Magical Materials: Tria Prima - Sulfur

Sulfur - An Introduction

Philosophical Sulfur, the Red King, the Fat of Paracelsus.

No, not his fat!

Sulfur is less present in the popular consciousness of magic outside its infernal role as “brimstone.” Mercury poisoning is exciting, romantic even. The first emperor of China went mad drinking “dragon blood” in immortality elixirs, hatmakers went berserk, and we’ve had to remove mercury from a host of consumer goods over the past century in conjunction with widespread reforms in manufacturing and consumer protections. That, and mercury, looks pretty darn cool. 

For lack of a better term, mercury is sexy. Sulfur isn’t sexy.

We at Damigeron’s Dungeon aren’t vain enough to think we can convince you that sulfur is sexy. However, we do believe that understanding sulfur might help your writing.

Physical Sulfur - Elemental Sulfur (16S), “Brimstone,” 🜍 or 🜏 
Sulfur is a nonmetallic chemical element, a yellow crystalline solid at room temperature. It is an incredibly reactive, multivalent element, capable of reacting with nearly every other element save the noble gases.  It is the fifth most abundant element on earth, readily available in native elemental form. Because of its abundance and reactivity, sulfur is a bioessential macronutrient.

Elemental Sulfur.
Image taken from the Heartland Sulfur website.

Sulfur forms more than 30 elemental allotropes, more than any other element. Its best-known allotrope is S8, where eight sulfur atoms form an octagonal molecular structure. S8 melts at 115.21 °C (239.38 °F) and boils at 444.6 °C (832.3 °F). 

Sulfur is water-insoluble but soluble in some nonpolar organic solvents, such as carbon disulfide, benzene, and toluene. Sulfur breaks down slowly in water, forming hydrogen sulfide and sulfuric acid.

Sulfur’s reactivity is worth underlining. Sulfur is as close to a perfect analogy for volatility as one could find, as sulfur’s chemical action extends to even the notoriously non-reactive metal iridium, forming iridium disulfide. Many sulfur compounds produce a strong odor, making them essential to skunk stink, halitosis, and garlic. Hydrogen sulfide is responsible for the characteristic smell of rotting eggs and several unpleasant biological processes. No other material ancient peoples engaged with at the human scale formed so many compounds or revealed itself in so many places. It’s little wonder that it forms one of the three analogies of the tria prima.

Sulfur Harvesting
Native sulfur is often found in association with sulfate minerals, where anaerobic bacteria synthesize it back into elemental form. A common example is gypsum deposits in salt domes, like those along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

Sulfur Vat, Freeport Sulphur Co., Hoskins Mound, Texas (1943)

Geologic processes, such as fossil-based deposits in the US, Russia, Turkmenistan, and Ukraine, can also produce native sulfur.

Sulfur can be extracted from common natural compounds such as pyrite (iron sulfide), cinnabar (mercury sulfide), galena (lead sulfide), sphalerite (zinc sulfide), stibnite (antimony sulfide), and lapis lazuli (blue color comes from a trisulfur radical anion).

Sulfuric Acid
Sulfuric acid (H2SO4), also known as mattling acid or oil of vitriol, is one of the most important industrial chemicals in the world. It is an essential precursor used to produce countless other industrial chemicals.  As of 1989, ~85% of all elemental sulfur harvested was used to produce sulfuric acid.

From geeksforgeeks.com

The sulfur dioxide (SO2) in the emissions of coal or petroleum plants reacts with the water in the atmosphere, converting to sulfuric acid and producing acid rain, which can become a significant environmental problem.

Flammability
Sulfur is flammable, melting into a red liquid on ignition and producing a bright blue flame. This flammability earned the moniker “brimstone,” which means “burning stone.” This property has probably been known since prehistory and has been used as a ritual fumigant since early antiquity.

This flammability is at the root of a geological anomaly: blue lava, also known as Api Biru. This strange phenomenon is well documented at the Kawah Ijen volcano on the island of Java, which is an active sulfur mine. That said, this phenomenon is not unique to this site. 

This is just a sulfurous fire that superficially resembles lava. Genuine blue lava would require a temperature of 6,000 °C (10,830 °F), which is impossible to achieve on earth’s surface.

Black Powder
The Chinese developed the first gunpowder from a mixture of potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur.

Chinese Black Powder

Bioessential Macronutrient
Unlike mercury, which has zero nutritional value and is always poisonous, sulfides are essential to life on Earth. Sulfur’s abundance, reactivity, and water insolubility make it a bioessential macronutrient. Numerous amino acids, vitamins, and other organic compounds are sulfides, including keratin, the essential structural protein for skin, hair, and feathers.

This is all sulfur.

Toxicity
Elemental sulfur is of low toxicity to humans. However, vaporous sulfur and sulfur dust oxidize into sulfuric acid on contact with the membranes of the eyes or skin, causing irritation. Overconsumption of sulfur can create a burning sensation in the digestive tract and diarrhea. Direct consumption of sulfur as a folk remedy has also led to life-threatening metabolic acidosis.

Various sulfides can be highly toxic, usually due to other elements bonded to the sulfur, such as the arsenic sulfide, realgar.

Realgar
Realgar, also known as “ruby sulfur,” “ruby of arsenic,” and sandarake to the Greeks (English sandarac), is an orange-red arsenic sulfide (α-As4S4) that burns with a bluish flame and releases sulfur and arsenic vapor. It takes its name from the Arabic rahj al-ġār (“powder of the mine”).

From Royal Reward Mine, King County, Washington.

It was traded throughout the ancient world as a red pigment for paint.

The Mandarin name for realgar is xiónghuáng, literally “masculine yellow,” in opposition to the “feminine yellow” of orpiment. (We’re sure an enterprising writer can do more with this information.)

Realgar was also used to remove hair and fur from animal pelts, similar to mercuric nitrate (see the Toxicity section of our Mercury article).

Realgar was used in fireworks to produce the color white before being replaced by aluminum, magnesium, and titanium.

Realgar is highly toxic and has been used as an herbicide, insecticide, and rat poison. 

Bull’s Blood
The Ancient Greeks used realgar to produce a medicine called “bull’s blood.” Famous Greek physicist Nicander of Colophon recorded the effects of overdose on bull’s blood, which matches arsenic poisoning. Further, bull’s blood is attributed as the poison used by King Midas and the general Themistocles in their suicides.

Themistocles, Athenian politician and naval strategist, 524-460BC.

Medicine
Sulfur has a long history as a topical medical treatment, especially as a medication for scabies and ringworm. This treatment extended to acne, eczema, and psoriasis. It is known to be effective, though the mechanism of action has yet to be determined. It may have something to do with sulfur slowly transforming into sulfuric acid.

Available at Walmart

Culture
Sulfur was used by nearly all ancient civilizations, and it is recorded in India, Greece, China, and Egypt. 

Insecticide
Sulfur was employed in the ancient world as an insecticide and insect repellent.

Fungicide
Sulfur has a long history as a fungicide. This extends beyond topical medical use to agriculture and the treatment of crops.

