Finding a seashell
Shells were charms against the evil eye in Turkey and emblems of the sea's treasure on Maltese wedding dresses. Every shell also records its maker's growth in fine lines, so a found one is a good way to look back at your own.
What it may mean
A seashell is a diary written in calcium. The animal that built it added new material along the lip as it grew, a little in good seasons and almost nothing in hard ones, and the ridges and bands you can trace with a fingernail are that record. Some shells show a sharp line where a storm, a cold spell or an attack slowed everything down, and then the growth carries on past it. Turning one over in your hand, you might ask what your own growth lines would show: the fat years and the thin ones, the moment something hit hard, the way you kept building afterward. Most people only see their latest edge. The whole shell, including the early ridges, is the more honest picture of who you are.
Depending on how you saw it
A whole shell among fragments
Most of what a beach holds is fragments, worn by waves and sand, so an intact shell catches the eye at once. Wholeness is the exception, not the rule. Can you value the pieces of your life that are not complete, the half-finished and the worn, as much as the rare intact ones?
A shell with a neat round hole
A tiny round hole near the hinge of a clam is often the work of a moon snail, which drills through to feed. The shell survived as a record of someone else's dinner. Which chapter of your story is really about something that happened to you, not something you did?
A shell with a hermit crab inside
Hermit crabs move into empty shells and trade up as they grow, sometimes lining up by size to swap. A home that fit last year may not fit now. What have you outgrown that someone smaller might be glad to move into?
Fossil shells far from the sea
In much of the American interior, fossil shells turn up in rocks and creek beds hundreds of miles from any coast, left by seas that covered the land millions of years ago. What lies under your everyday ground that would surprise you if you looked?
Why it happens in nature
Seashells are built by mollusks such as clams, snails and scallops, which add calcium carbonate along the shell's edge as they grow, leaving visible growth lines. After the animal dies, the empty shell is tumbled by waves and sand, so whole shells are far rarer than fragments. Many beaches forbid taking shells with living animals inside, and some protected areas forbid taking any.
What folk beliefs say
Malta
In Malta, on the wedding morning, small golden shells were fastened to the bride's dress for good fortune, as emblems of the boundless treasures of the sea.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 1 (1903), vol. 1, p. 131. View the page
Turkey
Turks wore shells, bones and blue beads in strings on their heads, and hung them on their animals, to ward off the evil eye.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 3 (1903), vol. 3, p. 1266 (file v 3). View the page
India (Hindu tradition)
In Hindu temples in India, conch shells were blown to drive away harmful spirits while the god received his daily meal; shells were chosen because they come from the ocean, which in Hindu belief is the final home of the sainted dead.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 1161. View the page
To reflect on
What would your own growth lines show, from the early ridges to the edge you are building now?