Alchemical Symbolism in the VMS

[Barbrey]

The fish is one of those bodies, but a different type of body to signify one of the three most common substances in alchemy: salt. Salt symbolizes the body in alchemy. ...

My knowledge of alchemy is limited to Wikipedia, unfortunately. Hence my question: was alchemical salt known in the 15th century?

Yes, it was Ruby, but alchemy was based on the Arabic dual model of sulphur-mercury even though salt and salt-as-body had a long history with alchemy. Moreover, there are different alchemical salts. Usually, in the process I’m describing, the salt itself was calcinated and went through different alchemical processes to be added back in at different stages, but the imagery doesn’t always show this. It was often called feces or dung!  My understanding is that even though salt was used, it doesn’t become an “official” third for a triumvirate of sulphur-mercury-salt until Paracelsus.

As for sources, my answer is “I’ll take what I can get. ”.  I wish there was one page or source that described all of the substances and processes in that time period, but the sources I read always say it varied, or jump into the esoteric. So Wikipedia is just fine.