From Iodized to Exotic: The Salt Saga and Pagan Conversations

Embark on a salty expedition with us, where we trace the lineage of this essential mineral from the days of the simple iodized table salt to the plethora of exotic varieties that garnish our modern palates. We'll dissect the hype and help you discern the true value behind the latest salt trends—is it marketing genius or mineral magnificence? We ignite a debate that dives into the rosy depths of Himalayan pink salt and the authenticity of what we sprinkle over our meals. As we share tales from rock collectors and their time-honored taste tests, prepare to question everything you thought you knew about the seemingly mundane grains that season our existence.

We extend a warm invitation into the heart of spiritual companionship, where connection and conversation are the espresso shots to our souls. We revel in the sharing of our path through life's stone labyrinths and the fiery seas that sometimes block our way, celebrating the togetherness that brings solace from dusk till dawn. Whether you're a metaphysical maven or simply seeking solace amidst life's tempests, join our fellowship as we stride into the morning light, fortified by the bonds of our kindred spirits.

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:22

Welcome to Pagan Coffee Talk. If you enjoy our content, please consider donating and following our socials. Now here are your hosts, lady Abba and Lord Knight.

Speaker 2 0:34

Alright, let's talk about Do we need different kinds of salt?

Speaker 3 0:41

Why Wait? A minute, stop, stop I learn my stuff, I go run my cabin like I'm supposed to and all this and I pull my head out of the community at large and do my stuff right then, I stick it back in there and now there's like 50 billion salts black salt. What the hell happened?

Speaker 2 1:09

I know it's so funny.

Speaker 3 1:12

I understand why people turn away from the iodide salt in craft and that's fine and dandy.

Speaker 2 1:18

It's really funny because I mean, back in the day, to my knowledge, back in the day, there were only three choices. You had iodized table salt, which you know, most of America used. You had kosher salt and then you had rock salt. Yeah, and depending on what you were doing, we would either use kosher salt or rock salt, and iodized was in a pinch. You you know if we literally had no other choice. But you know, rock salt is like the industrial stuff that you can't, you can't do anything with it, like you can't eat it. I mean, I guess you could, but I don't know it's and it's meant for like melting ice and it's meant for like making ice cream. That's what my parents used to do with it. They had the crank ice cream maker and you would. You know.

Speaker 3 2:11

Yeah, we thought we were moving up when we had the electric one.

Speaker 2 2:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because the electric ones I don't think need the salt, and that was it right, yeah. And so if you were doing something outside, that was a very large ritual you'd break out rock salt because it was cheaper, yeah, and kosher salt, yeah. And now it's like okay, we got sea salt, we got the pink himalayan sea salt we got the black salt from hawaii. We've got the celtic sea salt, yeah, the gray the gray sea salt that's from france, I mean how?

Speaker 3 2:49

to make.

Speaker 2 2:49

And then we have the black sea, the black salt that people are making but that's see, that's what I'm uncertain of. Like the black, I think. So the black is supposed to. It's volcanic, I believe, and it's, I think it's from hawaii. But I don't know if people are making it or not, if they're just putting charcoal and salt together and salt together, right and it? It makes it black, but that one doesn't make any sense to me. Salt's already pure. So if you're adding charcoal, why. To absorb odor. I don't know what we're doing. I mean, that's what charcoal right Is it?

Speaker 2 3:32

activated charcoal it would have to be. Yeah, I mean so. It either means you're trying to make somebody puke or you're you know like, or you're taking extra steps there.

Speaker 3 3:44

I mean, at the end of the day, salt is salt right one would assume I mean chemically, it makes no difference. On the periodic table it makes no difference I mean the only thing is is I know they add iodine to salt, but that was to get rid of gout or something in the population.

Speaker 2 4:06

I don't remember if it was gout or it was something. It was something that was like very, very common. It was a depletion right of iodine in the system and it was so significant that they started adding it to salt after, I think, World War II.

Speaker 3 4:21

Yeah, and it just disappeared after that.

