Fair warning. This post may ramble and take a few detours. It may include interesting trivia, or as my Dad liked to call it, “little bits of information of absolutely no value.” So, grab a cuppa, and settle in for a glimpse of my inner world.
I love hag stones. I would say I’m a collector, only I usually leave them right where I find them. Unless, of course, they’re especially unique, or have an unusually large hole to solid ratio.
So what are hag stones, you may ask, and where does one find them? Hag stones, also known as adder stones, are found on ocean or large lake beaches and sometimes near a river. They are stones with naturally occurring holes that are caused by the wearing of water over time or by marine critters that burrow through.
There is much folklore around these little treasures. It is said that hag stones find you, not the other way around, and if you look through the hole in just the right way, you will see faeries. For centuries, they’ve been hung over doors or worn around the neck on a string as a form of protection from disasters.
At least one hag stone finds me every day on my beach walk, which is quite surprising because not much washes up on that beach. Which got me to wondering why that is. It’s an especially wide beach, fairly level (except for the small sand dunes that form each spring) and it’s called Agate Beach. You’d think with a name like that, there’d be plenty of stones.
Let me first set you up with the geography of Newport, Oregon where I live. The town is fronted by miles of pristine, uncrowded beaches. Fun fact: all Oregon beaches are accessible to anyone at all times. That’s because the entire Oregon coast is publicly owned. Anyway (I warned you), these beaches are bisected by the north and south jetties that run over a mile into the ocean and were built in the late 1800s to calm the waters leading in to the bay. Newport has a vibrant Bayfront – an area of tourist shops (how much salt water taffy can you eat?), excellent restaurants, commercial fishing fleets and seafood processing companies. And I must not forget the sea lions, who laze on their very own dock year round, except in July when they go visit the lady sea lions (lionesses?) in California’s Channel Islands.
It seems that there used to be plenty of stones and shells on Agate Beach and on all of the beaches fronting Newport. Until the jetties were built. That’s when the sand that naturally flows up and down the coast by wind-driven waves was trapped by the jetties and that flow was interrupted. The sand was deposited on these beaches rather quickly and the existing rocks and shells were covered. The beaches get larger and larger each year, and not by fractions, but by full feet!
So back to my hag stones. I remember finding a hag stone in Cayucos a few years back. I carried it a while and then set it down for someone else to find. For some reason I thought about it over the next few days and was intrigued enough to research if there was a story behind them. I was not disappointed, and from that grew my fascination with hag stones.
So what is this whole meandering story leading to? Well, a week or so ago, I shared a guided imagery meditation with my Thursday night group on self-compassion, how we often attend to others with compassion and not to ourselves. In the meditation, a visitor appears, a strong, warm, wise, loving being that has a message for you. They share this message and offer you a gift, some material object that has special meaning to you. And because this being is you, is your higher source, you can ask them to return at any time.
I can still hear my message just as plain as day: “You are so loved and you are worthy of that love.” Apparently a message I needed to hear. My gift? You guessed it: a hag stone.
And now, whenever I’m out walking on the beach and I come across a hag stone, I pick it up, look through the holes at the ocean (because, faeries!), hold it to my heart remembering the message, and then return it to the beach.
May you find your own hag stones in life. Because you are so loved, and you are worthy of that love.
Wendy
What a lovely message. Thank you!
Anonymous
Love rambling on the beach. A hag stone found me as a sea shell this Sunday. I had no clue of this special meaning. Life is so full of magic! Thank you for sharing.
Susan Madden
Funny the synchronicity, and yes, magic is all around us. Thank YOU for sharing!