The deeper story of stones

Since I was very young, I took an interest in nature. Not just nature, but rocks. Like the dinosaur geeks so many boys my age were, but I ended up taking some coursework in it and it has played a role, as one might expect, in my pagan faith.

And one important thing I learned from that point of view is that the story of rocks are as important as the correspondences they represent. In my view, perhaps more so. I'm not pretending I'm the first one to come up with this. But it is a point of view I hold quite deeply.

As a geology student, I was taught how to read the rocks. How to look at individual crystals, their shapes, sizes, and orientations. How to look at the angles the ancient beach sands are sloped at and the criss-crossing bands of quartz running through them. How to look at whole mountain ranges and tell the story of the skin of our Earth. It dawns on me that while geologists eventually break out their mass spectrometers, chemicals, and polarizing microscopes, the end result is always a story. And stories are what paganism is all about.

These stories are ancient and modern, dynamic and catastrophic, and yet quiet, still and slow. You can go to Hawaii and find crystals that are minutes old. In the deserts of Western Australia, you can find crystals that are nearly as old as the Earth itself. And I am blessed with the background to look at one rock face, today, and tell a story billions of years old. (Please don't read this as me being a professional Geologist, I am at best a skilled amateur.)

I tried to write all of this down once. But I think the better angle is to write a series of short stories about these deep cycles. I'm terrible about commitment, at least with respect to personal habits. So I'm not going to promise a weekly feature, but I'll try to write something semi-regularly.