Salt
White gold or white poison, salt evokes many different attitudes towards it. What is clear however is that across cultures and time, salt has been considered a crucial element of human diets. People living far from the sea would often ride for days to acquire the valuable crystals and trade their most prized possessions for a chunk of that salty goodness. Animals migrate to get to the salt fields and just go to town licking the salt rocks for hours. Even they understand its importance in maintaining healthy bodies. This innate understanding of the importance of salt has made it a feature of many myths and rituals. Dropping salt is a bad omen, you should throw some over your shoulder for good luck, or rub it into your enemies’ wounds if they are being dicks. You can protect yourself by drawing a circle of salt around you, if you are humble and hard-working you are “salt of the earth”. You offer a guest salt and bread to solidify a bond. If you’re upset you’re salty, and you can mix salt into the earth to make it barren.
It seems curious that when we realized that iodine was the only cure for gout we chose to put it in salt because everyone consumes it and it is impossible to eat oversalted food. Salt in a modern sense also becomes a protector, healing us quietly from an unassuming shaker. Historically salt has been used as a symbol of resistance to Imperial aggression like when Ghandi embarked on his Salt March to protest the British taxation of salt. In modern literature, it has been used as a symbol of impermanence since it melts with the coming of rain in Cities of Salt, a novel by Abdul Rahman Munif describing the brittle unsustainable structures of the petroleum-based cities in the modern Saudi State. In Salt and Sorrow by Tamsyn Muir, salt serves as a symbol of the binding nature of promises. The Salt House Lisa Duffy, salt is a symbol of emotional cleansing and the process of healing. Salt still holds a prominent symbolic place in our collective psyche.
So what do you see salt as? What kind of symbolism do these eternal delicate crystals have in your culture? Have you thrown them into someone's eyes or drawn a circle around yourself to protect yourself from a horny vampire? In what kind of new folklore and fiction do you envision salt being a protagonist? Will there be a war of salt or an old man encrusted in a salt castle? Will salt cleanse us or render our lands barren? And don't forget the eternal wisdom of the Ying Yang Twins next time you’re on the dancefloor and shake it like a saltshaker.
[originally posted to Patreon on 8/2/25]
