EARTHLY WONDER WATER
THE SEARCH FOR MEANING ON THE WAY TO MYTHICAL SPRINGS
Hollywood divas such as Madonna and Sharon Stone discovered their spiritual side a long time ago. We see evidence of this in estates with devotional objects from the Far East orchestrated for public spectacle and the self-confessed consumption of Kabbalah water. And the fact that it is drawing ever more celebrities from every sector onto the bandwagon seems to confirm that the search for the meaning of life does not stop at riches and fame. And it is the myth-shrouded waters of this Earth in particular that have a perpetual attraction for us humans.
At present, it is German entertainers like Hape Kerkeling and Verona Pooth who, with their commitment to old pilgrim rituals, want to convey to their audience that life is not just about beautiful things, but also existential existence. This is actually nothing particularly new, especially for the millions upon millions of pilgrims worldwide. As Novalis, alias Friedrich von Hardenberg, proclaimed as early as the 18th century: "We are nothing, what we are looking for is everything". In principle, with this he virtually universally paraphrased the core of the movement, for it is the search for spiritual enlightenment or miraculous healing power that has led people to undertake such gruelling journeys since time began.
Adventurers, places of pilgrimage and wondrous springs
According to the records, Empress Helena is the first named pilgrim, who made her way to Jerusalem in Late Antiquity. The travels of the legendary British explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton to the world's major seas are considerably more recent and thus should be much better known. For not only was he proficient in numerous Oriental languages, but was also a real adventurer. As such, in 1853 he went to Mecca in disguise in order to see the Zamzam well in the precinct of the Holy Mosque with his own eyes, among other things. Out of interest and presumably also to disguise his Christian heritage, he completed the rites of Hajj: In memory of the holy search for water, believers walk to it seven times between the hills Safa and Marwa, to the site of the spring from which the Prophet is said to have drunk, back and forth. In addition, in 1857 Burton travelled to Africa to explore the continent's great lakes and rivers. Thus he also discovered Lake Tanganyika, which he believed was the source of the Nile.
In India today, believers still undertake the traditional, exhausting ascent to the source of the Ganges, the country's holiest river, on foot. The source is at a height of over 4,000 metres in Gomukh, the mouth of the Gangotri glacier in the Himalayas. This grand setting is possibly also a reason why the Ganges is said to have a divine origin. They say in India, "He sees much on his journey, and in the end he indeed reaches the sea". Many pilgrims consider these words an allegory for their spiritual search.
In Bali too, the hot springs of Tampaksiring are said to have healing powers, while in Armenia holy water burbles from the stone of a cliff-side chapel, which is richly decorated with wood carvings, not far from Yerevan.
The fascination of the spring at Lourdes
Of course Europe is also home to numerous places of pilgrimage and sacred water sites, of which the spring at Lourdes is certainly the best known on an international scale. In any case, the trend of making a pilgrimage to the French town of Lourdes in the Hautes-Pyrenées is unbroken. On February 25, 1858, the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared there to the 14-year-old Bernadette Soubrious and told her to drink from the spring and wash herself in it. The body of St. Bernadette, which is visibly undamaged to this day and laid out for visitors to St. Gilard to see, seems to confirm the miraculous power of the spring at Lourdes, at least for pious pilgrims. "Some drink the water like medicine. But you have to believe and you have to pray. Without faith, this water has no effect". This is how Bernadette herself is said to have described the way the spring works, the crystal structure of whose water can also be found in the Japanese water researcher Dr. Masuru Emoto's famous collection.
Throughout the entire course of history, countless cures have been attributed to springs like the one at Lourdes. However, reports on what happens there are not officially recognised as miracle cures because they contradict the laws of science. Nonetheless, or perhaps precisely because of this, for many people, belief in the healing power of water has become a fixed feature of spiritual and esoteric perspectives. And sometimes a desire for the mythical powers of particular waters is even a last resort, for example, when modern medicine and science cannot help.
And so, in our technology-oriented century, we look for other, more rational explanations for the miracles that some waters can evidently perform. This is where theories such as radiesthesia come into their own, although to date they have only been acknowledged as a pseudo-science. The focus is on exploring sensitivity to radiation which can be caused by so-called geopathogenic disturbance areas like water veins and earth radiation. Instruments used thus far, as a rule, include dowsing rods and pendulums, i.e., measuring methods that naturally cannot be said to be scientifically sound. Now, modern methods of measuring electromagnetic and ionising radiation are used additionally. With their help, miracle cure phenomena such as these can be explained by the specific charge states of the respective water, at least in broad terms.