Matches
It was an essential component in match production.

Magic

Purification
Under the label “brimstone,” sulfur is a material inextricable from Western notions of Hell. This is in part because of sulfurous emissions from volcanic activity, but its symbolic dimensions are what we’re interested in.

Sulfur was (and is) used as a fumigant during religious rituals despite the rotten-egg smell and the burning of the membranes that come with its use. It was valued mainly because of these qualities, as it was a potent repellent to vermin, which brought the ritual/spiritual corruption of disease to temples and religious sites. Suffumigating a temple against flies sanctified the place from their taint and thus became a reagent of purification.

Pair this with the sulfurous emissions of volcanoes, which are gateways to the underworld, and the underworld becomes a fiery place where sulfurous flames purify the souls of the dead!

Glowing Ash Rising from a Volcanic Vent.
Photo by Marin Rietze/Science Photo Library

Philosophical Sulfur - The Volatility of Matter
Philosophical sulfur is the reactivity or masculine animation of matter. It is evaporation and dissolution. It is the expansive force, counter to the contraction of mercury and salt. Like mercury, the analogies of sulfur are tortured and contradictory, but the general through-line is stable and, once understood, can be of great value to the writer.

Material Analogies

Red Earth
Thanks to its many brilliant red sulfides, the yellow element is identified by red earth, red powder, red tincture, and rubedo. Its association with the ruby no doubt comes from realgar and cinnabar. Still, this association goes the other way, tying sulfur to the carbuncle and its mystical manifestation, the Philosopher’s Stone. This is further reinforced by the belief that the red earth was also the philosophical gold from which that magnificent stone emerged.

Red Earth

Fat
Paracelsus described the philosophical sulfur through the analog of “fat,” likely due to sulfur’s color. Paired with the alchemical name for sulfuric acid, oil of vitriol reveals a host of other fat/oil associations that can be extrapolated or exploited.

Beef Tallow

Planet
Sulfur was identified with the planet Sol (the Sun) and all the associations that it brings. 

The Sun

Anthropomorphic

Male
The anthropomorphization of sulfur is wholly male in the Western alchemical tradition, confined to identification with male mythological figures and icons. The most significant of these is the Crimson King, Rubedo.

Rubedo, the Crimson King

Rubedo went by many monikers: the Red Man, the Red King, the Mighty King, Brother, Father, Adam, and so on. In all these, he is identified with essential masculinity, as evident from his identification with Adam, the All-Man.

The realized masculinity is expressed in the man-king-sun, who personifies the shaping reactivity inherent in the base matter of the world, combustibility, and growth. He is the guide through the gate kept by Albedo and the father of the child of enlightenment.

Phytomorphic
The red rose characterizes sulfur. Flowers are traditionally a feminine emblem, but this is overlooked in favor of the phallic qualities of the rose’s thorns.

Dat Rosa Mel Apibus 
Attributed to Johann Thedor deBry (d. 1598)

Zoomorphic
Sulfur takes on the form of the red lion, a prefiguration of the realized lion's golden solar glory. This is in continuity with other leonine emblems, like the green lion, which is both the state of the prima materia before the opus begins and, more materially, the device of aqua regia.

The Red Lion

Sulfur is also the cock. An emblem of masculine vigor, the cock announces the arrival of the sun as the realized philosophical sulfur presages the revelation of the Philosopher’s Stone.

The Cock

Using Sulfur Safely - Suggestions for Writers
As you can see, the above icons are considerably less vibrant than the multitude of associations held by sulfur’s spouse material. Sulfur is too often relegated to infernal brimstone or to esoteric mediations of less accessible works (looking at you, Fear and Hunger). That does not mean that it is any less useful to the clever creative with a more mainstream audience in mind. Here are some sample ideas we’ve come up with.

Expanding the Idea
Sulfur is the material analog of the expansive force instead of the contraction of salt and mercury. This material can answer how magical words and figures move from the scroll or page of a spellbook to realization in the world of the story.

How the hell do these things actually work?
(From here)

Magic in the Medium
Consider a strip of bark bearing sacred words cut into it in the form of runes. Presumably, there is magic in the strip of bark rather than simply bearing some magical instruction. Does the strip of bark require some particular action to activate, or is the breath of the caster enough to grant the spell animation? If the latter, then the strip of bark has no magic; it is merely a canvas for knowledge and, therefore, unsuitable as an expendable magical tool, as scrolls so often are in fantasy storytelling.

Taking the other road, where there is magic in the medium, the magic words need to find their expression not from the spellcaster but out of the medium. Igniting it over sulfur, smearing a sulfurous paste into the words into the cut of the runes, or otherwise infusing the bark with concrete or abstract sulfur imparts the words in the bark with reactivity to expand beyond the bark.

By such activation, the spellcaster releases the spell from the bark medium and, through gesture and breath, may direct the expanded spell to expression!

Up in Smoke
Divinatory powers are a hallmark of fantasy and supernatural horror. These need not be limited to hydromantic rites or teenage girls’ hallucinations. If there’s one thing this compiler thanks the Spiritualist movement for popularizing, it’s the idea of object reading (psychoscopy). In object reading, the medium claims the ability to psychically discern information about a person by contact with one of their possessions. This forms the germ of our idea.

The magician, eager to resolve a mystery, finds themselves at a dead end. Their only material clue, a personal possession of the unknown quarry, may be sacrificed by burning in or sublimation in volatile sulfur. By such means, they expand the secret history of the clue into the air. By shapes in the smoke, magical holograms, dramatic visions, or the spark of intuition, the magician acquires some information that takes the investigation to its next step.

If you want to be morbid, you could do the same with people!

Animating Will
The artificial magical constructs known as “golems” have a long history dating back to Jewish folklore. A human form crafted from clay or mud has the Hebrew word shem (“name” or “breath”) placed on the forehead or mouth and is brought to life to serve in the capacity of a slave. There are many variations in the folklore about what motivates the destruction of the golem, from fear that it will work the sabbath to falling in love, but the most significant that has permeated up through Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and into science fiction related to artificial intelligence is the created man’s resentment at not being human.

The relatively short history of modern fantasy has moved past the folkloric preoccupation with the golem-creation-as-hubris narrative, mainly relegating them to the comfortable position of stock magical automata. In this capacity, golems are not bound by traditional folkloric construction, coming in a wide array of materials with disparate methods of animation and control.

The iron and flesh golems from the
D&D 3rd Edition Monster Manual.

If we were to automate the golems in our story with alchemical thought in mind, their animus would necessarily be composed of both impressionability (mercury) and will (sulfur). The impressionability of its animus is its capacity for programming and absorbing instruction.

“But Damigeron,” you say, “Aren’t automatons characterized by a lack of will?”

Yes and no. This is not the will of a man or even an animal, merely the motive to react to and pursue orders. Without a sulfurous dimension to its animus, the golem would only absorb order and instruction and be unable to act because it could never decide how to execute the order. Even literal interpretation of instruction requires sufficient motivation to interpret and act and is subject to infinite (if subtle) permutation. If golem animation is framed this way, all golems must have a sulfurous component on all levels of sentience and sapience.