Speaker 2 4:23

Yeah, and people just kept doing it for whatever reason. Um, but I don't know. And now you know the irony of it is, right, in the from a, from a cooking standpoint, everybody's like you don't need to add salt to anything anymore unless again, you're making it fully from scratch because there's so much salt in the food we eat. It's out of control. But yeah, I mean as a rock, right? Right, there's only two situations that produce salt mining it or dehydrating salt water, right does it? The chemical structure, however, is identical, and when you dehydrate seawater, you get the same crystalline structure. It's again, it's identical, it makes no difference but yet people swear.

Speaker 3 5:19

Sea salt's better for you I mean I mean it just don't have the iodine in it well, I mean like.

Speaker 2 5:27

So there's a, there's a really cool rock that I'm kind of fascinated with called halite, and halite is nothing but gem grade salt. What? Yes, it's salt that's so damn pretty and so crystal clear, and it's big. It's big, big hunks of it, like cubes, yes, and they come out. They do. They come out in like cubes. That's why, if you look at salt, even the iodized stuff under a microphone, it's like a square block, right, because that's the crystal structure of salt. That's what it looks like. So halite is like these big, big blocks, the rarest of which is blue, and it's beautiful and it's bright, bright, bright blue. And it's just again, the different minerals, it's the different concentration of different minerals that are present inside the salt that are giving it that color.

Speaker 2 6:21

But halite is highly collectible. People pay a ton of money for it. The irony of it is it's a rock. You can't get wet. You have to be really careful with it around humidity and everyone, everyone who has ever encountered a piece of how light is full of shit. If they tell you they didn't like it, of course we liked it we had to confirm you damn right, I liked it, I. There's a t-shirt that even says have you tried licking it? The rock community? I mean it's a real thing, because there are certain minerals and things you can detect with your tongue.

Speaker 3 6:55

No, in my head all I can remember is lots of life right yes, pillar of salt, did you try licking it?

Speaker 2 7:02

you've absolutely done it. Pillar of salt, did you try licking it? Absolutely done it. I said it. But yes, sorry, no, it's it is, but it's hilarious. And so how light I? I, yeah, and it really is a hilarious thing because bacteria doesn't grow on it, right, it's the purity of salt.

Speaker 3 7:23

It's what we know Now do you think adding these things change the properties of salt?

Speaker 2 7:32

No.

Speaker 3 7:33

That it adds its vibration to what's going on when these minerals do interact with salt, changing it to blue or pink or no, it's just a.

Speaker 2 7:46

It's an inclusion, it's just a higher concentration of a specific mineral.

Speaker 3 7:53

And since you associate pink with love and you're using pink, salt beer love spells.

Speaker 2 8:03

Listen, the funniest thing that I was ever, ever told when it came to salt I about I had to leave. I had to leave a shop because it was going to be like an argument between me and the retailer. So when the himalayan salt lamps were at their height, right, they were everywhere. Now you can buy them at walmart, right right, you can get a himalayan salt lamp at walmart for like 10 bucks this is yeah, of course I did this is back when you could only get them at, like the fancy high-end mineral stores, and what they were doing is selling these well, I mean difference.

Speaker 2 8:40

Like they were huge, like you could buy like a lamp that was in like an 18 inch around you know bowl filled with the salt. And then there were the ones that were like the big towers and all shapes and sizes, right. So the woman selling these goddamn things was talking about the purification qualities, right. So I'm like, yeah, salt, it's pure. And she was telling these people with a straight face. She said wherever you put the salt lamp in your home, you won't see any dust. They repel dust like a natural filter.

Speaker 3 9:23

Oh, that's right, they're supposed to create negative ions which repel things. Which can only really be found in like by waterfalls and it's other natural areas.

Speaker 2 9:36

Yeah, most negative ions are created by sound yes they're created by you know it's a lightning strike, the moving force of water waves, that sort of thing um, so you can find these in nature but they believe okay, so she's telling this, she's, she is telling these people, you just, you know, you put these all over your house and you'll never have to dust again.

