====== Salt ======
<div #singlebox>
---- dataentry gem----
latin_names: 
folk_names: 
energy_tags: Receptive
gender_tags: 
planet_tags: 
element_tags: Earth
deity_tags: Aphrodite
effect_tags: Purification, protection, grounding, money
----
</div>
<ifauth @user>
===== Magical Uses =====
Salt is a fine grounding and cleansing material. To purify gem stones, place them in a bowl of salt and leave for a week or so (see chapter 7).

Add some salt to your bath water, This creates an alchemical change-you've converted a solid (the salt) into a liquid. Bathe in this mixture to create a similar change in you. Visualize your doubts, worries, illness (if any), and all negative energies that plague you as leaving your body and entering into the water, where they are neutralized.

If you prefer showers, place a small amount of rock salt and a half-handful of hyssop *(Hyssopus officinalis)* in a washcloth and scrub your body.

To protect a home, sprinkle empowered salt in the corners of each room, visualizing it sterilizing and burning away negativity.

Pour salt in a circle around you on the floor, visualizing the salt's energies spreading down into the earth and up above you to form a protective sphere of brilliant white light. Within this circle is a perfect environment to perform protective or defensive magic.

Tasting salt brings you firmly down to earth. It closes off your psychic centers (if working to awaken your psychic mind, avoid salt in your diet). It is also a protective and purificatory act.

If you feel the need to focus your energies and attention, to take a "tunnel-vision" approach to life for a while, carry a bit of salt in a green bag. This is especially important for those who tend to concentrate solely on the spiritual and neglect physical necessities.

Rock salt is also added to money-attracting talismans and is used in such spells. *A salt wealth spell:* On your altar or a large plate, carefully pour salt to form a pentagram (five-pointed star).

Empower a green candle with money-attracting vibrations and place this, in a small holder, in the center of the pentagram.

Light the candle.

Next, empower money-attracting stones. Place one on each of the pentagram's points. Use stones such as:

Tiger's-eye

Peridot/olivine

Jade

Lodestone

Opal

Pyrite

or any of the money-attracting stones listed in part four of this book.

Five of the same stones or any combination of these can be used. As you place each stone, starting at the top-most point of the pentagram, say something like:

*I place this stone to draw money.*

Let the candle flame for ten to thirteen minutes as you settle yourself before it, visualizing.

Repeat each day for a week. Then, place the salt in a small green bag, add the stones and any drippings from the candle, and carry with you to continue attracting money. When you feel the spell has fully manifested, pour the salt into running water (a faucet will do if nothing else is available), bury the wax, and cleanse the stones. It is done.
===== Ritual Lore =====
Salt has long been a sacred substance. Mined in the earth or evaporated from ocean water in shallow basins, it is intimately connected with life and death, creation and destruction, and the feminine aspect of Earth energies.

Salt is a mineral of crystalline structure and so has a place in this book. Look at salt through a microscope. It is composed of regular, six-sided cubes. This square structure relates salt to the earth.

Its use in religion spans the ages. Salt was frequently offered to deities, being deemed acceptable because of its scarcity and purity. In some parts of the world, such as ancient Rome and Abyssinia, salt was used as currency.

Salt is necessary for life, and yet an overabundance of it causes death. Similarly, sowing salt in fields destroys their fertility. It is sterilizing, purifying, and cleansing.

Related to the element of earth (as well as to seawater, which is a combination of two elements), salt is a powerful magical tool. Salt water is sometimes used as a magical substitute for blood where called for in old rituals. (*Note*: Any blood substitutes, such as apple cider or freshly laid, fertilized eggs, can be used in rituals of this nature. Opening veins is a needless, hazardous magical practice, and sacrificing any life form is useless and plays hell with your karma. Besides, would you want to be sacrificed for another's magical ritual? The only exception to this is menstrual blood, which is utilized in contemporary female magic and mysteries as it was in the past.)

In contemporary Hawaii, many still follow the old ritual of mixing //alae// salt (rock salt covered with iron-rich red earth) with water. This is sprinkled with a ki, or ti, leaf on persons, structures, and building sites for purificatory purposes.

Those Mexicans still attuned with magic often hang in their homes and businesses a large wreath composed of garlic or aloe vera, to which small packets of salt are attached to spread protection and to draw money.</ifauth>
===== Notes =====
==== Related Herbs ====
* [[herb:ti]]