As man’s first food seasoning, and later a food preservative and a medicine, salt has been a precious commodity for ten thousand years, so spilling it was costly as well as bad luck.
This superstition was enhanced by Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper, within which Judas has spilled the table salt as a foreboding of tragedy.
Because good spirits sat on the right shoulder and evil on the left, tossing spilled salt over the left shoulder became an antidote.
Today, spilling salt is still a symbol of bad luck to some people.
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