Salt and the Alchemical Soul: Three Essays (Dunquin Series, 22)

Salt is easily found, yet mysterious. It has been pursued down through the ages and across cultures. Homer called it a "divine substance," and Plato described it as "especially dear to the gods." It has been important in religion and magic, from baptism to a charm against the Devil. The image of salt has touched human behavior, feeling, and expression, from marriage rites and customs to economics, from fertility to friendship, from superstition to being the basic stuff of human life.

Not surprisingly, salt has become a focus of depth psychology. "Salt and the Alchemical Soul" is a collection of three papers from Freudian, Jungian, and Archetypal Psychology, newly edited and introduced, providing excellent examples of different methods and styles of working with images. Ernest Jones, in his essay "The Symbolic Significance of Salt in Folklore and Superstition," attempts to apply psychoanalysis as a "new science" to an understanding of superstition. C. G. Jung's investigation into alchemy in "Sal: Salt as the Arcane Substance," leads him to see salt as the principle of Eros at the base of the self. James Hillman, using the image of salt, looks into the alchemical way of psychologizing, in "Salt: a Chapter in Alchemical Psychology."