Holy Smoke (History)

[DPCrisp]

And Hel means light/bright as in hellblau, Elen, Helen, Hellene, Nehalennia, Helios...

hel = heal, health, hail, hello, hallow...

And Beltaine is a fire festival. [ Is H=B a strong rule? ]

Is the purity/sacredness of salt associated with its whiteness, as well as its preservative and antiseptic properties? Is the purity of whiteness associated with salt-colouredness?
Is it significant that rubbing salt in a wound feels like burning?

[DPCrisp]

Oakey wrote:

[Komorikid]

[DPCrisp]

The Saxons are generally reckoned to be named for their trademark seax swords, but on reading the post above it occurred to me that SEAX meaning sword is no doubt the same as SEX.

Specialism, metalworking, mining, rocks, salt... that's the Saxon nexus.

I was interested to see, from a nineteenth century map of Saxon burial sites marked Middel-Seax, West-Seax, Suth-Seax and so on, that 'seax' is indeed rendered directly into 'sex' in modern spelling. (Books usually say Wessex comes from West Sax, etc.)

These areas are certainly not named after swords or knives. They can't be named after Saxons either because a) that'd be dumb and b) even if Saxons were named for their seax swords, the name has been rendered Saxon at least since Roman times. (i.e. if seax became Sax, how did Seax reappear later in place names? It really should be Wessax, Sussax...)

Apart from the obvious connection between swords and sex, does anyone have any other ideas on what Seax/Sex means?

Other areas on the map were marked Suth-Rice, Northumbria [sthg like that] Rice, etc. Rice = ric, as in abbotric, bishopric = rich = reich. Does that help shed any light?

How about sex in the sense of a distinction between categories? A Seax as distict from a Ric... this estate as distinct from that one... as if seaxing/sexing the land means allotting it.

[DPCrisp]

Not allotted... sectioned! Sex-tioned. Cut up.

Wessex = West Seax = West Section.

There is an obvious connection between swords/knives and sex/section... but is that something characteristic of the Saxon enterprise... or just a coincidence that has obscured the true meaning of 'Saxon' (which means either "technical specialist" or "rock person", or both, and alludes to mining and metalworking in any case)?

[Ishmael]

[Ishmael]

Doh! Talk about sowing the fields with salt! Guess what you get when you sow the earth with salt?

Soil.

What is soil? Well...it is simply phosphate-rich earth. Earth plus Phosphate (Salt) equals Soil.

Even the word "Sow" itself seems related (though it may be merely derived from "seed" -- and then there is the word "Sod" both in noun and verb form).

Anyone reminded of Gilgamesh "Sowing the fields with Dragon Teeth?" Anyone want to place odds that "dragon teeth" is a mis-translation? I wouldn't bet against it -- let me put it that way.
Unless of course "Dragon Teeth" are mountains: Mountains being a prime source of mineral phosphate.

[Wireloop]

I don't remember 'dragon's teeth' in Gilgamesh, although it's been a few years since I read it. However I do recall 'dragon's teeth' in Jason and the Argonauts. The dragon's teeth, once sown, sprouted into warriors against Jason, or something like that.

Cadmus, the prince of Phoenicia, the founder of Thebes and the alphabet, also had dragon's teeth which he had to sow.

Cadmus' wife was Harmonia.
Cadmus/Harmonia had a daughter; Selene.
Selene/Zeus had a son; Dionysus.

Selene and Dionysus as you know are fertility symbols.

[DPCrisp]

HAL/HEL = SAL/SEL. Halogen = salt-generator (chemical technicalities). Helygen = salix, sallow, hallow, halo... Aspirin = acetylsalicylic acid coz it comes from willow.

Hmm. The name Saul is said to mean "asked for, prayed for" and reminds me immediately of wise women and herbal magic... Then I also remember that Saul was Paul's unenlightened name and that willow is known for its bitterness... Bitterness is an important part of the Passover rite, isn't it: which was something they prayed for? Is (bitter) aloe a HAL word?

[Hatty]

Dan wrote:

[DPCrisp]

[DPCrisp]

We mentioned sal ammoniac briefly as one sort of salt known in Egypt, but I've just had a thought...

