Spiral Saints and Shell Gods: On the Deification of Snails

Abstract

This article surveys the religious and cultural sacralization of snails and their shells across world traditions, showing how gastropods, though rarely deified as standalone gods, consistently acquired divine or near-divine status as symbols, instruments, and personifications. In South Asia, the conch (sankha) became Vishnu’s sacred emblem and a Buddhist Auspicious Symbol, often worshiped in its own right. In Mesoamerica, conch shells signified cosmic thresholds, embodied the moon-god Tecciztecatl, and served as ritual trumpets. Egyptian and West African contexts highlight cowries as fertility amulets, currency, and oracular “mouths” of the gods. Classical Greek myth recounts the god Nerites transformed into a shellfish, a rare case of direct deification. Andean and Polynesian traditions used shell trumpets to invoke the divine, while European manuscripts turned snails into moral or comic motifs rather than objects of cult. Together these cases illustrate how shells’ spiral form, ritual sound, fertility symbolism, and liminal character made them powerful vehicles of sacralization—sometimes attributes, sometimes mediators, and occasionally divine beings themselves.