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Sacred Waters
by
Martin Gray
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Articles by Martin Gray
Reprinted with permission. © Copyright Martin Gray
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Ocean, lake, river and spring
Sacred waters, myth and transformation
by Martin Gray
Hari Mandir, the Golden Temple of Sikhism, Amritsar, India
Since prehistoric times sacred places have exerted a mysterious
attraction on billions of people around the world. Ancient legends and
modern day reports tell of extraordinary things that have happened to
people while visiting these places. Different sacred sites have the power
to heal the body, enlighten the mind, increase creativity, develop psychic
abilities, and awaken the soul to a knowing of its true purpose in life.
Normally, when one thinks of such places, the mind imagines terrestrial
locations, fixed and unmoving, such as mountains, lands and caves. But the
planet is a water place too. In fact more than 70% of the surface of the
earth is covered with water and great portions of the hidden interior are
also of a fluid nature. The ocean, vast and elemental, is the ancestral
source of all life. Its depths are an enduring symbol of the great
feminine womb of the living earth and its sources have been worshipped as
sacred since time immemorial. According to the origin myths of different
cultures, the gods, spirits and first humans emerged into the world
directly from the cosmic ocean or from the depths of the underworld via
springs and lakes. At a large number and variety of locations around the
planet may be found temples and ceremonial sites where ancient people
propitiated and honored the water spirits of the wondrous earth.
For inland people, often unaware of the existence of oceans, rivers had
a similar sanctity. The Tigris and Euphrates were revered by the ancient
Hittites and rivers in pre-Christian Celtic lands bore the names of
specific deities, indicating the particular energetic qualities of those
fluid holy spaces. From the earliest epoch of pre-dynastic Egypt the Nile
was worshipped as divine and many of the great pilgrimages of Hindu India
were focused upon sacred rivers such as the Ganges, Indus, Yamuna,
Krishna, Godavari, and Brahmaputra. The largest religious festival in the
world today, held every 12 years near Allahabad, India and attracting
upwards of twenty million pilgrims, takes place at the confluence of two
rivers. The power of that blended water is said to grant a spiritual
realization that does not die with the passing of the human form. Holy
mountains were also known to be sources of sacred waters. Upon their lofty
summits resided storm gods and weather deities, whose gifts of rain
sustained all plant, animal and human life. Particular frozen waters were
also favored and pilgrims still trek long distances in the high mountains
to reach Qoyllur Rit’i in Peru, Amarnath cave in Kashmir and Lake
Manosarovar in Tibet.
Natural water sources were believed to be vitalized with indwelling
spirits and thus ritual bathing had a spiritual as well as physical
function. Both the body and the soul were cleansed by immersion in the
holy waters. In the Christian tradition, the Pool of Bethesda is mentioned
as a healing well and Jesus once directed a blind man to visit the Pool of
Siloe in order to have his sight restored. Cultures around the world, both
ancient and contemporary, have initiation and rite of passage ceremonies
using water as a symbol indicating death and rebirth, and consecrated
water is used to represent and engender psychological and spiritual
transformation. Throughout Europe, there were once many hundreds of pagan
holy wells, many dedicated to oracular and fertility goddesses. As these
springs were Christianized during early medieval times, some were turned
into Marian shrines while others were lost to time. The locations of many
of these forgotten springs have been found by various forms of map and
ground dowsing.
Visitors to Hindu and Shinto temples will often sprinkle blessed water
upon themselves before entering the sacred places, Sikhs immerse
themselves in the holy waters of Hari Mandir, and prayer in an Islamic
mosque is always preceded by the ritual act of washing called wudu. At
sacred sites throughout the world, pilgrims will drink and bathe in the
holy waters, seeking cures for a variety of ailments including mental
illness, toothache, skin problems, sprains, wounds, rheumatism and
epilepsy. In olden times, certain waters were known to be effective with
bareness in women, to ease the difficulties of childbirth, and to help
aged persons recover their youthful powers.
Ocean, lake, river and spring. These four types of fluid holy
spaces, insubstantial and substantial at the same time, are every bit as
powerful and spirit filled as any rock or cave or mountain. Different
cultures have responded to the spiritual magnetism of the water sites in
myriad ways. Let us now go upon a global pilgrimage, visiting an example
of each of these four types of holy waters. While doing so we will clearly
see that the use of spirit-waters preceded and continues to invigorate the
religions of the world.
Abode of three sea goddesses, Itsukushima Shinto
temple,
Miyajima Island, Japan
OCEAN. Located near Hiroshima in southern Japan, the sacred
island of Miyajima is a holy place for both Shinto and Buddhist pilgrims.
