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Salamander heaters

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n.
Etymology: < French salamandre (12th cent.), < Latin salamandra, < Greek σαλαμάνδρα. Compare Middle High German, modern German salamander.

A lizard-like animal supposed to live in, or to be able to endure, fire. Now only allusive.

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v.
Etymology: < salamander n.

a. intr. To live amidst fire, like the salamander.
1857Chambers's Jrnl. 7 25 In one apartment‥dwells a maker of lucifer-matches, salamandering in fire and brimstone.

b. trans. To submit to great heat.
1904 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. Dec. 782/1 His [sc. the Arab peasant's] garments must be salamandered and his carcass must be baked.

c. Cookery. To brown by means of a salamander.
1878 Amer. Home Cook Bk. 65 When it is cooked, glaze the top and salamander it.

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For the Spanish and Portuguese (Chilean), a traditional wood-burning stove is referred to as a "salamandra." This name reportedly came from a legend that the salamander could withstand fire, which probably derived from instances where a type of salamander which lived in dead logs would emerge when the log was thrown on a fire.

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• Of all the traits ascribed to salamanders, the ones relating to fire have stood out most prominently in salamander lore. This connection probably originates from a behavior common to many species of salamander: hibernating in and under rotting logs. When wood was brought indoors and put on the fire, the creatures "mysteriously" appeared from the flames. The 16th-century Italian artist Benvenuto Cellini(1500–1571) famously recalled witnessing just such an appearance as a child in his autobiography. According to some writers, the milky substance that a salamander exudes when frightened and which makes its skin very moist gave rise to the idea that the salamander could withstand any heat and even put out fires.
  
  
• The salamander is mentioned in the Talmud (Hagiga 27a) as a creature that is a product of fire, and anyone who is smeared with its blood will be immune to harm from fire. Rashi (1040–1105), the primary commentator on the Talmud, describes the salamander as one which is produced by burning a fire in the same place for seven years. According to Sahih Bukhari (810–870), Muhammad said that salamanders are "mischief-doers" and "should be killed".
  
  
• Leonardo da Vinci(1452–1519) wrote the following on the salamander: "This has no digestive organs, and gets no food but from the fire, in which it constantly renews its scaly skin. The salamander, which renews its scaly skin in the fire,—for virtue." Later, Paracelsus(1493–1541) suggested that the salamander was the elemental of fire, which has had substantial influence on the role of salamanders in the occult. (An elemental is a mythological being first appearing in the alchemical works of Paracelsus. Traditionally, there are four types:*gnomes, earth elementals; undines, water elementals; sylphs, air elementals; salamanders, fire elementals.)
  
  
• Early travelers to China were shown garments supposedly woven from salamander hair or wool; the cloth was completely unharmed by fire. The garments had actually been woven from asbestos.

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General Attributes

The salmander is a cold animal. It can live unharmed in a fire, and its coldness will extinguish the hottest flames. If it enters hot water, the water will become cold.

From the salamander comes a material that is unlike any other cloth; when it becomes dirty, it must be thrown into a fire, which will consume the dirt without harming the cloth. This cloth is made in the deserts of India, and is worn by important people. This is a good description of asbestos, which some sources link with the salamander.

The salmander's poison is very strong, and can kill many at once. If it climbs an apple tree, the apples become poisonous; if it enters a well, the water becomes deadly.


Allegory/Moral

The salamander represents righteous people, who can withstand fire, just as Daniel could emerge unharmed from the fiery furnace.


Sources (chronological order)

Pliny the Elder [1st century CE] (Natural History, Book 10, 86): The salamander is a shaped like a lizard, but is covered with spots. A salamander is so cold that it puts out fire on contact. It vomits from its mouth a milky liquid; if this liquid touches any part of the human body it causes all the hair to fall off, and the skin to change color and break out in a rash. Salamanders only appear when it rains and disappear in fine weather. (Book 11, 116): It is fatal to drink water or wine when a salamander has died in it, as is drinking from a vessel from which the creature has drunk.

Augustine [5th century CE] (City of God, Book 21, chapter 4): If the salamander lives in fire, as naturalists have recorded, this is a sufficiently convincing example that everything which burns is not consumed, as the souls in hell are not.

Isidore of Seville [7th century CE] (Etymologies, Book 12, 4:36): The salamander alone of animals puts out fires; it can live in fire without pain and without being burned. Of all the venomous animals its strength is the greatest because it kills many at once. If it crawls into a tree it poisons all of the fruit, and anyone who eats the fruit will die; if it falls in a well it poisons the water so that any who drink it die.

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Originally posted by Geoff:
I did not know any of the mythology of the salamander!