Recent references are confident about what it was and where it was found:

"Sal Ammoniac was named after it was observed in the Temple of Zeus-Ammon in Egypt; its name means "salt of Ammon". It was the white crystalline substance that remained on the ceiling and walls after camel dung was burned."

"Sal ammoniac forms on volcanic rocks near fume releasing vents. There is no liquid phase as the mineral crystallizes from these fumes in a process called sublimation. The crystallization occurs as the gases are escaping and crystals tend to be short-lived. Sal ammoniac is very soluble in water and crystals will be removed during the first rain of their existence, so to speak, if they are not removed by collectors first.

"Other possible natural occurrences exist from underground burning coal seams. Alexander the Great is said to have found sal ammoniac crystals in a cave in a region that is now Tadzhikistan. The region was plagued by underground burning coal seams."

"Natural crystals of sal ammoniac have an unreal or unnatural character to them. They are so small, delicate, intricate and at times quite beautiful that they just do not seem to be like other minerals."

but older references are more equivocal. This is the 1911 Encyclopaedia, I think:

"SAL AMMONIAC, or AMMONIUM CHLORIDE, NH4Cl, the earliest known salt of ammonia, was formerly much used in dyeing {cf. alum} and metallurgic {cf. alchemy} operations.

"The name Hammoniacus sal occurs in Pliny (Nat. Hist. xxxi. 39), who relates that it was applied to a kind of fossil salt found below the sand, in a district of Cyrenaica. The general opinion is, that the sal ammoniac of the ancients was the same as that of the moderns; but the imperfect description of Pliny is far from being conclusive. The native sal ammoniac of Bucharia, described by Model and Karsten, and analysed by M. H. Klaproth, has no resemblance to the salt described by Pliny. The same remark applies to the sal ammoniac of volcanoes. Dioscorides (v. 126), in mentioning sal ammoniac, makes use of a phrase quite irreconcilable with the description of Pliny, and rather applicable to rock-salt than to our sal ammoniac. Sal ammoniac, he says, is peculiarly prized if it can be easily split into rectangular fragments. Finally, we have no proof whatever that sal ammoniac occurs at present, either near the temple of Jupiter Ammon, or in any part of Cyrenaica. Hence we conclude that the term sal ammoniac was applied as indefinitely by the ancients as most of their other chemical terms. It may have been given to the same salt which is known to the moderns by that appellation, but was not confined to it.

"In any case there can be no doubt that it was well known to the alchemists..."

Ammonia just means "of Amun", who is himself The Hidden One. He was concealed in a lotus flower before emerging to create the world, but it's also taken to refer to the unseen but powerful wind and to his omnipresence.

Since Amun creating the world "by himself" means "by masturbation" -- single-handed creation -- it's no surprise that air and rain were his first offspring (who in turn created sky and earth). This airy, meteorological association seems important.

As if sal ammoniac isn't mysterious enough by itself, delicate and ephemeral, being deposited out of the air (particularly in temples or not) is surely a dead give-away for it being a gift from the gods... a salt theme we had already noted, I believe.

(This ties in with SAL = SAR = ZAR = helped (by gods) noted elsewhere. Lazarus, of course, was given very overt aid... and I dare say all those other "helped by god" names denote initiates to the Mysteries.)

Of course, salts are used in mummification -- which is really about rebirth.

But then there's that suggestion that sal ammoniac was rock salt: a gift from god concealed under ground {Remember how ambrosia means both concealed and immortal?}.

Quite possibly all salt was 'ammoniac' and I would like to suggest that Salt, Gift of Amun, is Amun's JISM.

[DPCrisp]

NB. Sal ammoniac was supplied to Europe by the Venetians and later by the Dutch.

There are some suggestions that the Venetians were Celts and the idea of the Celts as the original salt traders, overtaken by Germanic types (e.g. Saxons), seems to be a recurring theme.

I also came across Saint Amun, "one of the most venerated ascetics of the Nitrian desert".

Nitre (and other salts?) was collected in Nitria.

Nitre was also "a vital substance presumed to be present in the air and in rain".

[Mick Harper]

Is this sublimation process the same as (or industrially similar to) distilling? If so, it could be important because distilling liqueurs is supposed to be a very modern process (invented by "monks", natch).

[DPCrisp]