Accepting this formulation, the writer now has the opportunity to play with that animation. Is the sulfur material or abstract? If it is material, is quantity relevant? Is quality or source relevant? If abstract, where does this abstract sulfur come from?

This dimension of the artificial animus is now a thing that can be explored and even interacted with. Maybe a novel source of sulfuric animation is employed in a standard construction, and the automaton acquires independence because of a production failure? Perhaps novel sulfur is used intentionally to produce different effects and behaviors, distinguishing peacekeeper golems that stand sentinel in the streets from golems of war. Maybe the artificial nature of the golem animus leaves it vulnerable to manipulation, and a clever magician figures out how to turn the constructs of his opponents into bombs with a word and a snap of his fingers?

Addendum: Novel Sulfur (Added 03/23/2024)
It occurred to us that we have failed to provide sufficient examples of novel sulfur. These would be reagents that color the expansive force or shaping animus with their own peculiar character. 

While numerous sulfur compounds can be sourced from animals, such as horsehair and tiger’s claw, or from plants (far too many to list here), we will instead point to the world of minerals. The potential sulfurous magical qualities of gypsum, lapis lazuli, and pyrite will be explored in their own future articles.

*    *    *    *    *

Clear Cosmology

• Introduction to the Elements
• Chaos and Order
• Tria Prima (and Chaos)
• The Elements - Quintessence
• The Elements - Air [Pending]
• The Elements - Fire [Pending]

Man

• Man [Pending]
• Head - Brain/Mind [Pending]
• Head - Insanity [Pending]
• Fluids and Effluvia [Pending]

Animals

• Birds [Pending]
• Carnivorous Mammals [Pending]

Magical Practice

• Alchemy - The Chemical Wedding [Pending]

Magical Materials

• Tria Prima - Salt
• Tria Prima - Mercury
• Tria Prima - Addendum: Mercury and Sulfur Compounds [Pending]
• Metals [Pending]
• Plants - Rose [Pending]

Lapidary

• Gypsum [Pending]
• Lapis Lazuli [Pending]
• Pyrite [Pending]

*    *    *    *    *

Bibliography

-Drury, N. (2004). The Dictionary of the Esoteric: 3000 entries on the mystical and occult traditions. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. 

-Drury, N. (2005). The Watkins Dictionary of Magic: 3000 entries on the magical traditions. Watkins. 

-Tresidder, J. (2008). The Watkins Dictionary of Symbols. Watkins. 

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_lava )
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realgar )
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur )

Magical Materials: Tria Prima - Mercury

 Mercury - An Introduction
Philosophical Mercury, the Mercurius, the dew, the fountain, the water of life.

Despite our best efforts to simplify matters, 2000 years of abuse has muddied the waters (pun intended) on this touchstone of alchemical understanding. To navigate the confusing web of contradictory associations that this liquid metal has been saddled with, a few points must be understood:

1. Ancient and alchemical reasoning is based on naked-eye observation of phenomena;
2. Sense was made of naked-eye phenomena by analogy;
3. These analogies were communicated through a game of cross-cultural telephone;
4. The analogies were contorted to fit the results of centuries of alchemical experimentation when they didn't fit the narrative; and,
5. Return to point 3.

The alchemists were fundamentally wrong on chemistry, so their tria prima formulas failed to demonstrate their enlightened patterns (or bring them vulgar riches). To make the results of their operations fit their models, the alchemists tortured the notion of the Mercurius past its breaking point. Between their bad science, the jealous guarding of findings, the secret codes, and the admixture of deep reference and surface-level visual analogy (not to mention widespread mercury poisoning), it’s no wonder that the matter of mercury is as confused as it is. 

"It collects here in this bottle and becomes a woman, or some kind of goose."

Our goal here is not to rehabilitate Alchemy as a science or to convince the reader of the merits of more modern philosophical Alchemical practice, but to take advantage of the archaic observation of mercury and the conclusions that were drawn.

In other words, we’re mining the there there.

Physical Mercury - Element Hydragyrum (80HG), “Silver Water,” ☿
Mercury is a toxic, dense metal named for its curious liquid state at room temperature. It has a freezing point of −38.83 °C and a boiling point of 356.73 °C at one standard pressure atmosphere. In liquid form it has a high surface tension. Mercury consistently expands in response to heat and pressure, making it an ideal measurement medium for thermometers and barometers. It conducts heat poorly but electricity reasonably well, making it useful for switches and relays.

Elemental Mercury

Mercury does not react with most acids, though oxidizing acids such as concentrated sulfuric acid, nitric acid, or aqua regia dissolve mercury into the associated sulfate, nitrate, and chloride. Mercury spills can be cleaned with sulfur flakes, powdered zinc, or activated carbon.

Mercury is also the only classical metal to retain the name of its planetary association, as “mercury” was regarded as a preferable chemical name to “quicksilver.”

Amalgam
Mercury readily dissolves other metals, forming an alloy known as an amalgam. The production of amalgams dates back to at least 500 BC. Only a few metals are resistant to amalgamation, most in the first row of transitional metals: scandium, titanium, vanadium, chromium, iron, cobalt, nickel, and platinum. For this reason, Mercury has traditionally been stored and traded in iron flasks.

Amalgamation dissolves the structure of the solute metal. For this reason, mercury is not permitted on aircraft without special security considerations, as it eats through the protective oxide layer of the aluminum and corrodes it rapidly. Supposedly, allied spies used a mercury paste to sabotage Luftwaffe planes during WWII.

Mercury’s ability to amalgamate with other metals was first used for industrial-scale silver extraction in 1554. Bartolome de Medina employed it to amalgamate silver out of ore in Pachuca, Mexico, and after that, it was essential in the industrial processing of New World silver. Later, it was used in hydraulic gold mining, though this practice was discontinued in the 1960s.

Today, mercury amalgams are still used in dentistry for fillings.

The creative possibilities of amalgam are better understood in combination with the properties of the solute metals, so we explore them in our article on classical [metals].

Mercury Ore and Extraction
Mercury’s most common natural ore is cinnabar (mercury sulfide, HgS), the source of the pigment vermillion.  The primary sources of cinnabar for Europe during the past 2500 years have been the mines in Almaden in Spain, Monte Amiata in Italy, and Idrija in what is now Slovenia. More on cinnabar in our article on [mercury/sulfur compounds].

Raw Cinnabar Ore

To extract the mercury, the cinnabar is heated in a current of air, and the vapor is condensed:

HgS + O2 → Hg + SO2

Mercury vapor is highly toxic and one of the more common forms of historic mercury poisoning.

Toxicity
Liquid-state mercury can be absorbed through the skin and mucous membranes or ingested. It also reacts with hydrogen sulfide in the atmosphere, becoming an airborne pollutant.

