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Most people think of salt as something that comes in a shaker. Something dead. But salt is a crystal, and like all crystals it has structure, and where there is structure there is memory. I have been studying salt (on my own, as a hobby) since 1987, when I first noticed that the salt I collected from rock pools at dawn formed different crystals to the salt collected in the afternoon. I have now kept over 400 jars of salt from beaches all over the east coast. Each one is labelled with the date, the time, the moon phase and the weather. This is the most important thing I have learned and I want everybody to know it. The salt in the open ocean is OLD SALT. It has been in the sea for millions of years and it is calm and settled. The salt in the sand of a beach is YOUNG SALT. It is restless. It has been dried by the sun and wetted again thousands of times and it carries the memory of every footprint and every storm. When young salt returns to the sea it is calmed by the old salt. This is why swimming in the ocean makes you feel calm. You are feeling the young salt settle. If you stop young salt from going back to the sea it does not calm down. It stays restless. I have seen this in my jars. Salt kept away from seawater for more than a year forms sharp, irregular crystals. Salt that is returned to seawater regularly forms beautiful cubes. Everybody knows the moon pulls the tides. What they don't tell you is that the moon also pulls the salt. At the full moon the salt in the sand rises towards the surface. You can feel it if you walk barefoot at the high tide line on the night of a full moon. It is slightly warm. I recommend collecting a small jar of beach salt on the full moon and keeping it on a windowsill facing the sea. Watch it over a few weeks. Write down what you notice. The salt will tell you things if you pay attention. NO!!! Chemists will tell you that salt is just sodium chloride. This is like saying a person is just water and carbon. Salt from different places has different character. I can tell the salt from two beaches only a few kilometres apart by taste alone (most of the time). My other pages: |