Salt was offered at every little shrine by the wayside in Guatemala, in Central America, in olden time. It was an acceptable gift to the gods.[169]
Wellhausen, in treating of the remains of Arabian paganism,[170] tells of the custom of the old priests of throwing salt into the fire of sacrifice, unperceived by the worshiper as he appealed to the gods in his oath, and of the consequent startling of the offerer by the up-leaping flames, as though under a divine impulse. Various popular sayings are cited as incidental proofs of this custom; the purport of them all being that salt in the fires of sacrifice is supposed to be an effective appeal to the gods.
Pliny says that "salt, regarded by itself, is naturally igneous, and yet it manifests an antipathy to fire, and flies from it."[171] This would seem to be a reference to the tendency of salt to spring up, or flash and sparkle, when thrown into the flames.
It has indeed been suggested that the very name "salt" was derived (through saltus, "to leap") from the tendency of this substance "to leap and explode when thrown upon fire."[172] If there be any probability in this suggestion, or in another, and more natural one, that saltus was from the same root as sal, "salt," it is easy to see that the primitive mind might infer that such was the affinity of salt with the divine, that, when offered by fire, it leaped toward heaven, and so was understood to be peculiarly acceptable to God or to the gods, in sacrifice. The Latin verb salis has the twofold meaning "to salt" or "to sprinkle before sacrifice," and "to leap, spring, bound, jump;" and the root sal would seem to be in the Latin and the Sanskrit alike.[173] Similarly, the word "salacious," or lustful, had this origin.
It is evident that the primitive popular mind recognized salt as a peculiarly acceptable offering in sacrifice to God or the gods, and that its very name in various combinations seemed to suggest the aspiring or uprising heavenward.