Salt: Mineral, Preservative, Religious Symbol and Spiritual Protector

 Illustration PJ 2011, Salt, upper left Black Hunza Stone Salt, upper right Hawaiian Sea Salt, lower left refined modern tablet salt and lower right Pink Himalayan Salt.

Few elements have had a longer importance in human cultures as regular table salt, both mined stone salt and sea salt has been the prime tool for preserving foods and adding flavor even long before recorded history. Salt also played an important role in many religions and faiths, it was considered one of the prime elements in the European medieval alchemy and therefore essential for the making of the philosophers stone. In Christianity salt is also a religious symbol. Salt is a symbol of the sanctity of Jesus, as a preserving value of his sanctity and, protection it is used to make holy water and also the more powerful exorcised water in the Roman Catholic Church. Salt is also used to make protective circles like described in My First Exorcism by Rev. Alaina Damewood. 

Salt as a sign of bad omens. According to some recollections salt was spilled by Judas Iscariot at the last supper, and since then is seen as a sign of omen and bad luck. If you spilled salt you could avert your bad luck by tossing a pinch of salt over your left shoulder, which was thought to be the devils side. By doing this one would advert any evils that the devils lurking at your left side had in store for you.

In many pagan rituals salt was also important, it is used in magical spells, cleansing rituals, charms and concoctions, and already in ancient Pre-christian Rome salt were a symbol of friendship and spilling of salt, a symbol of ill luck. Later with Christianity a deep faith and salt as a symbol of Jesus, one assumed incorrectly that the pagan witch sabbath everything was salt free. In fact this is a blurring of the terms for witches and demon witches, while a witch is still fully human and not affected by salt,  a demon witch (hag) has started to lose their humanity is such ways that salt would affect and ward them off just like it could ward of full demons.

In Norse mythology they thought that the gods came from a salty ice-block as the cow, Auðumbla brought  Búri the first god in Norse mythology, grandfather of Odin, out of the salty ice block over the course of four days. In general, other than its role as part of Norse creation myths salt had little importance other than a tool used to preserve and condition foods, though later Christianity brought in a lot of their beliefs in salt.

In Hawaii and Samoa sea salt is used for protection both by placing salt in each of the four corners of the house and by poring salt on the door threshold to prevent any spirits from crossing into ones home.

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The Ringing of the Phone

 Illustration by PJ 2011

Back in the early 70's, My sister and her young son moved into an old house down in the southern part of the country. As I said, the house was indeed old but, it was only for a year until her husband would complete his military commitment over seas and then would be back home and a civilian once again. So she figured the old house would suit her purpose for a year and besides the owner was asking a very low amount of monthly rent.

My sister noticed that there was no phone in the house and only one phone jack and that was in the living room. She said she had to wait until pay day to get a phone installed. She had an especially busy day at work that day and was very tired when she got home. later that night, she put her son to bed and she went to get ready for bed herself.  As she was getting ready to turn in for the night she heard a phone ring. She thought she just imagined  it because it only rang once and, she already knew there was no phone in the house. She went to bed and just as she was falling off to sleep she heard a phone ring again. She didn't get much sleep that night because of the sound of a ringing phone. It actually woke her son up and together they searched the entire house for a phone including the basement and attic and there there was no phone to be found.

The next day she complained to the landlady about it and the woman told her why she heard a phone ring all night long. She told my sister the story of what happened in that house several years before. The landlady said that her parents built that house many years ago and that her mom and dad were married 50 years when her mother was murdered in that house. One day her father came home from his doctor appointment and as he walked into the house, he found that his wife had been murdered during his absence. by strangulation. According to the landlady, there were no signs of forced entry so his wife must have let the intruder into the house.

The elderly man's  wife had been strangled. The intruder used the phone cord to kill her. When he got into the living room, his wife was laying dead on the floor with the phone core still wrapped around her neck. A lengthy police investigation ended with no suspect being arrested.

