Few minerals have the importance and recognition of salt. Without it, life as we know it could not exist. Not only is salt part of everyday life through our cuisine, but it’s also part of every cell in the body.
Salt transformed the ancient world. In virtually every culture, it is ascribed some kind of special meaning, usually rooted in its ability to preserve and protect. Imagine finding an unusual stone dug out from the earth or sharp crystals forming at the sea’s edge that demonstrates strange powers. It draws moisture out of the air and disappears altogether in water. When added sparingly to food it improves flavor, but in the right quantities it desiccates or ferments, transforming raw foods into stable products with long lives.
While salt is important to the human diet, it has long been used for more than culinary applications. Salt has been used for embalming the dead, in religious rituals, as medicine, and in more mundane aspects of life. We ensure icy roads are safe to drive and make ice cream with salt. Salt is helpful in suppressing the growth of weeds and turf grass in agriculture, and it is the basis for many processes and products in the pharmaceutical industry. Today we find more than 14,000 industrial uses for salt across all the fields of manufacturing, medicine, technology, and beyond.
To Preserve And Protect
Salt is immersed in customs, lore, and superstitions everywhere you turn. Even today spilling salt is considered bad luck, but tossing a pinch over one’s shoulder is said to avert harm and bring good fortune. Salt was shared with guests as a sign of fortune and wealth. In many parts of the world salt was long held as a symbol of fertility, perhaps on account of the connection between fish (themselves symbols of fertility) and the salty ocean. Its symbolic and folkloric value ranges from love and desire to healing and friendship. Salt is a versatile stone that can be used for both beneficent and baneful magic.
Salt’s most important uses relate to its ability to preserve food and ensure good health. It prevents decay, wards against spoiling, and makes food seemingly impermeable to harm. In the same fashion, salt has been used as a means of magical prophylaxis, preventing not only illness but also spiritual harm.
Just as it preserves food for storage, it conserves the body and soul. The Egyptians took advantage of this in their mummification rituals, as did many cultures who blessed newborns with a sprinkling of salt. It expels evil of all kinds, making it one of the best mineral allies for purification, cleansing, and exorcism. Salt not only casts out uncleanliness but preserves against future contamination. It grants ritual purity and consecrates whatever it touches.
Consider the act of preserving food by salting, otherwise known as curing. We are literally curing food of its potential to cause illness.
Because it protects against putrefaction and decay, salt bestows virtues of incorruptibility and well-being. It is therefore a stone of healing. Consider the act of preserving food by salting, otherwise known as curing. We are literally curing food of its potential to cause illness, driving away the harmful pathogens that lead to disease. Salt was known to and used by Anglo-Saxon læce (healers, shamans, cunning folk), often requiring a finer grade than was typically applied for mundane uses. Medicinally, saline solutions flush wounds to prevent the proliferation of microbes and drain harmful secretions. Magically, it draws out the spirit of illness to hasten convalescence. Salt is a token of longevity, as a well-salted diet encourages physical health, symbolically drawing good fortune and averting evil.
Magical Endeavors Of Salt
Salt lends itself to a variety of magical endeavors, including cleansing, protection, banishing, luck, love, wealth, and healing. It is a superb offering to your gods and spirits; leave a small dish of salt at your altar or shrine to strengthen the compacts with your spirits. For use in cleansing and consecration, sprinkle salt wherever you want harmful or foreign energies to flee. A handful of salt can be added to the bath for a cleansing soak. A popular action is to dust each of the four corners of a room with a pinch of salt to clear out and seal the space against unwanted energy. Alternatively, you might sprinkle a more generous amount of salt around the perimeter of a building or space. In some traditional strains of witchcraft, a circle of salt (and sometimes ash) encloses the ritual space, protecting the witch from unwanted forces and containing the magic worked until directed outward. Cursed objects and those imbued with harmful energy can be buried in salt to dispel whatever evil they may carry.
As a token of love, abundance, and fertility, salt can be added to spell pouches, placed in a vessel on the altar, added to the bath, or used in recipes as an act of kitchen witchery. A pinch of salt added to your food can imbue a meal with any of salt’s magical virtues. Salt carries a strong current of power for healing, and thus, is well suited to curative magic. Sprinkle salt over the subject who requests healing, add salt and healing herbs to the bathtub, or immerse yourself in the salty sea to allow its virtues of healing and regeneration to work their magic. Scatter salt across the threshold of your home or business at the beginning of each month to bring abundance and blessings into your home.
Blessed Salt And Holy Water
In many traditions, salt must be ritually prepared before its use in magic and ceremony. Such prescriptions are found in Solomonic texts, Catholic liturgy, and among modern books of witchcraft. The resulting blessed salt can be used on its own or mixed with water to create holy water.
You can use your own tradition and rituals to created blessed salt and holy water, prescriptions for which can be found in a wide variety of sacred traditions.
To create blessed salt, prepare your ritual space according to your tradition (such as by casting a circle or invoking your gods and spirits). Either hold your hands over the salt, or aim a wand or ritual knife toward the salt and recite the following benediction:
May the gods of the Nameless Art bless this creature of salt, exorcising it of all harm, seen and unseen, in this world and beyond. Salt, thou art consecrated and regenerated; wherever you go and whatever you touch receives your sacraments.
To make holy water, fill a glass vessel with good quality water. Repeat the benediction above, substituting the word “water” for “salt.” Now add three pinches of the blessed salt to the water, stir vigorously, and say:
By the spirits of earth and water, by the virtues of matter and spirit, may this sacred elixir transmute all harm and bless whatever it touches. So mote it be.
Seal the holy water to prevent contamination from dust, and use it to consecrate objects, cleanse your space, and anoint yourself or others as part of your ritual preparation. It confers protection, healing, and grace whenever you are in need.
Prosperous Salt Cellar
Thanks to salt’s prolific lore, you can harness this mineral to create a charm that will invite abundance, health, and protection into the home. Since the salt cellar is a long-standing representation of household abundance, filling and sealing a vessel with salt symbolically fills your home with abundant resources. To create this charm you’ll need salt, a coin (preferably silver-colored to reference the Latin expression salarium argentum), a salt cellar or wide-mouthed jar with a lid, and a green candle. Ideally, perform this working when the moon is new or waxing to symbolize financial growth.
Cleanse your salt with the exercise above. Sprinkle a little of this blessed salt on the rest of your ritual supplies to consecrate them. Fill your salt cellar halfway, place the coin inside, and continue to fill the vessel so the coin is buried in salt. Carefully fit the lid on your salt cellar and set the candle on the lid. Light the candle and let the wax melt to seal the salt cellar. When the candle is extinguished, stow the sealed vessel in the kitchen or dining room, or wherever you keep a household shrine or altar. Re-energize the charm with a fresh candle whenever you feel the need to increase the flow of abundance into your life.
Adapted, and reprinted with permission from Weiser Books, The Witching Stones: The Lore and Craft of Essential Crystals, Gemstones and Minerals to Empower Your Magic by Nicholas Pearson is available wherever books and ebooks are sold or directly from the publisher at www.redwheelweiser.com or 800-423-7087
Nicholas Pearson has been immersed in all aspects of the mineral kingdom for nearly thirty years. As one of the leading voices in crystal healing today, he offers a unique blend of science and spirituality alongside a grounded, practical approach to working with crystals.
Find holistic Crystals and Stones resources in the Spirit of Change online Alternative Health Directory.
RELATED ARTICLES:
Natural Sinusitis Treatments That Actually Work
Beyond Sushi: Eating Sea Vegetables
Recent Comments