By Eben van Tonder & Christa Berger, 7 August 2025
Introduction
Few bodily substances have evoked as wide a range of responses across human cultures as saliva. Simultaneously sacred and profane, healing and contaminating, its use in ritual, medicine, and food preparation reveals an ancient logic that predates modern microbiology. Across time and geography—from the meat-houses of Victorian England to the shrines of Japan, from Balkan wedding customs to South Asian healing rites—spitting and the deliberate application of saliva have been employed to bless, to preserve, to heal, and to protect.
This investigation was prompted by an obscure but telling nineteenth-century meat-processing practice in which fat was “spouted” from the mouth onto pork carcasses to protect them from spoilage. While modern hygienists recoiled at the image, the method bears remarkable similarity to a vast array of pre-scientific practices in which the mouth and its fluids served as instruments of transformation. Whether as part of love charms in Styria, tree-healing spells in Hungary, or spit-offerings in Nigerian and Japanese shrines, these acts suggest that saliva was understood as more than just fluid. It was essence, vitality, and intentionality in liquid form.
This work explores the practice of spitting and the use of saliva and fat in cultural, spiritual, and technological contexts across regions, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Balkans, Russia, South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. Drawing on historical manuals, anthropological accounts, folk medicine, and religious rites, it considers saliva as a substance through which people connected with the sacred, preserved the perishable, and negotiated the boundaries between purity and danger, self and other, body and spirit.
In an age increasingly driven by sterility, this study returns us to a time when the human body, in all its fluid expressions, was the instrument and medium of care, transformation, and meaning. What emerges is a remarkable cross-cultural grammar of the mouth: a hidden language of spitting, blessing, anointing, and sealing, whose significance remains embedded in the margins of ritual, memory, and craft.
United Kingdom
Spouting Fat and Folk Uses of Saliva
In nineteenth-century Britain, pork processors employed a preservation method known as “spouting” fat. A butcher would place melted fat in his mouth and spray it onto hanging meat in a fine coat. This was intended to seal the surface and repel flies. However, it is unlikely that keeping flies and insects at bay was the primary or original consideration, as far simpler methods were available. Complete immersion of the carcass in a bath of liquid fat, or sprinkling ash over the surface, would have been more practical and hygienic alternatives. The act of spouting fat from the mouth harkens back to something older and more fundamental. Mechanical sprayers replaced this method around 1901, when Douglas and Sons Ltd. described mouth-spouting as “in the highest degree objectionable and disgusting” due to the risk of disease transmission (Douglas and Sons 1901).
In popular British folklore, saliva held strong protective and healing connotations. Fasting spittle, or the first saliva produced upon waking, was widely believed to cure warts and eye infections. Pliny the Elder claimed that human saliva could heal bloodshot eyes and was especially effective when produced by a woman (Naturalis Historia, Book XXVIII). Early modern folk cures in northern England instructed sufferers to apply fasting spittle to warts for nine consecutive mornings (Simpson and Roud 2000).
Spitting also served as a binding mechanism in oaths and contracts. In the mining communities of Northumberland and Durham, men sealed agreements by spitting on the same stone, symbolising the unification of intent and spirit (Opie and Tatem 1989). This notion of saliva as life-force reflects a pre-germ-theory view in which the body’s secretions carried mystical potency.
Germany and Austria
Saliva in Meat Curing and Love Rituals
Analysis of Alpine Hallstatt communities suggests that saliva may have contributed to the fermentation of meat in sealed pits. Modern biochemistry confirms that saliva contains nitrate-reducing bacteria capable of forming nitric oxide and stable curing pigments (Lund et al. 2007).
In love magic, saliva held symbolic weight. The Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens records that girls in Styria secretly mixed their saliva into a man’s drink or bread to ensure fidelity (Bächtold-Stäubli and Hoffmann-Krayer 1987). In Baden, young men placed a drop of saliva in their beloved’s wine as a form of binding (ibid.). The Church regarded the act as a serious offence, punishable by three years of penance. Saliva was treated as an extension of the self, embodying vitality and intent, and ingesting it was thought to establish a spiritual bond (Crombie 1913).
Hungary
Protective Spitting and Tree Rituals
Hungarian folk tradition includes many saliva rituals. One custom directed anyone hearing the first cuckoo of spring while lying down to spit three times into a hole bored in a tree to avoid bad luck (Jones 2005). To rid oneself of fever, one could spit thrice into an oak while reciting a charm to transfer the illness. Morning saliva treated warts and boils, believed to carry the essence of life (Pócs 1989).