The landlady went on to say that after about two weeks since his wife was murdered, the elderly man had the phone taken out of the house so he wouldn't have to look at it anymore. Once the phone was out, the elderly man started to hear a phone ring in the house at night. He swore it was his late wife trying to call him from beyond and, she would not have known that the phone had been taken out. He told the landlady about all of this and she said it was just his mind playing tricks on him and that it would all go away soon.

The elderly man missed his wife of 50 years very much and he thought his daughter was correct, that the ringing of the phone every hour late at night was all in his mind. Now, I know it wasn't because my sister and her son both experienced the same thing the elderly man did.

A few nights after the elderly man's daughter told him it was all in his mind, the lonely elderly man was sitting in his living room and once again the phone would start to ring on the hour, every hour. Finally, he could not take it anymore and he pulled a gun out and shot himself in the head. The neighbors heard a gun shot and called the police and an ambulance. The man wad dead when the police and ambulance arrived. 

As far as was it the elderly man's wife trying to call him from the other side... I do not know. I often wonder that if that were actually  the case, then why did a the sound of a phone continue to ring long after his death when my sister moved into the house? What I do know is that a sound of a phone ringing happened every night, every hour on the hour even though there was no phone in the house. My sister did indeed move out of that old house. Since then I believe the old house has been torn down along with a few other houses in that area, due to being old and abandon.

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A Psychic Experience by Stephanie B

Illustration by PJ 2006

Hi, my name is Stephanie and I believe that I may be psychic, (wow that's hard for me to say). I know that I am an Empath; I have been extremely empathic all my life. I found that out at a very early age.  As for premonitions or psychic experiences, I have had a few before this experience but have dismissed them off as either de ja veu or coincidence. The story that I'm about to tell is going to be the first time I have ever talked about it openly to a stranger or to any sort of organization.  I've only told this to people who are very close to me, or immediate family. I probably would have never been able to really open up or accept my abilities had it not been for me getting in contact with someone who was actually there and witnessed firsthand, what I went through and what had actually happened and can fill in some of the blanks.  It is only now, 10 years later, that I am trying to accept and come to terms with my experiences and try to gain some sort of control over them.

This was a horrific experience for me and very confusing to explain. Whenever I try to explain what was happening to me and what I experienced, I begin to re-live it. It was all emotion and that in itself is hard to describe, but I will do my best.  My friend James, who was my boyfriend at the time, is helping me with this story and has written his own account of this experience.

This all takes place in Phoenix, AZ, a couple of weeks leading up to the tragedy of 9/11. I had two different psychic experiences during this period.  One was an out of body experience but I will leave that for another time.  I will concentrate on the one that has stayed with me for all this time.  I remember it as being only a few days before 9\11, but I've been told it was actually a few weeks.  It started slowly; I didn’t even realize it at first.  I would just be thinking of a place, you know when you can’t remember a word or a name?  I would ask James “what’s a town in Pennsylvania?”  He would answer but it would not be right.  Then New York City would pop into my mind out of nowhere.  

This went on about a week with growing frequency.  Then an overwhelming desire to write things down took me over and I began to scribble franticly in a notebook.  At the time, I felt I had no choice but to write, to figure out a puzzle of some sort, and I had to do it fast because time was running out.  I had to get people to listen to me and see what I was doing. I felt increasing fear and terror, for I felt if I did not figure it out and get someone to help there would be serious consequences. 

I still remember what it felt like and what was happening like it was yesterday.  Time had no meaning, I actually thought it was only a few days, but come to find out it was a few weeks before 9/11.   I felt like I was getting pieces like clues, as if someone was desperately trying to tell me something.  They were frantic and needed my help so I tried to help them.  It was almost as though they knew me because they would remind me of certain happenings in my life like a past memory, and in that memory was a clue as to what I needed to help.  The only way I could make sense of it was to write what the clues that I got were, almost like a tree. 

I had to use deductive reasoning so to speak, the problem was it was too much to handle all at once.  Emotions and clues were bombarding me all at once so my writing would become tangled up on each other.   When I would feel I was close to figuring one clue out, then there were more and different clues. It became difficult to distinguish between the clues in my writings.