The minor symptoms of mercury poisoning include sweating, tachycardia, increased saliva production, and hypertension. More intense symptoms include reddening or pinking of the nose, cheeks, lips, fingers, and toes, transient rashes, muscle weakness, kidney dysfunction, sensory impairment, and increased photosensitivity.

More alarming (at least to this compiler) are the neuropsychiatric symptoms: insomnia, memory impairment, and emotional lability (emotional incontinence). These are frightening when paired with peripheral neuropathy, which can come in paraesthesia (abnormal skin sensation), itching, burning, pain, or even formication (the feeling of bugs crawling under the skin). The other symptoms can also be hair loss, teeth, nails, and desquamation (shedding or peeling skin).

The phrase “mad as a hatter” comes from mercury poisoning. 18th- and 19th-century hat makers separated fur from animal pelts and matted them together into felt for hats using an orange solution of mercuric nitrate (Hg(NO3)2·2H2O) in a process called “carroting.” 

The Mad Hatter, engraving by Dalziel (1865)

Lewis Carroll’s “Mad Hatter” character is a play on the phrase rather than a depiction of mercury poisoning. Make no mistake, though, nearly an entire profession was plagued with this horrific condition. And it is far from unique to hat-makers! Alchemists were known to suffer the same for obvious reasons. It also applied to lighthouse keepers, who had to contend with social isolation and mercury exposure from the pool the Fresnel lenses rested on. The first emperor of China, Qín Shǐ Huáng Di, was similarly driven insane by the mercury-based immortality elixirs his alchemists fed him.

Medicine
In both China and Tibet, mercury was believed to be an essential ingredient in the elixir of immortality and could, therefore, prolong life more generally. They also held that it could maintain general health and even heal fractures. Mercury found historical use in medicine, some of which has been carried (dubiously) into the modern day.

Mercury(I) chloride, called mercurous chloride or calomel, has been traditionally employed as a diuretic, topical disinfectant, and laxative. Mercury(II) chloride, also called mercuric chloride or corrosive sublimate, was used as a treatment for syphilis. However, it was so toxic that the symptoms of syphilis and mercury poison were often conflated.

In the 19th century, a mercury-derived medication called blue mass was prescribed in pill and syrup forms for constipation, depression, toothache, and to ease childbirth. In the 20th century, mercury was prescribed as a laxative and dewormer for children before being banned. It is still occasionally prescribed in diuretics.

Culture

Cosmetics
Mercury has a long history in the production of cosmetics. The Egyptians and Romans used it in their makeup, and today, it’s used as a depigmenting agent in modern bleaching creams.

Landscaping and Conspicuous Wealth
Mercury has a long history with displays of wealth. The tomb of Qín Shǐ Huáng Dì was allegedly crafted as a map of his domain, with the rivers of his unified China flowing with mercury. 

The second Tulunid ruler of Egypt, Khumarawayh ibn Ahmad ibn Tulun (r. 884-896), is reported to have built a basin filled with mercury, where he would be rocked to sleep on a bed of air-filled cushions. Across the Mediterranean in Islamic Spain, it was used to fill decorative pools.

Mercury was also found in elite tombs and ritual caches dating to the Classical Maya period (100-700AD) and earlier. This was in quantities of 3.2-21.2 oz (90-600 grams), though the purpose may have had a cross-divinatory function in addition to wealth display.

Leveling
Liquid mercury seeks equilibrium, which has made it an essential component in leveling tools of all sorts. It is instrumental in transit telescopes, which need an absolute vertical and perpendicular reference.

Mirrors
Mercury amalgam was used in silvering mirrors (which is also why old mirrors don’t reflect the images of vampires). Mercury can also create a cheap parabolic mirror by holding the mercury on a disc and rotating it. This mirror cannot, unfortunately, be tilted, so it is restricted to a perfectly vertical orientation.

Lighthouses
The Fresnel lenses of old lighthouses floated and rotated in a mercury bath, which acted as a bearing.

Firearms and Explosives
Mercury(II) fulminate is an explosive agent commonly used as the primer in firearm cartridges.

Other Uses
Mercury was employed in developing daguerreotype film and as a wood preservative.

Magic

Immortality
The immortality elixirs fed to Chinese emperor Qín Shǐ Huáng Dì were made from mercury and powdered jade.

Divination
Maya-region archeological finds of liquid mercury, such as those in elite tombs, under ballcourts, and the massive 2014 find under the Temple of the Feathered Serpent at Teotihuacan, are often interpreted as having a divinatory function. This stems from Mercury’s reflective properties and the region's long-standing history of hydromancy and cataptromancy. Given that the Classical Maya did not have metallurgy, the reflective properties of mercury alone would have been novel and mysterious. 

Temple of the Feathered Serpent, Teotihuacan.
Photo by Diego Delso.

Animation
According to Aristotle, the mythical engineer/inventor Daedalus made a wooden statue of Aphrodite move by pouring mercury into the statue’s hollow interior.

Philosophical Mercury - The Impressionability of Matter
Philosophical mercury, the Mercurius, is the impressionability or feminine animation of matter. It is fluidity and transformation, volatility, the Aristotelian "cold," the intellect, the yogic flow of internal energies, and the liaison between the spirit and the material. These mixed material/spiritual properties were understood as analogous to mercury, but they were abused through numerous other devices considered synonymous despite the disparity of their features.

Material Analogies

Water
The Mercurius had many names related to its first analog, mercury, hydrargyrum, quicksilver, argent vive, or “living-silver,” and mercurial water. The relationship was expanded to aqua pontica and aqua permanens, the divine water, the water of life, the dew, the fountain, the white elixir, and the white mercury. As bodily fluid, it is called phlegma, which incorporates it into the theory of humors. 

Despite being traditionally sexed female, it is identified by the dual-sex devices of the sperm and the menstruum. The former is derived from its visual/matter-state analogy and as a “messenger” or delivery mechanism for alchemical “seed.” The latter is from its more heavily explored feminine qualities. 

This dual-sex nature was reinforced by its role as an emblem of productive chaos. As primal chaos it was held that the Mercurius contained both male and female “seeds” of matter, requiring the mediation of sulfur in the chemical wedding to manifest the one or the other.

This ambiguity is paralleled in the East. In China, it was associated with water, lifeblood, blood of the womb, and semen. In India, it was the semen of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction.

Earth
The Mercurius is also identified as the white stone from which the red stone of the philosopher emerges.

Air
It is identified with the direction west and the wind from that direction, the zephyr, and the deity of the same name.

Planet
Mercury was identified with and named for the [planet] closest to the sun, whose rapid orbit around it made it astrologically challenging to predict. This speed across the sky was associated with the metal’s liquid flow.

Anthropomorphic

Male
Mercury was associated with the deity for which the planet was named, Hermes/Mercury. Hermes was a messenger god associated with intellect and later occult matters under the partially Christianized figure Hermes Trismegistus. Hermes syncretizes with the Egyptian god of scribes, Thoth. This anthropomorphization of mercury was occasionally glossed to the less flattering “flying slave,” which may have been in reference to Zephyr, the god of the west wind.