To come by early morning boat across a mist-enshrouded sea, slowly
approaching the small island and its holy mountain of Misen San, is to
enter a fairy tale realm. There are few places so sublimely beautiful in
all the world. Miyajima’s mother temple, Itsukushima, is perched on wooden
stilts anchored deep in tidal shallows, thereby giving the appearance of a
mystic shrine floating on the ceaselessly moving waters of the primeval
sea. The magnificent temple, dating from 1168 and built entirely from
wood, is dedicated to three Shinto goddesses of the sea, each of whom is
believed to frequently visit the inner sanctum. Long before Buddhism came
to Japan in the 5th century AD, Shinto sages lived as hermits along
Miyajima’s forested shores, sensing place-energies that gave rise to tales
of three sea goddesses. If we conceive of sacred site myths as having
metaphorical meaning, then the three goddesses indicate that Miyajima
Island is a power place of yin or female qualities and, furthermore, that
there are three different ‘frequencies’ of that gender-specific energy.
Associated with the Itsukushima temple, and actually a part of its sacred
geography, are seven other waterside shrines positioned at specific
geomantic intervals around the 19-mile circumference of the island. There
are no roads to most of these shrines. In order to visit them, pilgrims
must use small boats to approach the rocky shores where the temples are
located. In esoteric Shingon and Shugendo Buddhism, pilgrimages to the
holy island of Miyajima with its sacred mountain and oceanside shrines
were conceived as metaphorical journeys through the world of
enlightenment, with each stage in the pilgrimage representing a stage in
the process through the realms of existence conceived of by Buddhism.
Pilgrimage is exterior mysticism, while mysticism is interior pilgrimage.
The island of the Sun, Lake Titicaca, sacred Mt. Illampu, Bolivia
LAKE. Situated high in the Bolivian Andes (at 3,856 meters and
covering 8000 square kilometers), Lake Titicaca is the preeminent holy
place of all ancient Andean cultures and the source of a hundred
cosmogenic myths. Legends say that long ago in a forgotten time the world
experienced a terrible storm with tremendous floods. The lands were
plunged into a period of absolute darkness and frigid cold, and humankind
was nearly eradicated. Some time after the deluge, the creator god
Viracocha arose from the depths of Lake Titicaca. Journeying first to the
island of Titicaca (now called Isla del Sol or the Island of the Sun),
Viracocha stood by a waterfall jutting from a black cliff and commanded
the sun, moon and stars to rise. Next going to Tiahuanaco, he fashioned
new men and women out of stones and, sending them to the four quarters,
began the repopulation of the world. With various helpers, Viracocha then
traveled from Tiahuanaco, bringing civilization and peace wherever he
journeyed. As with many other deeply ancient origin myths around the
world, we find evidence in Andean legends of the two great catastrophes of
early Neolithic times; the geological cataclysms of the 9600 BC crustal
displacement and the seven cometary impacts of 7460 BC. What is also
fascinating to note is that the sacred city of Tiahuanaco is on a
planetary grid system aligned to the Yukon pole. This prehistoric grid
system was operative two pole positions back in time, before the pole was
at either its present location or its Hudson Bay position during the
Antlantean epoch. Around 96,000 BC and also at 52,000 BC there were other
crustal displacement cataclysms and the myths of Lemuria point to these
Pre-Antlantean times.
Pilgrims viewing temples along the Ganges as sunrise,
Banaras, India
RIVER. Sprawling miles along the holy river Ganges, the city of
Banaras (also called Varanasi or Kashi) is the most visited pilgrimage
destination in all of India. Myths and hymns speak of the waters of the
Ganges as the fluid medium of Shiva's divine essence and a bath in the
river is believed to wash away all of one's sins. The Hindu scripture
Tristhalisetu explains that,
There whatever is sacrificed, chanted, given in charity, or suffered in
penance, even in
the smallest amount, yields endless fruit because of
the power of that
place. Whatever fruit is said to accrue from many
thousands of
lifetimes of asceticism, even more than that is obtainable
from but three
nights of fasting in this place.
One of seven Holy Cities of India, one of twelve Jyotir Linga Shiva
sites and a Shakti Pitha goddess site as well, riverside Banaras is also
the most favored place for Hindus to die. Cremation at the holy city
insures moksha, or final liberation of the soul from the endless cycle of
birth, death and rebirth. Dying persons and dead bodies from far-off
places are brought to Banaras for cremation at the five principal and
eighty-eight minor holy sites along the river Ganges. But the water borne
holiness of the ancient city is not limited to the river alone. Adjacent
to Visvanatha temple, the city's primary Shiva Linga, flows the Jnana Vapi
well, the ritual center and axis mundi of Banaras. The Jnana Vapi, or Well
of Wisdom, is said to have been dug by Shiva himself, and its waters carry
the liquid form of jhana, the light of wisdom.
Encircling the holy city at a radius of five miles is the sacred way
known as the Panchakroshi Parikrama. Pilgrims take five days to
circumambulate Kashi on this fifty-mile path, visiting 108 geomantically
situated shrines along the way. If one is unable to walk the entire grid
of the sacred geography, then a visit to the Panchakroshi Temple will
suffice. By walking round the sanctuary of this shrine, with its 108 wall
reliefs of the temples along the sacred way, the pilgrim makes a symbolic
journey around the sacred city. Another important Banaras pilgrimage route
is the Nagara Pradakshina, which takes two days to complete and has
seventy-two shrines. The sacred architecture of the temples on both these
sacred geographies was designed with the mathematical and magical formulas
of Vastu Purusa, an Indic geomantic system similar to but older than
Chinese Feng Shui.
