Salt
Also called the fixed principle
The principle is Paracelsian; salt the stuff is as old as cooking
Alchemy symbolsSalt meaning
In alchemy, salt is the principle that stays when fire has driven the rest off: body, fixity, what remains. It is not table salt, and it is not “protection” in the crystal-shop sense.
What the fire cannot talk out of staying.
The name. A circle crossed by a diameter. Not the shaker on the table, except as an analogy.
Where it comes from
In the tria prima, salt is the body: the ash, the crystal, the part of a substance that holds its shape when the volatile has left. Paracelsus is not talking only about sodium chloride. He is naming fixity. The kitchen salt is the teaching example, the way a child meets the idea, and then the idea outgrows the pantry.
Alchemy
The body of the work
Without salt, sulfur and mercury have nothing to inhabit. The principle is unglamorous on purpose. It is the remainder you can weigh. Spiritual readers who skip straight to the volatile miss the claim: incarnation, in this language, is not a fall away from the real thing. It is one of the three real things.
Alchemy
A circle, cut
The glyph is almost nothing: a circle and a horizon. Fixity is pictured as a closed body with a level in it. Compare the sun, which is a circle and a point. The point concentrates. The line stabilizes. The drawings are doing different jobs with the same economy.
Near this
Sources
- Paracelsian tria prima
Named when the entry depends on a text, a date, or a standard. Catalog numbers are not invented.
Your margin
Private. It stays in this browser and never joins the canon.
symbol.wiki, edited as Sigilla. Last reviewed 2 October 2026. A reading of public tradition, not a ruling.