The salt water cure, and what I make of it
The salt water cure is used in feng shui when a certain combination of difficult stars, or a build up of negative energy, turns up in one sector of a home or office. It is one of the best known cures there is.
How to make it
- Salt. Fill a glass jar about three quarters full with salt. Rock salt is best.
- Six coins. Lay six coins in a circle on top of the salt, yang side up. With ordinary coins that means heads. With Chinese coins it is the side with four characters.
- Water. Fill the jar with water. Tap water is fine. If the coins sink or shift, that is fine too.
- Place it. Set the jar on a plate or a mat in the sector that needs it. You can tuck it behind a picture frame or a plant if you would rather not look at it. Do not put a lid on it or shut it in a cupboard. The tradition says it has to be open to the air to absorb the negative energy.
- Leave it alone. Try not to move it. The idea is that moving the jar moves the energy it has collected around the room.
Over the weeks crystals form around the rim and down the sides of the jar. That is said to be the cure at work.
The questions people ask most
When do I change it? Keep it in place until the end of the Chinese calendar year, then replace it with a new one if you still need it. Some rooms collect more than others. Some people change it once a year at Chinese New Year because the crystals do not bother them. Others change it every three months because they would rather not be reminded of what is in the room.
Can I just knock the crystals off? The tradition says no, because you would be disturbing what it has collected. Make a fresh one.
Can I add to it? Yes. Six coins tied with red ribbon beside the jar are said to make it stronger, and so is any other metal cure.
Why six coins every time? Six is the number of the trigram Chien, which belongs to metal. In feng shui metal weakens earth, and the troublesome stars this cure is used for, the 2 and the 5, are earth stars. Whenever you need a metal cure, six is the number to use.
Can it go in the bedroom? Yes. The water to keep out of a bedroom is moving water, which is yang. The jar holds still water, which is yin.
How do I get rid of it? Do not reuse the jar or the coins. Wrap them in a plastic bag and throw them out. Pour the water down an outside drain that runs away from your house, never toward it.
What I make of it
People ask me how it works. It is a hard question to answer well.
Some cures in feng shui ask for a leap of faith more than a scientific explanation, and this is one of them. What I can tell you is that feng shui masters have used it for thousands of years, and that salt water turns up in religious traditions all over the world. People have tried to explain it with science, usually something to do with the air by the sea. Science is not my background, so I will leave that to them.
The tradition says negative energy builds up in a house from difficult flying stars as the cycles turn, from the people who lived there before you, and from arguments. A jar of salt water on a plate is a quiet answer to all that.
So my answer is the same one I gave years ago. What harm can it do? Make one, and watch the jar.
From the archive. First written for my journal years ago, and rewritten for life after 50.
