a founder of the codex

Salt

Halocrystis figens·the Fixing Crystal

From Greek hals, salt and sea, and krystallos, ice or crystal, and Latin figens, fixing, the crystal of the sea that holds things fast.

Level: Conceptorganism
Book: Mineralsthe mineralogical treatise
Phylum: Balanceimage schema
Class: Kernelits seed crystal
Niche: Extremophileabsence
Mode: Attachmenthow it keeps existing
Stage: Matureindividuated
Status: Living
Habitat: Market

Its kinds · Roget, 1852: Inorganic Matter · Wilkins, 1668: Stone · WordNet, 1990: Substance · Llull, 1308: I · Elementative

Fixing Crystal, the whole specimen — Plate XXXIII. Halocrystis figens, the whole specimen.

Salt is the crystal left when the sea dries, and it keeps what it touches by drawing out its water, until in excess it makes the land barren.

What salt fixes keeps, and what keeps can be traded and sworn by.

behavior It grows as clean cubes in still sunlit shallows, melts at the first fresh rain, and creeps white over any field that holds it too long.

provocation

What do you keep by drying it out, and what has that keeping cost?

Each draw is the being derived afresh by the current laws at another seed (laws §11); the chosen one leads (where they sit in the morphospace).

I Dissection

Each organ answers one question about the idea. The framed one, its kernel, is the dominant organ: the being's class, the one the idea could not lose and stay itself.

Kernel of Salt — Fig. 1. Kernel
Cubic lattice
❦ dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
Salt is sodium and chloride ions locked into a cubic lattice by the pull of opposite charges, the same order in every grain.¹
drawn as: seed crystal · view: magnified

Boundary of Salt — Fig. 2. Boundary
Deliquescence
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
Fresh water dissolves it, so it keeps its form only where water is scarce or already saturated.²
drawn as: rind · view: cross section

Intake of Salt — Fig. 3. Intake
Brine pans
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It feeds on seawater and brine left to evaporate in shallow pans under sun and wind, and on ancient seas dried into rock.²
drawn as: mother liquor · view: at work

Mechanism of Salt — Fig. 4. Mechanism
Hopper crystal
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
As the water leaves, the ions crowd together and lock into cubes, each new layer copying the order of the one beneath.¹
drawn as: lattice · view: exploded

Output of Salt — Fig. 5. Output
Dry cure
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It draws water out of meat, fish and vegetables, so the microbes that rot them starve and the food keeps for months.²
drawn as: habit · view: detached

Dispersal of Salt — Fig. 6. Dispersal
Sea spray
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
Sea spray carries it inland on the wind, and trade carried it farther, into wages, covenants and the welcome of bread and salt.^{2, 3}
drawn as: shard · view: in situ

Decay of Salt — Fig. 7. Decay
Efflorescence
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
In excess it kills, and the irrigation that left salt behind in ancient Mesopotamia turned its fields white and barren.⁴
drawn as: weathering · view: series

II Meaning associations

No relations recorded yet.

descent membership food web resemblance or friction

Lineage

A founder, dissected by hand.

Kin

same kind in Roget Erosion, Fire, Rain, Storm, Wind

same kind in Wilkins Amber

same kind in WordNet Amber

same kind in Llull Amber, Emergence, Entanglement, Entropy, Erosion, Fire, Rain, Resonance, Resonance (Automata), Storm, Wind, Self-Ending Order

same phylum Chiaroscuro, Equinox, Symmetry, The Shaping Pause

same dominant organ Entanglement, Entelechy, Geomancy, Qualia, Syllable, Symmetry, Vertigo, Volition, Knowing Trust, Hesychology

Genome

crystal
preservation also in Amber
fixity
measure also in Equinox
bond

III In the world

Echoes

salt pans drying in the sun
salted cod
the word salary
bread and salt offered at the door

IV Record

How it was drawn

its draw 1, a point in the morphospace (laws §8), drawn by flux-2-klein-4b.safetensors.

axis	value
book	minerals
symmetry	radial 6
organization	solitary
silhouette	columnar
scale	hand
proportion	tapering latent
growth	encrusted
articulation	jointed latent
openness	spongy latent
skeleton	exoskeleton
locomotion	rolling latent
pattern	reticulate latent
coloration	warning latent
substance	crystal
surface	ribbed
palette	humus
luminosity	sheen
transparency	clouded latent
gesture	hardens
unity	unmarked latent
modality	necessary
causation	formal
determinacy	crisp latent
fusion	mirrored
anomaly	one break
graft	arches
technique	silverpoint
viewpoint	cutaway
value	high key latent
balance	grounded latent
density	intricate latent
rhythm	alternating latent
saturation	accent latent
appendages	armour plates, ocelli
anchor (body)	a sand circle sculpted on the sea floor, ridged rays around a smooth centre
anchor (detail)	a Purkinje neuron, a flat fan of densely branching dendrites

Sources

W. L. Bragg, The Structure of Some Crystals as Indicated by Their Diffraction of X-rays (Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 1913)
Mark Kurlansky, Salt: A World History (2002)
Numbers 18:19, on the covenant of salt
Thorkild Jacobsen and Robert M. Adams, Salt and Silt in Ancient Mesopotamian Agriculture (Science, 1958)

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