Salt
Sal sapientiae
Wisdom, and the bitterness it costs.
Salt: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
Salt was one of the three principles of Paracelsus, with sulphur and mercury: the body, the fixed. Jung gave it a chapter in Mysterium Coniunctionis and read its two properties together: salt is bitterness, like tears and the sea, and it is wisdom, the sal sapientiae. The bitterness of experience, taken in, becomes wisdom.
Salt: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
Lot’s wife, the salt of the earth, the salt of the covenant, the salt of tears and of the sea, and the blessed salt of the Symbolarium.
From the Sources
Redgrove explains that the alchemists' 'salt' was a supposed basic principle in the metals, a principle of fixity and solidification that conferred resistance to fire.
““Salt” was the name given to a supposed basic principle in the metals, a principle of fixity and solidification, conferring the property of resistance to fire.”
H. Stanley Redgrove, Alchemy: Ancient and Modern, Chapter II, § 18, 'The Sulphur-Mercury-Salt Theory'. Second and revised edition; London: William Rider & Son, Ltd., 1922 (first published 1911) (Project Gutenberg eBook #43240). The text, read in part
The Sophic Hydrolith says of the substance's own proper salt that it becomes a bright, clear and transparent white, and is called by the Sages the Salt of Wisdom.
“…but then becomes of a bright, clear, and transparent white, and is called by the Sages the Salt of Wisdom”
The Hermetic Museum, Restored and Enlarged: Most Faithfully Instructing All Disciples of the Sopho-Spagyric Art How That Greatest and Truest Medicine of the Philosopher's Stone May Be Found and Held, 'The Sophic Hydrolith', p. 80. Now first done into English from the Latin original published at Frankfort in the year 1678; containing twenty-two most celebrated chemical tracts; in two volumes, Volume I; London: James Elliott and Co., Temple Chambers, Falcon Court, Fleet Street, E.C., 1893 (Internet Archive OCR text). The text, read in part
Each passage is quoted from the text named, which the press fetched and read, and was checked word for word against a fresh copy of it; the link opens that copy. Passages are given as printed, without the editors’ footnote numbers, and with words broken across lines joined.
In the Materia Medica
Salt: the substance itself, as the old medicine used it and as it is known today.
Where to Read
- “Sal,” in Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
Also among Metals, Principles, and Substances
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“Salt.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/salt.
Nearby in the alphabet: The Salamander: The creature that lives in the fire. Salome: The anima as Jung first met her: blind, and loving. The Scales: Weighing the heart: judgment, justice, and equilibrium. The Scarab: The beetle that rolls the sun into rebirth.