Some seek not gold, but there lives not a man who does not need salt.
—CASSIODORUS
Toward a Substantial Psychology
Alchemical salt, like any other alchemical substance, is a metaphoric or “philosophic” salt. We are warned in various alchemical texts not to assume that this mineral is “common” “common” salt, our table salt or sodium chloride. Yet, as we shall see, this alchemical salt is indeed common to us all—and not only as the physiological content necessary to our blood and fluids. [1] It may well be that the epithet “common,” which is curiously attached only to salt of all our everyday comestibles, reveals that salt is the substrate of what is meant by “commonly human,” so that salt is the archetypal principle of both the sense of the common and common sense. Already you can see how we shall be working in this chapter: we shall be activating the image of salt (1) as a psychological substance, which appears in alchemy as the word sal; (2) as an operation, which yields a residue; (3) as any of many physical substances generically called “salts”; and (4) as a property of other substances.
The word sal in alchemical texts, especially since Paracelsus, often indicates the stable basis of life, its earth, ground, body. However, the term also more particularly refers to alums, alkalis, crystallizations, bases, ashes, sal ammoniac, potash, as well as to the sense qualities equivalent to these materials: bitterness, astringency, pungency, mordancy, desiccation, and crustiness, dry stings and smarts, sharpness and pointedness.
These qualities of human life belong to the very substance of character. Indeed, bitter and mordant qualities are not only as common and basic as salt, but they are as essential to the embodiment of our psychic nature as is salt in our physical bodies. Our stinging, astringent, dried-out moments are not contingent and accidental; they are of our substance and essence.
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Salt Mines: The Mining and Making of Salt
But first—where is the salt to be found? How do we mine it, make it, prepare it. Eirenaeus Philalethes replies: “Descend into yourself, for you carry it about with you …” It is to be found in “Man’s blood out of the body, or man’s urine.” [8] “Mark well that those bodies which flow forth from our bodies are salts and alums.” [9] As there is salt in the macrocosm, so can it be mined from within microcosmic human nature. In fact, because salt is “the natural balsam of the living body” (Paracelsus, 1: 259) we descend into the experiential component of this body—its blood, sweat, tears, and urine—to find our salt. Jung (CW 14: 330) considers alchemical salt to refer to feelings and to Eros; I would specify his notion further by saying that salt is the mineral, impersonal, objective ground of personal experience making experience possible. No salt, no experiencing—merely a running on and running through of events without psychic body. [10]
Thus salt makes events sensed and felt, giving us each a sense of the personal—my tears, my sweat and blood, my taste and value. The entire alchemical opus hangs on the ability to experience subjectively. Hence it is said in “The Golden Tract”: “He who works without salt will never raise dead bodies.” [11] The matters are only macrocosmic and chemical, out there, dead, unless one works with salt. These intensely personal experiences are nonetheless common to all—both intensely mine and yet common as blood, as urine, as salt. In other words, salt acts like the ground of subjectivity (“That which is left at the bottom of our distilling vessel is our salt—that is to say our earth.” [12]). It makes possible what psychology calls felt experience. We must turn to this same ground to mine our salt.
“Felt experience” takes on a radically altered meaning in the light of alchemical salt. We may imagine our deep hurts not merely as wounds to be healed but as salt mines from which we gain a precious essence and without which the soul cannot live. The fact that we return to these deep hurts, in remorse and regret, in resentment and revenge, indicates a psychic need beyond a mere mechanical repetition compulsion. Instead, the soul has a drive to remember; it is like an animal that returns to its salt licks; the soul licks at its own wounds to derive sustenance therefrom. We make salt in our suffering and, by keeping faith with our sufferings, we gain salt, healing the soul of its salt-deficiency.
Hillman, James. Alchemical Psychology (Uniform Edition of the Writings of James Hillman Book 5) (pp. 60-61). Spring Publications.