THE SPIRITUAL PROPERTIES OF SALT

AT THE LAKE                                                    Return to HoodooRoots.com

Looking through the woods towards 
the lake at twilight

Every summer during my childhood, teenage,    and young adult years, I spent many happy weeks at my family's summer home, up the steep wooded hillside from an beautiful, glimmering lake.  Nestled deeply between forested hills, this ancient glacial lake was formed some 11,000 years ago, as the last ice age receded.  When I was young, it was said that the lake was so deep it had never been plumbed.


Our old house had a large yard which brought forth purple-blue lupines in the early spring and delicious, tiny, wild alpine strawberries throughout the summer.  An old Strawberry apple tree - a rare heritage specimen - stood in the yard, along with two enormous evergreens, alert sentinels always guarding our home.

Red raspberries grew at the edge of the wood

At wood's edge grew fat and juicy raspberries, sun-sweetened blackberries, gooseberries, prolific high-bush blueberries, and my father's trellised grapes.  All around the yard, the deep elder forest stood:  pine and spruce, aspen and maple, beech, birch, and graceful tamarack.  And always, the birds, their clear sweet song filling the air.


THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE

Indian Paintbrush with Swallowtail

Further up the hillside from our summer home was an old, abandoned Queen Anne-style cottage, complete with princess-worthy turrets, which had long ago been built by an English professor from Columbia University for the summertime pleasure of his French wife and their daughters.


In the 1950s, 60s and 70s, when I was young, we would sometimes trek up through the woods to see this home, which stood abandoned throughout all of those years.  We'd amble down it's long grassy driveway, still rutted from the carriages of long ago.  The trees canopied this long, winding drive, with shadowy forest on either side.

Lace curtains hung long ago

As we drew nearer to the home, a hush always came over us; there was something about this property which every one of us, even the most prosaic, recognized as being not of this world, enchanted.  Then the woods cleared, and before us stood the Gingerbread House, surrounded by a wildly overgrown yard, smaller every year as the forest reclaimed it's own, thick with Queen Anne's lace, sky-blue chicory, Indian paintbrush, black-eyed Susans, and everywhere, fragrant, exuberantly arching wild roses.

Charmed by the Gingerbread House's elaborate curlicued fretwork, the flower-choked grounds, and entranced by the antique Victorian furniture visible through the wavering glass windows, I urged my parents to purchase the home, it's outbuildings and acreage.  My mother shook her head in absolute refusal.  "Never," she stated flatly.  "This property needs to be exorcised by a priest, and the grounds sown with salt".

Queen Anne's Lace grew everywhere

Though extraordinarily perceptive and mediumistic, my mother was also very practical; for her to state so emphatically that a property needed such a serious uncrossing was very rare.  I was 10 or so at the time.  My mother's intention there was not the destruction of the soil's fecundity, needless to say!  Rather, it was the permanent removal of what she perceived as an unwholesome, even malevolent, spiritual presence.  Salt has long been recognized as having the power to do just this.



 These photos only approximate the Gingerbread House, which was purchased some 20 years ago and razed, a hunting lodge erected in it's place.  As of now, it resides only in my memory, and the memories of a very select few. 

The Gingerbread House, abandoned for decades, stood alone in the woods. 
House photos courtesy of Janie Fortenberry

Over the next few days, I'll be posting much more about the spiritual properties of salt and it's worldwide use as a purifying and protective substance, including some practical salt magic specific to hoodoo. Stay tuned!





Dara Anzlowar

on a beautiful golden September Monday

Many thanks to Janie Fortenberry of Southern Lagniappe Photography, for allowing me to post her lovely and evocative house photos here. Visit Janie at:
http://southernlagniappe.blogspot.com/ 


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