Water is perhaps the most varied of the elements. As a physical element it is a colourless, odourless, tasteless liquid, and as a mystical element it carries within itself the potentiality of existence. As a cosmic or cosmological element it plays a part in creation and falls to earth as ice meteorites, and as a sacred element it is known to have a thousand holy associations.
Water Element
At rest and restless, I pray, enfold me,
wash away my sins, receive me into your purity,
And bless me with the vision of eternity!
In material nature water is a very common, dominant element. It is so self-evident that we can best appreciate its importance in its absence. Life on earth depends on water, and according to an enigmatic saying breath is liquid, that is, without the primal waters of creation there is no breath, and without water there is no life. Perhaps that is also why every ancient culture regards water as holy and reveres it. The great golden civilisations were river cultures, whichever continent we consider.
Many symbolic meanings are attached to water. The constant cycle of water is the symbol of the order of nature, of eternal return. We must surely stop to consider that all the people who have ever lived on Earth drank the same water and breathed the same air, and so it will be in times to come. A sip of water, a deep breath, binds us to millions of years.
The clear spring is a metaphor for spotlessness, of a pure and authentic origin, and to find it one must swim against the stream.
Water is also the model of persistence. The Romans, too, recognised that persistently dripping water hollows out the stone. Water fills whatever space is available and mingles readily with almost everything else – by these qualities it is the symbol of adaptation and acceptance.
As a mystical element it forms a link between the everyday plane of being and the heavenly dimension of reality. Of the primal elements, water alone can take on three states of matter: its primary form is liquid, but heated it becomes a gas, and frozen it turns solid. Thus it connects the different regions of existence and pervades them with its presence. Its transformation resembles the earth element's metamorphosis between living and dead.
Water, too, is present at the origin of life, and indeed of the world, but also at man's death. Its cleansing power is equally important at birth, when the newborn is bathed, and at departure, when the dead are washed. Without the nourishing amniotic waters there is no embryonic existence, and in India the cosmic primal waters are also called the Ocean of Amniotic Waters. From the primal ocean rises the world-lotus, and so the possibility of existence, its origin and, in time, its annihilation are all bound up with water. According to the Bible, the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. It is precisely by its homogeneous, unformed nature that water best expresses the primal states. In mystical terms water is regarded as the primary form of matter, as liquid light! As the water of life, as the source of fertility and of life, or as the promise of refreshment, it is feminine in nature, and so it is also linked with the worship of the Magna Mater.
According to mystical Christianity, the spring's water of life rises in Paradise at the foot of the tree of life, whereas the cross of Christ was hewn from the tree of knowledge, whose root reaches down to the bottom of hell and whose top touches the throne of God.
The creation of the world, the origin and flow of life are all connected with the water element: it dissolves, washes away, purifies, aids forgetting and re-creation, and at other times it is also the embodiment of the oceanic nature of ignorance, or of consciousness. It is present, too, in the steady pulse of the bloodstream, whereas death is a drying up.