THE CULT OF SHELLS 69 
again with a click, must have seen what seemed to 
be just the familiar slow-going shells moving quickly 
and even fighting. What a fine basis for a doctrine 
of a demon in the shell the hermit-crab’s tenancy 
would afford! But in any case Aphrodite was one 
of the earliest of man’s deities, and the cowrie 
(Cyprea) which brought her to Cyprus was her 
emblem. It was emphatically the woman’s shell, 
helping towards marriage and towards birth. It 
brought good luck, it averted the evil eye, but 
primarily it was a symbol expressive of fertility 
and vitality, and had life-giving, life-saving powers. 
In connection with the custom of placing a cowrie 
in the mouth of the dead, Professor Elliot Smith 
makes a very interesting note: “The twofold 
significance of the cowrie—the belief in its vitalizing 
powers and its use in currency—led to a confusion 
between these two properties, and was responsible 
for the origin of a remarkable custom. The cowrie 
was placed in the mouth because it was supposed 
to be able to animate the dead; but when it came 
to have a new value as currency this practice lost 
its original significance, and the use of the shell— 
or the actual metallic coin that superseded it— 
for this purpose was rationalized into the belief 
that it represented Charon’s fare for ferrying the 
deceased to the other world.” According to Pro- 
fessor Elliot Smith the whole of the complex shell 
cult sprang from a fanciful suggestiveness which led 
a group of primitive men to connect the cowrie 
with sex. 
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