Hermes Ingenui, 2nd Century, BC Copy

It was also associated with the lesser sea god, Proteus, one of Homer’s “old men of the sea.” He was a god of prophecy, the personification of the changeability of the world’s waterways, and came to be associated with mutability, versatility, and the assumption of many forms.

Illustration of Proteus by Andrea Alciato,
from The Book of Emblems (1532).

Female
The Mercurius assumed an identity unique to alchemical practice in the guise of Albedo, the White Queen. Also identified as Queen Luna to sulfur’s King Sol, she was the female half of the Alchemical Wedding, the framing device of alchemical operation. In imagery more familiar to the Christian, philosophical mercury was identified with Eve and the Holy Virgin and more universally with the roles of sister and mother.

Queen Albedo is the most definitive person of the Mercurius, the face of the alchemical stage leading up to enlightenment. She is a gatekeeper to be negotiated with, cajoled into unity with her counterpart, King Rubedo, and, in gratitude, births the gift of understanding.

Here we see Albedo lasciviously touching hands in public with her husband, Rubedo.
From Philosophia reformata (1622), emblem 2, by Johann Daniel Mylius

Phytomorphic
Appropriate to the female anthropomorphization, the plant analogs of the Mercurius are the [white lily] and the [white rose].

From Pixabay, on pexels.com.

Zoomorphic

Feminine
Mercury is identified with the [hen], which, being an egg-layer, also lays the egg of the universe, the all-thing that is the Philosopher’s Stone.

Masculine
Mercury is identified as the [gander], the male goose, inverse to the hen. This is both a phallic symbol and one of the emblems of Hermes. 

From Getty Images.

More interesting, though, is the association between the Mercurius and the white hart. The [stag] is an unmistakable masculine emblem but also feminine relative to the hunter, as the spear penetrates prey. This animal is significant in pagan mythology and folklore.

The White Hart badge of Richard II. 

One folk belief may bring the alchemical association into greater focus. One of the permutations of the Great Work of Alchemy is the pursuit of the panacea, the universal medicine (itself a synonym for the Philosopher’s Stone). The folk belief holds that stags seek out and consume snakes and other venomous reptiles to initiate terrible sweating, purging their bodies of toxins. Once in this state, the stag enters a river or other body of water to wash the toxic sweat from its body and emerge clean and pure. This belief mirrors the language of alchemists’ treatment of various materials in the operation.

Further, this may reference the myth of Cyparissus, whose mourning over slaying his best friend, the stag, was immortalized by his transformation into a cypress tree (a convenient parallel to immortality bestowed by the Philosopher’s Stone). 

Androgynous
Mercury is identified with the [serpent], an emblem of feminine chaos and a phallic symbol. It was heavily associated with the [dragon], a masculine emblem in China.

Ouroboros from the manuscript Codex Parisinus graecus 2327 (1478).

Using Mercury Safely - Suggestions for Writers

INSPIRATIONAL HOLY GRAIL - Holistic Wizardry
The emblem of the white hart bridges the gap between classical mythology, local folklore, and the pseudoscience of alchemy. We have yet to see a better model for holistic magical influence on magical practitioners! The ability to connect the mechanisms of their magic with the ancient stories and local flavor is an invaluable tool for making your spell-casting characters feel like living members of your fantasy world.

Holistic Magical Action —> Material or Action x (Old Myth + Local Flavor) =  Worldbuilding and Character and Plot Progression

Materials like mercury have a veritable library of analogous emblems like those previously discussed, but the same goes for gestures in imitation of myth, legend, and folklore. The extension of the right hand may imitate the dominance of the conquering Pharaoh or the striking of the smith’s hammer Thor’s slaying of a Jotun. Because of the universal patterns (and often shared heritage) of myths, we often find the same actions and emblems appearing in folk tales and fairy stories, subject to more pronounced regional variation. The appeal to setting mythology establishes or reinforces broader currents in worldbuilding, with the folkloric connections being more particular and framing your character as somewhere rather than anywhere. Further, the material is set up as something to be used, facilitating plot progression, and the action is a doing, which is plot progression. While one could hypothetically spin their wheels in the exposition of actions, there is no way to justify the explanation of an action without moving forward; it demands immediate follow-up.

Use this as a template for other materials or actions. Reverse-engineer setting folklore and mythology or devise your own mechanisms from the old stories. It also frees storytellers from binding themselves too closely to a single source of inspiration. Exploit the hell out of this!

Mercury Toxicity and Madness
Mercury poisoning is an excellent template for the onset of “madness” for a wizard or other caster in your story or anyone else over-exposed to mercury. When you join the neuropsychiatric symptoms and the feedback loop of the body falling apart with magical knowledge or executive state action (in the case of a ruler like Qín Shǐ Huáng Dì), an unpredictable, irrational, and devastating danger is introduced to the story. 

Further, philosophical mercury is mercury by analogy. If the analogy is extended, a magician could have philosophical mercury poisoning, pairing the neuropsychiatric and physical symptoms with impressionable animation. What that means will, naturally, be dictated by how the magical system of your setting functions, but some ideas come to mind:

• The magician’s formication manifests as actual bugs under the skin, with the bugs in question being thematically relevant to the magician’s research or as communication vectors for malicious intelligences (demons).
• The photosensitivity and desquamation pair together, making the magician susceptible to sunlight as a vampire.
• The operational failure is impressed upon the magician’s soul, compelling him to repeat the procedural step of the error, feeding back into the problem until there is no longer a man there but a meat automaton performing the same lab experiment over and over until death.

Contradictory Images
The numerous contradictory emblems of the Mercurius can be converted from a problem to the basis of a character set. This can be played subtly, involving emblems of noble houses, physiognomy, and more oblique characterizations. It could also be played on the nose, like this season’s antagonistic faction in a bad-guy-of-the-week show.

These emblems can also be romantic manifestations of character growth in the narrative environment, parallel to traditional alchemical practice.

Iron and Platinum
Mercury is traditionally held in iron, but if the philosophical mercury can be separated into a distinct substance, it may require a more exotic metal closer to the state of material enlightenment: platinum. Because platinum was understood as a higher-order alloying (or possibly a hypostasis) of gold and silver, and therefore just short of the Philosopher’s Stone, that makes platinum objects ideal tools for alchemy-inspired spellcasters, being resistant to warping by the Mercurius.

In either case, the resistance of iron and platinum to amalgamation in Mercury raises exciting prospects for how the material interacts with magic. Perhaps iron is a bane to fae creatures because of its resistance to their mercurial nature, and platinum can produce the same effects!

The Lighthouse as Temple
The lighthouse is a location that has been successfully exploited in horror fiction. It is a place of isolation, surrounded by the chaos of the sea. Lighthouse workers must thanklessly battle the elements to keep the light going and prevent disaster, an essential service that thrusts them into the liminal zone between civilization and the void.

Lighthouses already have the obvious feature of the titular light, a conceptual flame of guidance and comfort in the storm, and of enlightenment in the dark. Leaning into the early Fresnel lens technology, the mercury bath that acted as its bearing also reinforces the lighthouse's liminal qualities, marking it as a place of transformation.

