I am not here referring to fetishes, which are a means to evoke a system of belief and not properly ends in themselves. Nor am I referring to fantasy-constructs like, for example, the ship made of fingernail-parings described in Norse mythology. This ship is, undeniably a fine thing, but it is only feebly numinous compared to a block of sodium in a meadow, its edges mollified by the tongues of cows into a lopsided loaf like snow. And, while my more sceptical readers may scoff, it is a fact that if this salt-lick be removed from the meadow and placed in a confined enclosure or, better still, sealed into a lead container, its numinous charge will be boosted many fold [4]. It may be, as some have theorized, that the object, "au naturel" or in its "accumulator" [5] is numinous to the degree that it functions as a "mirror of the spirit", to the degree that you or I can imaginatively see something of ourselves, something we do not ordinarily have a name for or an image of, made objective in it. That salt can function as a mirror of anything, especially when sealed in lead, will smack of blatant hocus-pocus to the sceptics - but it is in such unlikely ways that the imagination actually works. NEXT>>

4. Cf. Leonora Carrington: "The explosion... had momentarily dispersed the powers that always gathered around the Cup in enclosed areas. This is a magic law and true for nearly all charged objects." (from The Hearing Trumpet)

5. Cf. Wilhelm Reich and his "accumulators" and "boosters" (of "orgone energy").