It was the worst experience in my lifetime. When I would come to a conclusion, from where I don’t know, I would try and explain it to someone.  James mostly, I would show him the paper and tell him that something was going to happen there!  I was frightened and determined, he listened, and looked at what I was doing and tried to be patient but all in all he really thought I was nuts at the time. I remember even explaining to him how I knew that something was going to happen, he would ask me what is going to happen, and I didn't know.  I just knew it was something bad. My memory of those weeks leading up to 9/11 and what was going on around me is limited, mostly what I remember is the panic and the feeling of despair.  

I was running out of time, someone had to listen to me, I was so consumed with the emotion of it all, I barely knew what was going on around me.  This continued with increasing frequency for 2 weeks or so.  I've never felt so helpless in my entire life.  I began to tell people that something bad was going to happen in New York, the Liberty Tree, and some place in Pennsylvania.  I would tell James over and over until he would repeat it back to me, but I still didn’t know what would happen.  After a while no one except James would listen to me and even he was just humoring me.  That didn’t stop me from continuing my mantra about New York, the Liberty Tree, and Pennsylvania.  I would mutter those three things over and over whether anyone was listening or not. 

On the night of September 10^th, not being able to sleep, James and I walked around for hours thru our neighborhood all night.  As I still tried to convince him that something was going to happen, he humored me and explained that he couldn't do anything unless he had more information.  As he finally calmed me down somewhat to go home, that is when we saw the helicopters and received the news.  After receiving the news, things become very hazy.  I ran away from James, he lost sight of me, and I have no recollection of that time so I’m not sure of the events at that point.  I did realize eventually that I had predicted the tragedy, although I denied it to myself for a long time.  I ended up disappearing from my home in AZ and left to California.  

The psychic experiences continued to happen for about a year after that and that's why I left to try and get away from it.  It’s been 10 years and I still have a hard time believing it, a couple of years after 9/11 I started accepting that I had some sort of a vision. I thought I was the only one who used writing and free association.  It was astounding to me to find out that there are others who do the same and they even have a name for it (free writing) I think.  Every 9/11 I have a hard time accepting it and I still doubt what I did and try and tell myself that I was crazy, there is a perfectly logical reason for all this but the more I think on it the more I can’t find one.  I recently came back into contact with James and we've talked about it and he has confirmed it, I was not crazy.  He remembers it exactly the way I do with a little more detail. I'm still not sure if that was the answer I was looking for.  But for now I've decided that it would be best for me to embrace the gift, and try and control it and myself so I will never have to feel the terror anything like that again.

Thank you for your time, I appreciate your site very much.  You’re doing a wonderful service for those of us who have stories to tell.

Stephanie B.

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To Death Do Us Apart and Then Some

Illustration Photo by PJ 2005. 

We all have light and dark sides to us, and the capacity to do good or evil, who knows what paths could bring you to the brightest light or darkest despair...

This is the true account given me of the event described by TJ as it happened to her in the summer of 2008. After a few decades of marriage to Robert, they were naturally attached even after the separation Robert would not let go of his life partner, and wife TJ. This all escalated trough months after their separation with terror on both sides, involving everything from death treats, attempted suicide and even worse. I knew both of them really well and it is painful to see someone that lived all their lives together now placed into different paths, but still not letting go.

To cut to the chase, after Robert left the asylum before the police was able to inform the hospital to keep him restrained for his own and others safety. His wife felt she would be in grave danger, and took every precautions she could to not end up as the end result of this last chain of events.

After a few days where no one had heard from Robert, she started to calm down some and decided to head to her summer house with a friend, only to spot Robert hiding around the corner, of what used to be their place from years earlier. Naturally TJ panicked and rushed with her friend back to the car, and had the police troopers come over to pick up her once life partner, now deranged and jealous of anyone she would be with.