*    *    *    *    *

See Also:

Clear Cosmology

• Introduction to the Elements
• Chaos and Order
• Tria Prima (and Chaos)
• The Elements - Quintessence
• The Elements - Water [Pending]
• The Elements - Air [Pending]

Man

• Man [Pending]
• Head - Brain/Mind [Pending]
• Head - Insanity [Pending]
• Fluids and Effluvia [Pending]

Animals

• Birds [Pending]
• Hooved Mammals [Pending]
• Reptiles/Amphibians [Pending]
• Monsters, Dragons, and Cryptids [Pending]

Magical Practice

• Alchemy - The Chemical Wedding [Pending]

Magical Materials

• Tria Prima - Salt
• Tria Prima - Sulfur
• Tria Prima - Addendum: Mercury and Sulfur Compounds[Pending]
• Metals [Pending]
• Gemstones - Jade [Pending]
• Plants - Cypress
• Plants - Lily [Pending]
• Plants - Rose [Pending]

*    *    *    *    *

Bibliography

-Drury, N. (2004). The Dictionary of the Esoteric: 3000 entries on the mystical and occult traditions. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. 

-Drury, N. (2005). The Watkins Dictionary of Magic: 3000 entries on the magical traditions. Watkins. 

-Tresidder, J. (2008). The Watkins Dictionary of Symbols. Watkins. 

( https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/24/liquid-mercury-mexican-pyramid-teotihuacan )
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(element) )
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning )

Magical Materials: Tria Prima - Salt

Salt - An Introduction
Philosophical salt is the body of matter, its concrete or permanent qualities. While today we know that all salts are compounds of a metallic cation and a nonmetallic anion, such chemical knowledge was beyond ancient peoples' perception and experimental toolsets. Salt was the result of processes intended to remove unwanted impurities from a material, and at the human scale, very much appears to be a singular, uniform substance.

Stone from seawater, the solid from the fluid, the end product of dissolution and crystallization, salt is distilled substance. In the eyes of the ancients, salt was the condensation of base matter, leading purified chemical salts to be interpreted as the isolated qualities of materials wholly divorced from their animating principles. 

Salt was identified closely with the fundamental goal of philosophical alchemy, which was the self-knowledge that expunged impurity from the practitioner and consequently strengthened the alchemist’s knowledge of and relationship with God.

Salt was regarded as feminine as the earthiest substance of elemental earth, and when personified, it is female. In the Western alchemist’s attempts to syncretize the Tria Prima with the Trinity, they identified salt with Christ. 

Ash
Ash is a close analog to salt symbolically and as a technical term in alchemy. Both salt and ash were purified contractions of material exhausted and rendered inert by heat, salt being processed by boiling and ash by burning. Other than as a dietary preservative, they are synonymous.

Salt the Preservative
Salt was also an excellent preservative, staving off corruption by drawing the water out of preserved foods and providing a chemically hostile environment for microbes. Before germ theory, it was not understood why biological matter decomposed, so natural biological and chemical processes were regarded with some degree of supernatural mystery. Rot and disease were synonymous, and disease was regularly anthropomorphized in the form of demons. This is one of many reasons salt was regarded as an effective ward against evil spirits: it kept evil spirits away from the preserved food.

Because of this preservative quality and salt as a dietary necessity, it is also a key symbol of friendship, concord, and hospitality, especially in the ancient Near East—the Hebrews salt is a covenant offering in sacrifices in recognition of this common meaning.

Contractive Force
Salt iss the product of condensation, a manner of contraction. It also draws water out of other materials, another form of contraction. Salt was then synonymous with the more abstract contractive force, or like-attracts-like, the predecessor of Newton’s formulation of the Universal Law of Gravitation.

Spiritual Elevation and Enlightenment
Salt symbolizes spiritual purification, a path with an upward trajectory. This derives not just from removing the impure during the processing of salt but also because of salt's effect on food. Salt not only adds flavor to food but also brings out the qualities of other ingredients. This is another layer to Christ’s description of the faithful in Matthew (5:13). The faithful are the distilled, noblest essence of Man, free of impurities, and bring out the best in those around them.

This line of thought is not wholly unique to Abrahamic religions, as salt was an emblem of purification, spiritual improvement, and incorruptibility employed from Greece to Japan.

Wit and Wisdom
Salt is necessary, but one can easily have too much of it. It brings out the best of other flavors but can quickly become unpalatable or even dangerous. This quality is analogous to sharp wit and wisdom. Both are necessary and can elevate, but they can also be bitter and unwelcome. A bright intellect can dispel closely held illusions, and wisdom can unpleasantly call out invested waywardness. 

Abjuration
The preservative qualities of salt and the belief it warded off evil spirits are accompanied by a host of superstitions. In Voodoo, giving salt to zombies awakens them to their state of death and compels them to return to the grave. The Greeks and Romans regarded salt spilling from a salt cellar or other vessel as bad luck and responded by grabbing a pinch of the salt and throwing it over their left shoulder.
This is because the left-hand (sinister) side is weaker in a right-hand-dominant culture, and therefore the direction evil spirits will attack from/the shoulder the spirit will latch onto. Consequently, spilled salt in iconography indicates ill-omen, as when Judas Iscariot spilled the salt in Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper (c. 1495).

Essential Salts

"The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated." 

-Borellus

Pierre Borel, or Borellus, French physician and alchemist, (1620-1671)

H. P. Lovecraft’s short horror novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward opens with this quote, laying out the inspirational germ of the story’s central premise: necromancy by essential salts. However, this is not a quote. Or, at least, it’s not a quote from Borellus; it’s a paraphrasing of Borellus by Cotton Mather.

Yes, of the Salem Witch Trials. That Cotton Mather.

Cotton Mather, Puritan minister and theologian (1663-1728)

This paraphrase is worth examining in its larger context, as it covers the notion of essential salts rather well:

“§ 1. If such a renowned chymist, as Quercetanus, with a whole tribe of labourers in the fire, since that learned man, find it no easie thing to make the common part of mankind believe, that they can take a plant in its more vigorous consistence, and after a due maceration, fermentation and separation, extract the salt of that plant, which, as it were, in a chaos, invisibly reserves the form of the whole, with its vital principle ; and, that keeping the salt in a glass hermetically sealed, they can, by applying a soft fire to the glass, make the vegetable rise by little and little out of its ashes, to surprise the spectators with a notable illustration of that resurrection, in the faith whereof the Jews returning from the graves of their friends, pluck up the grass from the earth, using those words of the scripture thereupon, Your bones shall flourish like an herb : 'tis likely, that all the observations of such writers, as the incomparable Borellus, will find it hard enough to produce our belief, that the essential salts of animals may be so prepared and preserved, than an ingenious man may have the whole ark of Noah in his own study, and raise the fine shape of an animal out of its ashes at his pleasure : and, that by the like method from the essential salts of human dust, a philosopher may, without any criminal necromancy, call up the shape of any dead ancestor from the dust whereinto his body has just been incinerated. The resurrection of the dead, will be as just, as great an article of our creed, although the relations of these learned men should pass for incredible romances : but yet there is an anticipation of that blessed resurrection, carrying in it some resemblance of these curiosities, which is performed, when we do in a book, as in a glass, reserve the history of our departed friends ; and by bringing our warm affections unto such an history, we revive, as it were, out of their ashes, the true shape of those friends, and bring to a fresh view, what was memorable and imitable in them.”