Speaker 2 10:02

And I went that's not true. And of course, yeah, no, it started a whole thing and the point that I was trying to make to her, as I was like, the reason you think there's no dust is because the humidity in your house naturally changes at different times of the year Humidity and salt. Well, guess what? The salt is going to absorb the humidity, which is going to make the rock wet, which effectively makes the rock sort of kind of melt a little bit on the outer layer, and so what you think is a repelling of dust is actually the dust sticking to the salt lamp and adhering to it and getting trapped in it when the humidity changes. So you think there's no dust. In fact, that rock is all dust by the time you're done. And I've I mean, yeah, I've seen ridiculous versions of these over the years, and so, anyway, at its height, I just remember how funny this was some of these salt lamps were selling for like a hundred plus dollars.

Speaker 3 11:14

I remember when they first came out, they were and then I figured something out what yeah.

Speaker 2 11:19

So I took a basket, just a basket, like a regular old, like I mean an easter basket, whatever.

Speaker 2 11:24

Just a basket pokes a hole in the bottom, threaded a light kit through it, so you know, just put a bulb yeah right in into the basket, had the cord coming out the other end and I went to the hunting section at walmart and I bought a bag of the rock deer salt. I guess that's what's called deer salt. Yeah, it's salt lick for animals. Yeah, it's made of himalayan pink salt. It's the same shit. The entire bag costs maybe twenty dollars and I was able to take it home and put it in this basket with the light bulb, completely cover the light bulb, so you couldn't see it and all this, and made the hundred dollar lamp for 30 bucks and thought it was pretty goddamn funny. Um, and it was pretty. It worked for you know quite some time. But yeah, the other thing people don't tell you is that as the salt rocks leach, you will actually see like a ring of salt, like on your furniture and on you know things in your home, oh yeah yeah, just go set them out in your yard.

Speaker 2 12:35

I don't know. I mean, that's the funny thing about it, right? What does salt do? It melts, it doesn't really? Yeah, it just it melts. Water makes it melt, yes, so that's a really, really low melt point.

Speaker 3 12:52

I mean, heat makes it disappear, it liquefies instantly what think of how many was sent to the dump after the craze was over?

Speaker 2 13:04

I can't even imagine.

Speaker 3 13:04

I can't, I mean honestly, I cannot even imagine because I think the only people that still have them are the massage parlors they're still around.

Speaker 2 13:13

I mean, I know, I definitely know people who have them, but they're not nearly as common or as big a deal as they used to be. But you know they're, they're, they're still around. It's just that I think a lot of the craze and the bullshit about them has died down, which now also begs the other question with the sheer quantity of this shit being mined. I mean, I've never looked into it, but I mean, is there an entire mountain in the himalayas that's made of nothing? But like, where are they mining this? What? How are they?

Debating the Value of Salt

Speaker 3 13:45

but I hate to be this way. Are they even mining it? That's my point, I mean. The fact is, is you can take salt, add a little bit of water, place it into something and force it into a shape?

Speaker 2 13:57

Well, that's my point Is what we're buying that gets called Himalayan sea salt, nothing more than regular old salt that is being introduced to the same minerals that exist in the Himalayas, therefore turning it pink, and we're just being told it's himalayan sea salt because, I'm sorry y'all, the himalayas are a fucked up, treacherous place on this planet. Right, you hear the stories every year about the people who die on everest and the bodies that get left there. You know there's no extracting them. Who's risking their lives for salt?

Speaker 3 14:37

to make lamps out of yes, this is absurd.

Speaker 2 14:40

I mean, they make it sound like this is so plentiful, but again, it's still a very treacherous place. This would be a hell of an operation, and for it to be as inexpensive as it is, I'm like I mean any mining is an expensive undertaking and dangerous yes, but even more so when you're dealing with something that remote and far off and I don't know.

Speaker 2 15:04

But do we do? Is there any difference? I mean, I've known people in many situations that have used a packet of salt from a fast food restaurant to cast circle. Does it matter?

Speaker 3 15:21

nope why, you know, and even then do you even have to open up them packets what if you picked up just four of them shit, that's pretty funny then after that you can pick them back up and use them again that.

