Worth Your Salt

Before we had ink, we had salt.

It dried the flesh and preserved the fish. It held the memory of food long past harvest. It kept rot at bay and turned meals into offerings. Salt, like fire, was sacred—not for its flavor, but for its power to preserve. It made time fold in on itself. It let the living carry the dead forward.

In India, Saindhava Lavana was prized in Ayurveda—not merely as flavor, but as medicine. Rock salt was said to kindle agni, clear the channels, calm the mind. In ritual, it cleansed. In life, it endured.

In the Roman world, salt walked beside power. A man’s worth might be measured in salt—salarium—payment to the soldier who marched the empire’s roads.

In Africa, salt marked the edges of spirit and spell. To encircle a space in salt was to hold the unseen at the gate.

In Japan, it still falls like snow in sumo rings—purifying, protecting.

Among some Indigenous nations of North America, salt springs were revered as sacred ground—gifts from the Earth Mother where conflict was forbidden

Salt was the Earth’s memory, crystallized.
A grain of it held oceans and ages.

To preserve something in salt was to choose it—to say, this matters. This stays.

Today, we shake it from cheap metal shakers onto processed food and think nothing of it. But salt remembers.

Salt holds the story of preservation—not just of meat or fish or herbs,
but of meaning.

Salt tells us: what you choose to preserve is who you become.