-Magnalia Christi Americana, Book II, “The Life of his Excellency, Sir William Phips, KNT”

We apologize; the grammar may be difficult to interpret. This particular section of the book is the opening of a 56-page biography of Sir William Phips. The introduction reads as an extended joke made of the wild promises of future medical technology from the pens of alchemists, before segueing into proper eulogy by stating that the remembrance of friends resurrects the shape of the dead as surely as the processes and preparations of fringe medicine and magic.

Understanding the framing, we can parse this quote and discern the information that draws our genuine interest: the claimed properties of essential salts.

Chemical Extraction
Mather references the student of Paracelsus, Joseph Quercetanus, on the extraction of essential features of plants (framed as the “vital principle”). Under this formulation, so much of what makes the plant that plant is retained in the salt that the reintroduction of animation via gentle flame reinvigorates inert matter with the original plant’s life and shape. 

The core idea of essential salts is that the whole being of a living thing can be rendered inert while that essence is still accessible through a reanimating reaction. 

The same ideas that apply to vegetable matter under these lines of reasoning apply to animal matter, including human beings. Mather observed that resurrection would be achieved by chemical process rather than devilry or other criminal magic under such a formulation.

As with many alchemical presuppositions, the chemical resurrection of whole beings from salt is pure fantasy. However, pursuing this impossible end goal led to the development of many chemical extraction and isolation methods that formed the foundation of chemistry as a genuine scientific discipline.

Creative Musings
With knowledge and account of the history of salt, practically, culturally, and magically, we turn our attention to salt’s creative value to storytellers.

Salt Abjuration as Dysjunction
Preservative practices might not be the only dimension for a writer to consider when examining salt as an abjuring reagent. There is another way to look at the relationship between salt and the evil spirit grounded in its role in the Tria Prima: the concrete.

Spirits, be they ghosts, demons, or what have you, are typically thought of as not having solid bodies of their own or only the semblance of. Animated corpses like the upvakningr or various interpretations of the vampire notwithstanding, evil spirits/demons/what-have-you are thought of as immaterial anima, or particular animation without a physical body.

Salt, being a non-particular physical body without animation, is the relevant opposite of the evil spirit and, therefore, suggests the negation of the spirit. A writer who wishes to go in this direction could use the salt to lend the spirit physicality in the form of an ectoplasm or something similar, making the incorporeal vulnerable to physical action. They could also have the salt and the spirit negate each other in a literal sense, destroying both the spirit and the physical matter of the salt!

Essential Salts, Again
H. P. Lovecraft recognized and exploited the essential salts of Borellus, but his story pertains to necromancers seeking a kind of depraved immortality. The necromancer is already material. What about salts of more exotic provenance?

The Elder Scrolls video game franchise implements spirit-sourced essential salts through the beings known as atronachs. 

A flame atronach, is they appear in TES V: Skyrim.

Atronachs are extra-dimensional elemental beings made of fire, ice, and lightning. On being defeated or killed, atronachs collapse into a residue that can be harvested as an appropriate essential salt. Flame atronachs drop fire salts, frost atronachs drop frost salts, and storm atronachs drop void salts.

These essential spirit salts are used in alchemical concoctions (potions) and in improving commodities and tools. Food may be made both dry and cool for long periods without refrigeration by preserving it in frost salts, and furnaces might be made to burn hotter, longer, and with less fuel by introducing fire salts, and so on.

The essential qualities of the atronach’s element is made readily available for exploitation in novel forms!

While essential salts have been exploited, from the pulps to Bethesda’s flagship video game franchise, this Compiler feels that the subject is still under-explored in popular fantasy media, both in itself and in combination with other materials.

Chemical or Spiritual?
For those considering using essential salt in their writing, there are two vectors for the reaction of essential salt: chemical and spiritual.

To explain, we propose a salt of tiger blood.

A concoction of salt of tiger blood is prescribed to improve the strength and stamina of a patient. What is its mechanism of action?

In the case of chemical action, the essential salt may have extracted nutrients from the blood necessary for building muscle or may have been deficient in the patient’s diet. The salt may even contain hormones that further promote muscle mass development and stamina. 

In the case of spiritual action, the essential salt may have extracted the strength and ferocity of the tiger from its blood. This action is conceptual: tigers are strong; therefore, consuming the tiger’s vital essence will make the patient like the tiger. 

Which vector do you, as a storyteller, choose?

Making the Choice
We apologize, as the question we just asked was based on two false premises: 

    1) that you have to choose one; and 

    2) that you have to choose one.

The first of these is the easiest to address: as the storyteller, you can choose not to explore your story's causal mechanism. This may be because the narrative point of view doesn’t leave room for teasing out the two for character or pacing reasons, or you simply don’t care to explore that side of the subject.

The second premise is more complicated by the wealth of options available. You might choose one mechanism of action over the other because it makes sense for your story, your magic system, or any other considerations.

You can also choose both. This is the most challenging path to take and potentially the most creatively rewarding, particularly because there’s more than one “both.”

You may be writing a story where the narrative considers both the chemical and spiritual action of salts valid. This might play out with different characters prioritizing one action over the other, providing two methods of material interpretation that the character must choose. This provides the characters with a material grounding and creative freedom in their problem-solving.

The characters might also prioritize one method of interpretation over the other, while their biases have no meaningful impact on the salt reaction. Their ignorance of one or the other could lead to unforeseen complications.

What writer doesn’t love unforeseen complications? 

Binding via Spirit Salts
The Elder Scrolls video games source exotic salts from spirits, and the same salts are used to summon those spirits. Fire salts are necessary to create a Scroll of Summon Flame Atronach. This poses an ambiguity: is a second flame atronach drawn into the world by the salts via sympathy, or is the first atronach resurrected?

Imagine freeze-drying a ghost so you can bring it back to death later.

For our purposes, we shall explore the possibilities of the latter: capturing spirits whole for later reanimation.

Thankfully, we are not wholly informed by the contrivances of a 20th-century pulp author and a 21st-century video game studio. We have found similar ideas that are much older on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the Maya epic the Popol Vuh, the hero twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque tricked the earthquake giant Cabracan by feeding him a bird sprinkled with magical earth or chalk. The enchanted bird weakened Cabracan, and the hero twins buried him alive.

The Death of Cabracan by Diego Rivera

While this story does not speak of salt, the logic is that Cabracan’s weakened state was likely the result of terrible thirst, which makes for a perfect analogy. If a mountain-splitting ogre like Cabracan can be brought low by thirst and rendered inert, why not other monsters?