Hindus call the sacred places to which they travel tirthas, and the
action of going on a pilgrimage tirtha-yatra. The Vedic word tirtha means
river ford, steps to a river, or place of pilgrimage. Tirthas are more
than physical locations, however. Devout Hindus believe them to be
spiritual fords, the meeting place of heaven and earth, the locations
where one crosses over the river of samsara (life and death in the
illusion of the material world) to reach the distant shore of liberation.
As thresholds between heaven and earth, tirthas are bridges for psychic
sojourns and the passage of prayers, they are portals into our physical
realm for spirits and deities, angels and elementals.
The hot springs of the Roman temple of Aquae Sulis
and the Cathedral of Bath, England.
SPRING. Archaeological excavations have revealed the human use of
the hot mineral springs at Bath, England to have begun at least 10,000
years ago and continued to the present times. First frequented by
Neolithic hunter-gatherer tribes, the springs were later venerated as
sacred by an unbroken lineage of Celtic, Roman, and Christian cultures.
The Celts, who arrived in England around 700 BC, erected what are believed
to be the first shrine structures at the springs. Dedicated to Sulis, a
goddess of water, the shrine was a religious center for much of
southwestern England. Soon after the arrival of the Romans in England in
43 AD, the Celtic shrine was taken over and the goddess Sulis was
identified with the Roman goddess Minerva as a healing deity. Beginning
sometime around 65 AD, and continuing for nearly four centuries, the
Romans constructed increasingly elaborate bathing and temple complexes at
the springs. The spring was, however, more than just a source of hot water
to the Romans. It was a sacred place where mortals could commune with the
spirits of the underworld and seek the healing assistance of the goddess
Sulis-Minerva.
This great healing shrine of Aquae Sulis was not destined to endure.
Following the departure of the Roman legions from Britain early in the
fifth century AD, the city and its splendid temples and baths swiftly fell
into decline. Over time the baths were covered by the relentless silting
of the spring and only the fallen temple of Sulis-Minerva marked the
ancient sacred site. Yet the town was not abandoned. Rather it continued
to grow and by the seventh century the first Christian structure had been
established directly upon the ruins of the Roman temple. For the next
twelve hundred years a succession of churches rose and fell upon the
hallowed ground. The hot springs, while never again receiving
architectural development equal to that of the Roman era, were
continuously used throughout the medieval period. By the beginning of the
1600's the springs had begun to attract royal and aristocratic families
intent on 'taking the cure', and by the 1720's Bath was on the way to
becoming England’s most highly fashionable spa.
Water Shrine of the Islamic Sufi saint Somunca Baba,
Darende, Turkey
Following in the footsteps of our ancestors, we may explore and benefit
from the holy waters of the world. My own relationship with these magical
places has been a blending of the mental, physical and spiritual. With a
foundation in the scholarly study of the holy places, I journeyed upon
traditional pilgrimages and, residing at the sacred sites, used various
shamanic and meditation techniques to attune with the spirits and
elemental forces. During the past twenty years, I have visited and
photographed 1000 of these holy and magical places in 80 countries.
Dowsing, too, has played an integral part in my exploration of the sacred
sites. Using different methods of this ancient art, I have been able to
determine the energetic focal points of the power places, those particular
centers where the spirit forces are most radiant. The sacred sites have
profound transformational powers and thereby may contribute to the
psychological and physiological integration of human beings. For readers
interested in learning more about the holy places of the world, I suggest
a visit to my web site,
www.sacredsites.com
where you will find an enormous resource of textual information, lovely
photographs, maps, extensive bibliographies and links to related web
sites.
Door to the Spring Sanctuary of Ahura Mazda,
Zoroastrian Fire Temple of Chak Chak, Iran
* * *
Other articles by Martin Gray available on our web site:
Selected Bibliography
BOOKS by Martin Gray
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of Peace and Power
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in the US, $6 International).
The 120 page manuscript includes the Introduction, three
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Visit Martin's Web Sites
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PLACES OF
PEACE AND POWER - The Sacred Site Pilgrimage of Martin Gray
This web site discusses Martin's pilgrimage journeys, features
many of his photographs and writings, lists calendar details of
upcoming slide shows, gives information regarding book and
photograph orders, and has links to related sites.
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Magic Planet
Magic Planet Productions is the on-line art print store for
Martin Gray’s extraordinary photographs of sacred sites around
the world. The photographs featured on this web site were
created during a twenty year period when Martin traveled as a
pilgrim, visiting and studying more than 1000 holy places in 80
countries. Martin is an expert in the scholarly study of the
anthropology and mythology of pilgrimage, archaeoastronomy,
sacred geometry and esoteric earth mysteries. These sacred site
images reflect Martin’s knowledge as well as his profound love
of the living earth.
Martin Gray is an anthropologist and photographer specializing in the
study of sacred sites and pilgrimage traditions around the world.
Traveling as a pilgrim, Martin spent twenty years, visiting and
photographing over 1000 sacred sites in eighty countries.
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