Spilt Salt
Salt has been a valuable commodity since the earliest of times. Vital to bodily health, it was also quickly recognized as a critical to preservation. This insight led to salt becoming an essential component of the mummification process used by the ancient Egyptians, as well as a preservative for food. Its rareness only increased the value of salt for it had to be acquired by mining rare salt deposits or by extracting it from seawater. Such was its worth that the Romans used it to pay workers. This payment, known as salarium is the original word for salary.
Salt was vital and rare, and so was a commodity people could ill afford to waste. So to spill this precious mineral could be seen as a misfortune in itself. However, salt also came to be seen as a symbol of prosperity. People gifted it to newlyweds or those moving to a new home to ensure future wealth as well as a generous gift in itself. This association between salt and prosperity arose because people observed the wealth salt brought to those who mined and traded in it.
Provadia in Bulgaria was one of the earliest cities in Europe. The town was established 1500 years before the beginning of Greek civilization, and rose and fell by its salt production. At its peak, its people were buried with fabulous wealth, brought in by the city’s trade in salt. When that production failed, the town became impoverished and died, and its people had to move away. Fortune’s rose and fell based on the availability of salt. So it was no wonder that to spill salt was seen as an omen of future poverty.
Salt had also had very distinct transformative properties. It disappeared when dissolved in water only to become solid again when the water evaporated. This mutability, plus its preservative properties gave the salt a sacred significance. Most ancient societies used the mineral in rituals of purification. The Christian Church inherited the tradition from the Greeks, Romans, and Jews, using salt in Holy Water- something still practiced in the Catholic Church today. So to spill salt was to create a chink in the spiritual armor and leave an individual open to evil influences.
As a countermeasure against future misfortune, the practice of throwing salt over the left shoulder developed. The custom stemmed from the common belief that evil spirits lurked around a person’s left hand or sinister side. Christian, in particular, thought that the devil loitered here, which was a belief they had adopted from near and Middle Eastern nations, which believed a good angel, lingered about the right shoulder while an angel of evil haunted the left. By casting some of the wasted salt over the left shoulder, the idea was you would hit the devil or demon in their eye, thus dispelling any attack.
Many other superstitions have a Christian connotation that has been influenced by earlier beliefs.