In The Testament of Solomon, the King of Israel had the demon Kunopaston sealed in a “phial” or jar.  Kunopaston’s escape following his sacrifices to Moloch tells us such monsters can also be released.

The brass vessel from the Ars Goetia.

A spirit or monster might be bound to salt, rendered salt, or immersed in salt. They might be placed in the vessel as a salt, ground up with the salt, or as a shriveled mummy covered in salt. In any case, they are rendered inert for later use, awaiting some form of activation. Quercetanus speaks of reanimation via soft flame, and both The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and The Elder Scrolls bring about reanimation by breath or word (an uttered spell). 

Both of the above catalysts of animation are sulphuric (masculine) in nature, being tied to the elements of fire and air. This raises the possibility of different effects between the sulphuric and mercurial reanimation of the salt, to say nothing of the variability of materials. 

Unfortunately, that exploration is best left for the reader's own projects. For simplicity, our sample premises are predicated exclusively on liquid reagents of reanimation: water, wine, oil, blood, etc.

The Process of Reconstitution
Reconstituting a whole being from salt might involve multiple treatments of aqua regia and ethanol, etc., and you might make a scene or multiple scenes of it. It might take months. Depending on circumstances, it places the reconstituted being in a position of considerable vulnerability and may give the story a ticking clock.

Reconstitution could also be relatively quick, occurring in a flash of powder or a gust of wind. Maybe they reform their body from grains of salt. Perhaps they rise from a salt slurry like Frank Cotton from Clive Barker’s Hellraiser:

How they reconstitute might reveal something of the way the world of your story works. If they pull themselves up or crawl out of the salt, they may drag themselves out of hell and back into the corporeal world. If they simply materialize, perhaps their spirit was trapped in a salt prison, and they never actually went to the other side.

The performance of reconstitution could also reveal something about the materialized being. It may reveal the creature’s true nature if it normally wears a deceptive skin or mask, like the vampires in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novels or the plaster-covered angels in the Bayonetta video games. A spirit or monster rising from the salt headfirst, standing erect as though being pushed up on an elevator platform, implies that the creature is perfectly aware when it begins reconstitution. It may have even been conscious the entire time it was salt-bound! 

The process could also reveal a change in the essence of the reanimated thing, as in the case of the Sand Man, Flint Marko, in Spider-Man 3:

Utility
Essential salts are convenient as a delivery vehicle for preserved alchemical reagents. Being a powder, they readily dissolve in liquid media and mix with other powders. Salt can be thrown or scattered quickly, but it is solid enough that if a spill occurs, it’s much easier to recover than an aqueous solution (a potion). This makes them a valid substitute for liquid potions and spell scrolls, whether for your fantasy novel or your Dungeons and Dragons game.

Small jars of exotic essential salts and other powdered reagents might be available at a regional shop to convey something about the local culture, or the characters might encounter this as archaic magic in some remote crypt. Your heroes may have developed the method themselves to smuggle dangerous magic into a city with prohibitions on scrolls and the like.

One could quickly build a magical system predicated entirely on essential salts.

Complicating Spell Salts
Working from our list of liquid reagents, what if a spell salt requires a specific fluid to activate? Does using the wrong fluid interfere with the spell salt? Does it spoil the salt’s essence? Does it fundamentally change the salt’s reactivity?

Let’s explore a few sample premises:

Premise 1: Something in the Water
A magician, while fleeing from a gang of thugs, attempted to reanimate the salt of a demon he had bound. In haste, he poured water into the demon jar instead of wine, ruining the salt. He tossed the salt, which leeched into the ground after the next rain. 

What might the demon do in the soil, plants, or drinking water?

Premise 2: Monsters on the Dock
When an adventuring party enters the dock, an over-enthusiastic customs official orders his underlings to thoroughly search the party’s cargo. The customs official’s goons fumble and drop a crate full of jars into the water.

What spells go off? What monsters rise from the foam? How much damage do they cause? How inconvenient is the mess for your heroes?

Premise 3: A Novel Explosive
A military engineer too clever for anyone’s good has made a terrible discovery: if he renders an entire wasp nest into a salt and blends it in with the gunpowder in the explosive cannonballs, the shrapnel homes in on anyone in the blast radius with the malice of a swarm of hornets!

Premise 4: A Radical Procedure
A terminal illness afflicts a wealthy prince. The court doctor/magician suggests a radical procedure to rid the prince of his affliction: complete calcination. The court doctor insists that once the prince has been burned to ashes, his ashes can be sifted for the impurity of the disease by various processes and that he might be reconstituted over a year from his purified essential salt.

Premise 5: Father of Chimeras
A mad alchemist renders animals to salt and blends their powders to reconstitute them into chimeric monsters.

And you wondered where the hell owlbears came from.

Premise 6: No Blood, No Problem
The ambitious court wizard of a decadent and declining empire wishes to seize the throne from his master. Unfortunately for him, he is not of royal or even noble blood, being the son of a foreign land. The wizard resolves this by stealing the previous emperor's bones and, with his underlings' aid, renders both the old emperor and himself to salt. When he returns, he appears as brother to the sitting emperor, and his regicide goes unopposed.

Premise 7: An Ancient Evil Returns
A grave robber in the sandy wastes of the east burgles his way into a tomb whose name is lost to history. He eagerly tears the tomb apart, looking for gold and jewels. He finds a handful before his eyes fall on the prize: a great burial cask. He pries the lid off but finds only dust. He runs his fingers through the dust to the bottom and finds nothing. He curses and spits into the cask before searching the rest of the tomb for enough to break even on his journey. 

Before he stoops to smash another pot, a mewling noise stops him. He returns to the cask, finding a shriveled, fetal form with a wizened face glaring at him with eyes as black as the void. He watches as it grows, hearing its voice deepen and its words become speech.

*    *    *    *    *

See Also:

Clear Cosmology

Chaos and Order

Tria Prima (and Chaos)

Magical Materials

Tria Prima - Mercury

Tria Prima - Sulfur

*    *    *    *    *

Bibliography

-Drury, N. (2004). The Dictionary of the Esoteric: 3000 entries on the mystical and occult traditions. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. 

-Chabbert, Pierre. Pierre Borel (1620?-1671). Presses Universitaires de France, 1968.
( https://www.persee.fr/doc/rhs_0048-7996_1968_num_21_4_2567 )

-Drury, N. (2005). The Watkins Dictionary of Magic: 3000 entries on the magical traditions. Watkins. 

-Mather, Cotton. “Book II, The Life of His Excellency, Sir William Phips, KNT”.” Magnalia Christi Americana, or, the Ecclesiastical History of New-England: From Its First Planting in the Year 1620, unto the Year of Our Lord, 1698: In Seven Books, Published by Silas Andrus. Roberts & Burr, Printers, Hartford, 1820, p. 151.
( https://archive.org/details/magnaliachris01math/page/150/mode/2up )

-Tresidder, J. (2008). The Watkins Dictionary of Symbols. Watkins.