The Suffering of Salt
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.