Salt has been used throughout human history for cooking, seasoning, food preservation, healing, cleansing, and in ceremony, ritual, and magic.
In the Taoist principles of Chinese medicine, the salty flavor is a universal property, and humans have the kidneys for the purpose of utilizing this cosmic substance. The kidneys organize the water within the human body using the osmotic properties of salt.
Holy water is salt water which has been consecrated, and is used in churches for anointing and blessing. There are many sacred healing places in the world centered around salt: salt baths, salt caves, and the eternal cleansing and healing power of ocean water.
Halotherapy or splelotherapy, the inhalation of salt particles, has been credited with many healing properties, particularly for respiratory illnesses.
Structure of Salt
The salt crystal is called halite, and the chemical name for salt is sodium chloride. This molecule has a crystal lattice structure that forms a cube.
This is very interesting for the many ways in which salt plays a role of structuring, stabilizing, and grounding.
“Homer referred to salt as a “divine substance” and Plato described it as “especially dear to the gods.” The Celtic word for salt meant “holy” or “sacred.” [ ] Areas where there is very little sodium in the soil will support only small numbers of human beings.
The quest for salt led to the development of the major trade routes in the ancient world. If you look at a map of the world showing the major accessible salt deposits, there you will also see where civilizations developed—in Jordan, the Tigris-Euphrates, the Yellow River of China, the salt swamps in Persia, the deserts of Egypt and the Sahara; in the New World in Central America, the Andes and the Great Lakes; and finally on the seacoasts in areas of abundant sunshine, where salt could be obtained from evaporated sea water.” [source]
Health Properties of Salt
Salt is necessary for health, contrary to the low-sodium health fads in the last century. Salt is necessary for kidney and adrenal function, brain development, proper nerve signaling, muscle functionality, thyroid balance, metabolism, and digestion.
Water composes a large percentage of our bodies, so it follows that every system in our body relies on salt because of the osmotic and conductive properties that occur with salt and water.
Refined salt, or table salt, has been bleached, adulterated with additives, and heated at high temperatures to produce a uniform white and pourable product. Iodine is then added back in to create “iodized” salt, because it is a necessary trace mineral that is stripped away in the refining process. Animals and fish from the ocean will die if put into water where only refined salt has been added.
Unrefined salt, sea salt, “real salt”, Himalayan salt etc. contains many beneficial minerals in trace amounts including zinc, copper, fluoride, magnesium, sulphur, potassium, calcium, tin, and manganese, which all nourish our body in a balanced way. The complex balance of all these minerals in unrefined salt is a product of Mother Nature and nourishes us physically and vitally.
Salt in Alchemy
“All sickness have their beginning in some form of the three substances: Salt, Sulphur and Mercury; that is to say, they can have their origin in the world of matter (Salt), in the sphere of the soul (Sulphur), or in the kingdom of the mind. (Mercury)”
-Paracelsus
In the medieval texts of European alchemy salt is often included in references to sulphur and mercury. These substances are all physical elements with practical uses in the world, but they are also internal components of our psychological and spiritual makeup.
Ancient alchemists transmitted their teachings in the code of laboratory chemical-alchemy, when really the work was about the internal spiritual transformation.
Salt is the matter, the prima materia that must be constantly transformed by the power of the mercury (the mind, also the sexual waters), and the sulphur (the soul, the sexual fire, or sexual energy).
Salt is our Essence, and also our physical and energetic bodies. The salt then is cleansed, purified, burned, immolated, by the water and the fire, while also giving form and structure to these powers (the mind and the soul).
“Salt is the substance of all things, and the fixed principle of all that exists. Salt works upon the Sulphur and the Mercury. Thus, Sulphur and Mercury make the Salt volatile, just as they are. Salt thickens them and makes them fixed in return. [ ] Salt dissolves and thickens all things. The Earth has the nature of Salt. This is why it is dissolved in water and thickened in water.“
-Samael Aun Weor, A Treatise of Alchemy
The salt fixes, and in turn is made volatile. Salt dissolves in water, and then thickens the water. This is all in relation to our psychological and sexual purification.
“The continents emerge from the salty waters of the sea and then return to the sea.”
-Samael Aun Weor, A Treatise of Alchemy
The nature of changes of the Earth are all determined by the sea, and the same is within ourselves. We must use our sexual waters to determine the changes that will occur to our internal philosophical Earth (salt).
Salt and Transmutation
The oceans of the Earth allow their water to evaporate, to form clouds, which settle into mountains to become rivers, which pour again into the oceans to renew the salt. This is how nature transmutes, circulates and transforms. This is how the salt of the Earth is cleansed, purified and rejuvenated.
We have within our bodies the salt of the Earth, and also the Waters. When we transmute the sexual waters, in the context of a psychological commitment to an inner transformation, we are in harmony with the renewal processes of nature. As a whole, humanity is so out of balance with the inner nature of the body and also the outer nature of the environment, that transmutation is a concept that is all but lost, and seems strange or extreme.
“…For that reason, when we transmute,
when we die in our defects,
and when we sacrifice ourselves for our fellowman,
we cooperate with the great rivers of spirituality,
so that the poor orphan, humanity,
is not only desire, salt that is degenerated, perverted,
but rather also regenerated salt that is palatable for the gods.”
-RV, Gnostic Society Samael Aun Weor