The police spared no resources as they had been keeping up with the only escalating drama of these once pillars of community, both well respected and never even been caught for even a slightest traffic violation, drunkenness or violence before the separation put Robert on the downward spiral that this point had brought him to.

The police found nothing at the summer house other than footprints and with the help of a few other locals, and friends of Robert they started searching the perimeters, around and towards the House a few miles away that Robert currently lived at. After hours of searching they finally found the lifeless body of Robert in the shores of the sea close to the home he lived at, and it immediately became clear, he had been there for days. TJ had seen a still lingering apparition of her once significant other that still even after his death clinged on to the life he once knew...

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Powers Come and Then Fade Away

Illustration Plumeria Blossoms by PJ 2009

Like the powers in our life blossom and fade away.

This is from Mary
When I was just barley in my teens, I really became interested in all paranormal things. Not because I wanted to do so, rather because even when I was a child paranormal experiences happened to me. As I got older, the paranormal experiences I had would change some. For example, when I was very young, I could always tell when there were spirits in our house or any where I might be. I could not only sense them but they would talk to me. I was so young that I thought that was normal but, I sometimes wondered why they would tell me some of the things they told me because I didn't understand it all. My mom just thought I had pretend or make believe friends.

As I became older, I was very good at seeing impending danger and did my best to warn others of danger or a tragedy. That is when my mom started to take real notice of my abilities. I warned my mom of her sister's death and my brother about a car accident that he was in before it ever happened. I was able to warn almost anyone I was close to about almost anything bad that would happen to them and, I was usually correct.

Now that I am older, I seem to have lost both abilities. For many years now it seems that I can feel when a spirit is around but I cannot talk with it and I can sometimes see someone who has passed on but they never seem to talk. Maybe for some of us that had the gift at some point as we get older it we become less able to tune in to those kind of things.

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Mythological Beasts: Nøkken

 

Asian White Water Lily (White Lotus) 

by PJ 2011 Honolulu, Hawaii

Nøkken was in norse mythology a creature of the inland waters much like Huldra was a creature of the deep forest. And like the female Huldra, that lures people into the forest and never let them go, the male Nøkken would try to lure people to the waters and drown them.

The Norse Nøkk seem to be similar to stories of water elves, also known as nymphs in other european cultures, and also carry similarities to the mermen of the seas and oceans.

The most common described way for Nøkken to lure gullible people to its watery depths is in the form of a stunningly beautiful white horse, which willingly would let especially young children climb up on its back, and then leap with them into the water.

In other legends Nøkken seeks out one person a year to drown in his fresh water ponds, where he lures using his power of invisibility, or the ability to shape-change into something unsuspecting like a floating log, a beautiful water lily or even other plant life that is making it look like the edge of the pond is farther in, so when you move over to the water to pick flowers you would fall into the deep cold, treacherous waters.

In other occasions Nøkken was said to appear as a handsome young man, playing music in the calm tranquil forest, luring young fair maidens into his watery embrace and their doom, playing the harp or fiddle he would spellbind them with his magical charm.

In order to protect yourself legends say, is by spitting and then tossing a steel needle or a steel cross into the water. Another way was to bind Nøkken to a Nøkkstein (Nøkken rock) and then let it drop into the water directly vertically from as high up as you could get it, if you have already been grabbed by Nøkken and is about to be pulled into the waters you can break free by saying his name, as in this norwegian phrase "Nøkken! Nøkken nål i vann. Jomfru Maria kastet stål i vann! Du synker, jeg flyter!" translated this becomes "Nøkken! Nøkken! needle in water. Virgin Mary tossed steel into the water! You are sinking I am floating!"

So the next time you see a floating tree stub or water lily, a beautiful white horse wandering by the outskirts of a small lake or pond or even a handsome young man fair-skinned and with blond long hair playing the harp or the fiddle next to a river or pond it just might be Nøkken himself trying to trap you as his once a year victim... beware.

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Water lilies are called Nøkkerose in Norwegian, PJ 2005 Honolulu, Hawaii

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