The Stone- Eating Worm

“Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the shadow.” Thomas Stearns Eliot, The Hollow Men, 1925

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And on the Sixth Day, God created… the Shamir…! This tiny creature appears in several Jewish sacred texts, including the Talmud, as one of the ten miraculous creations of day six of the Hexameron. The Shamir was a worm, the size of a grain of barley, whose intense gaze could cut through even diamond, the hardest substance known to man. Such tremendous power needed to be both protected and contained, and for this, God chose the Hoopoe bird, which – with the caution worthy of a nuclear launch code – sealed the minute but mighty worm into a lead box, the only material able to withstand its laser-like glare. The Shamir was kept safely encased, in the Garden of Eden, until required by Solomon as principle stonemason for his Temple. Since then, this curious but voracious creature seems to have gone quiet, but for the mysterious phenomenon of “vermiculated rustication”…