Shells have been casting spells of fascination and enthrallment for arguably all of human history. The earliest known example of jewelry is a set of thirty-three sea snail shell beads uncovered in a cave in Morocco, dating back around 150,000 years. That’s quite a tenure for conchophilia, or the love of shells. Within that time, in different cultures around the globe, shells were valued for many uses, even currency.

A step beyond the love of shells, conchylomania is the madness for collecting sea shells. And deeper still are the mystic and esoteric uses of shells – conchomancy, or divination with shells, and a new term I have coined: conchomagia, or shell magic. Not that the use of shells in magic and ritual is new, simply this specific name that fits in nicely with the other Latin-root terms and uses.

Crystals are wildly popular across spiritual practices and more mainstream than ever, but their cousins, seashells, don’t get quite the attention in this context they deserve. As discussed previously in “Conchomancy: Messages From the Sea”,

“Just like the myriad spectral crystals that grow deep in Mother Earth’s flesh and bring us healing vibrations and messages, so too do the similarly composed shells that grow in her blood, the oceans…

Calcium carbonate, the primary compound in seashells and pearls, is also found in its more stable form, calcite, in rocks and crystals…

This scientific fact alone interestingly mirrors the nature and energies of these two different Earth treasures – the broader, original compound comprising the shells that move within the moving element, and its most stable polymorph making up the grounded, much-less-moving crystals.”

Essentially, seashells can be used in the all the same ways as crystals. But seashells have another element to them that crystals don’t; the fact that they are made and grown, almost magically, by living creatures. They have powerful life energy in this respect. I have been experimenting with shells in multiple ritualistic applications for some time and so far it seems that, like kyanite and citrine crystals, they are self-cleansing. In the case of shells, I attribute this to their inherent connection to water. Though literally rinsing them in water, more than smudging, is the best way to cleanse them if needed. This is one of many methods and practices that can be determined intuitively by the individual practitioner and might vary from person to person.


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