Speaker 2 15:32

That's really funny. You can even color code them for your directions. Put a little dot on them, say no, that's clever, that's really funny that you say that.

Speaker 3 15:43

Yeah.

Speaker 2 15:44

But it's true. I mean, does any of that really make a damn bit of difference?

Speaker 3 15:51

I think it's more the individual. If they believe it, if they want to believe it, it then becomes important.

Speaker 2 15:59

It was a discussion I remember you and I having at my first degree where I was a little bit too obsessed with man-made Right. And you and Lord Oswin kept challenging me and going well, what is man-made? What does that mean? Well, it means it was made by man, uh-huh, and what made man? And what made the materials and what made right like plastic? I was like but plastic is man-made. And you were like so, so the the materials to make it and the things are of this planet they did not miss.

Speaker 3 16:33

Yeah, yeah, we did not have a little box, it's just poof Plastic Plastic. Yeah, that's the part that baffles me. Everybody wants to think these things are separate.

Speaker 2 16:46

Yeah, it's kind of a witch hallmark, is it not that? Yeah, it's.

Speaker 2 16:52

It's like we're supposed to be discouraging of anything manmade inside of our ritual spaces or inside of our practices, but does that really matter? Now, here's the irony, as a rock collector there are a lot of rocks and I mean a lot that are manufactured. There are a lot of rocks and I mean a lot that are manufactured. They're not real. They are. They're not mined, they're not coming straight out of the earth. They're either being created in a lab Right, they're a chemistry experiment really or they are heated or treated in some way.

Speaker 3 17:31

The manufactured diamonds are the exact same diamonds we get from the ground, which is insane.

Speaker 2 17:37

Yeah, yeah. But same thing with quartz, same thing with right, all these other yeah. But the lab-created stuff is now becoming part of the metaphysical scene of people using them and I'm like is it marketing? Probably, but is that stone any less effective if the person using it, holding it, working with it, believes in it.

Speaker 3 18:01

Don't you ever remember the debates back in the day about the whole entire using artificial deer urine versus real deer urine for your spells? Because, there's an argument over the ethics of collecting, hmm, interesting. Do you remember that debate I?

Speaker 2 18:22

do, because there were some spells that went around that required that at one point I do, but I also remember the active hunters in the group just going. What are you talking about? We can go to the sporting goods store and buy deer urine right now yes yeah real deer yep, the real thing.

Speaker 2 18:40

Yeah, I remember that. I don't know, but that's a good point. But it seems like every so many years right, there's a thing to hit the market that people get obsessed over and that's all it really is. It's like a temporary obsession. Like in 10 years are we going to be looking back going? Haha, remember when we were all obsessed with salts. Does it really matter? I mean, does it? I don't know. I do think it's worth experimenting. Well, yeah, I do think it is absolutely worth gathering up some of these different types of salts and working with them and deciding for yourself. Maybe there is a particular property to one that is stronger than another, maybe there isn't. We don't know till we try, true. At the same token, do I think it's absolutely necessary to try? No, it's up to each their own.

Speaker 3 19:46

I have more different ideas of experimentation than that you with me.

Speaker 2 19:52

Yeah.

Speaker 3 19:53

That's a little bit farther up. That's a little bit lower on my list.

Speaker 2 19:57

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, like you know quantum mechanics. But we can't all be that smart, so I'll just play with my rocks, okay?

Speaker 3 20:07

All right, I ain't that smart.

Speaker 2 20:11

I'm going to get some more coffee All right.

Pagan Coffee Talk by Life Temple

Speaker 1 20:14

Thanks for listening. Join us next week for another episode. Pagan Coffee Talk is brought to you by Life Temple and Seminary. Pagan Coffee Talk is brought to you by Life Temple and Seminary. Please visit us at lifetempleseminaryorg for more information, as well as links to our social media Facebook, discord, twitter, youtube and Reddit.

Speaker 4 20:32

We travel down this trodden path, the maze of stone and mire. Just hold my hand as we pass by a sea of blazing fires. And so it is the end of our day, so walk with me till morning breaks. And so it is the end of our day. So walk with me till morning.