The Balkans
Spitting Against the Evil Eye
Throughout the Balkans, spitting wards off the evil eye. In Bulgaria, elders simulate spitting on babies after compliments to deflect malevolent attention (Dundes 1992). Greeks utter “ftou, ftou, ftou” three times following praise (Herzfeld 1985). Among Orthodox Christian communities in Serbia and Macedonia, spitting occurs in wedding rituals as protection (Danforth 1982). In Albanian and Macedonian villages, a guest might lightly spit near or on shared bread as a blessing or oath (Elsie 2001).
Russia and Eastern Europe
Spitting to Avert Misfortune and Disease
Russians still simulate triple spitting—“tfu, tfu, tfu”—to avert misfortune (Ivanits 1989). Symbolic spitting over the left shoulder confuses evil spirits (Ryan 1999). Literal spitting on or near children protected them after praise (Tolstoy 1977; Murgoci 1927). Russian folk medicine used fasting spittle for burns and warts (Ivanits 1989). Mothers spat on a child’s forehead as informal baptism (Kononenko 2007). Spitting on coins before almsgiving sought agricultural success (Manning 2012). Hunters and sailors spat for luck or appeasement (Ryan 1999).
South Asia
Saliva, Spitting, and Ritual Power
In South Asia, spitting deflects the evil eye (nazar) and transmits vitality. Mothers may spit near children to deter jealousy (Banerjee 1994; Maloney 1976). Fasting spittle (subha ka thook) treats skin ailments (Nadkarni 1976). Chewing betel leaf produces red saliva used in offerings and purification rites (Parry 1994; White 2000). Healers chew herbs and spit the pulp onto patients, believing saliva carries both spirit and medicine (Sharma 1996). Reports from Odisha describe belief in the healing power of sacrificial victims’ saliva (Elwin 1950).
East Asia
Ritual Spitting and Sacred Fermentation
Ancient Japanese shrine maidens (miko) chewed rice and spat it out to create kuchikamizake, mouth-chewed sake used in Shinto ritual (Kasulis 2004; Kuroda 1996). The enzymes in saliva initiated fermentation, and the act symbolised divine transmission (Ohnuki-Tierney 1993). Sumo wrestlers rinse and spit before bouts to expel impurity (Bocking 1997). Folk Shinto associates spitting with warding off spirits (Nelson 2000).
Daoist texts describe circulating saliva as conserving jing, while expelling it releases harmful qi (Kohn 1993). Yao and Zhuang healers chew herbs and spit them onto wounds or ritual vessels, transferring healing force (Siu 2009). Symbolic triple spitting after frightening events persists among older Chinese and Japanese people.
Southeast Asia
Chewing, Spitting, and Transference in Ritual
Across Southeast Asia, betel chewing and spitting express spiritual energy. Betel quid—betel leaf, areca nut, lime, and spices—colours the mouth red and marks social and ritual identity (Reid 1985). Shamans in Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar chew and spit betel during exorcisms; Burmese nat mediums direct spit toward the possessed (Spiro 1967). In the Philippines, bolo-bolo healers spit chewed herbs into water and interpret the bubbles (Cannell 1999). Malay bomohs chew plants and spit the pulp while reciting verses, transferring spirit-energy (Benjamin 1986).
These rites share a consistent principle: chewing activates, and spitting transmits. Saliva becomes the carrier of breath, word, and life essence, turning bodily action into ritual authority.
Why Was Spit Viewed as Powerful? A Hypothetical Reconstruction
The universality of spitting as ritual, healing, and preservation suggests a shared pre-scientific logic. One hypothesis proposes that women licking fresh meat observed it turning red again—a biochemical effect of saliva’s nitrate and enzymes producing nitric oxide, which reacts with myoglobin to form nitrosomyoglobin, the cured-meat pigment (Lund et al. 2007). Such visible colour restoration could have appeared miraculous and reinforced belief in saliva’s life-giving essence.
Through repetition, spit became sacred: a medium of blessing, binding, and curing. The mouth, source of breath and word, was seen as a channel of life power. These interpretations may represent early empirical observation forming a vernacular biochemical practice long before formal science.
Conclusion
Across civilisations and continents, saliva and spitting have served as tools of healing, preservation, and protection. From Victorian butchers to Shinto maidens, Balkan grandmothers, and Southeast Asian shamans, spitting—literal or symbolic—communicated vitality and intent.
Premodern cultures viewed saliva not as waste but as essence, projecting the spirit and sealing social or sacred bonds. Whether chewed into rice for sacred sake, sprayed onto meat, or expelled in maternal defence against envy, saliva embodied both symbolic and practical power.
These traditions show that distinctions between sacred and profane, clean and unclean, are culturally shaped. The body itself, through its fluids, was humanity’s earliest tool of science and meaning.
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