This gave rise to
their widely used name, thunderbolts. However,
belemnites are also known by many other names in
folklore.
In some regions of England belemnites are known as
bullets, Devil's Fingers or Saint Peter's Fingers
(Bassett 1982).
Belemnites were once believed to have medicinal
qualities and were used as cures for both rheumatism
and sore eyes in humans and horses. The treatment
for horses involved crushing the fossils into a dust
that would then be blown into the animals eyes.
They were also used to keep a person from being
struck by lightning or bewitched by demons from the
sky (Kennedy 1976).
Oakley (1974) described a belemnite that was found
with a female skeleton in a Bronze Age burial site
in Yorkshire - a testament to the cult status of
these fossils among prehistoric humans.
In Scotland, the earliest mention of belemnites
dates from 1703 where they are referred to as
botstones (Martin 1703). They were used medicinally
by some Scots to cure horses of the worms that
caused distemper - the remedy was water that had
been steeped in belemnites (Oakley 1974).
In Chinese folklore belemnites are known as Jien-shih
or sword stones .
Scandinavian folklore regards belemnites as candles
belonging to elves, gnomes and pixies. In some areas
they are still called vateljus which in Swedish
literally means gnomes' lights.
Objects resembling belemnites appear in ancient
Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions symbolising the
god, Min. According to Newberry (1910), fossil
belemnites and certain arrowheads were cult-objects
in the Egyptian Middle Kingdom. They represented
thunderbolts and by association, the deity Min.
Fragments of altered amber-coloured belemnites with
fine perforations were found at a 20,000-year-old
archaeological site known as Kostenki 17 on the Don
river in Russia (Boriskovskii 1956). They may have
been used as charms.
Belemnites are known by many different names in
German folklore. Among these are Alpschoß (nightmare
shot), Fingerstein (finger stone), Gespensterkerze
(ghostly candle),and Katzenkegel (cat's skittle).
Price 152$ (One piece pedant).
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