@coulson-is-an-avenger asked me, apropos of this post, whether Crowley would be susceptible to salt lines. And I’m leaning towards yes, mainly because there then exists yet another opportunity for Crowley to be highly inconvenienced, possibly through his own doing. Which is my favorite thing.
In GO ’verse, it’s pretty well-established that magic has a lot to do with belief/imagination. The Bentley makes it to the air base ON FIRE! because Crowley insists on it. Technology seems to work, for Crowley and Aziraphale, however they think it works. Probably the reason Crowley’s plants are sentient is because he read that thing about talking to them and bought right into it. Et cetera.
But suppose humans can do that, too? Obviously that’s essentially what Adam’s power is; but maybe all humans can do it, to some degree. (There’s precedent for this in Gaiman’s and Pratchett’s other writing. The gods in American Gods only thrive if they’re believed in enough. In Discworld, after death, people go wherever they believe they should go.)
So… in one of his attempts at shenanigans, Crowley spreads the idea that yes, you can definitely thwart demons, easily, by creating a barrier of salt. Probably he does this back in a time when salt is harder to come by, and very valuable—so not only is he spreading misinformation, it’s very expensive misinformation which results in people pouring a valuable substance all over the ground. Which is especially hilarious if the people he convinces of this are very rich, and if poor people are then able to come along and collect the salt the dumb rich people are just pouring out all over the place.
But eventually, enough belief is put into this whole salt thing that it starts to actually work. And one day Crowley is just sauntering along and encounters a salt line, and gets knocked back like he’s run into a wall, and he’s like, “…the fuck?”
Whereupon someone, seeing this, shouts, “DEMON! HEY, EVERYBODY, HE CAN’T CROSS THE SALT BECAUSE HE’S A DEMON! GET HIM!”
And Crowley is like, “You’ve got to be shitting me,” and ends up having to flee a righteous mob who are lobbing handfuls of salt at him.
And that’s the story of how Crowley accidentally invented salt circles.
