1st Edition
Sacred Waters A Cross-Cultural Compendium of Hallowed Springs and Holy Wells
Describing sacred waters and their associated traditions in over thirty countries and across multiple time periods, this book identifies patterns in panhuman hydrolatry. Supplying life’s most basic daily need, freshwater sources were likely the earliest sacred sites, and the first protected and contested resource. Guarded by taboos, rites and supermundane forces, freshwater sources have also been considered thresholds to otherworlds. Often associated also with venerated stones, trees and healing flora, sacred water sources are sites of biocultural diversity. Addressing themes that will shape future water research, this volume examines cultural perceptions of water’s sacrality that can be employed to foster resilient human–environmental relationships in the growing water crises of the twenty-first century. The work combines perspectives from anthropology, archaeology, classics, folklore, geography, geology, history, literature and religious studies.
Holy wells and sacred springs
Celeste Ray
PART I Ancient influences
1 Fons et Origo: observations on sacred springs in classical antiquity and tradition
Christopher M. McDonough
2 Water sources and the sacred in modern and ancient Greece
Evy Johanne Håland
3 Life and death from the watery underworld: ancient Maya interaction with caves and cenotes
Nicholas P. Dunning
PART II Stewarding curative waters and caring for pilgrims
4 "Go drink from the spring and wash there": the healing waters of Lourdes
Michael Agnew
5 The well of Zamzam: a pilgrimage site and curative water in Islam
Ahmad Ghabin
6 Sacrality and waterfront sacred places in India: myths and the making of place
Rana P.B. Singh
PART III Genii loci and ancestors
7 Freshwater sources and their relational contexts in Indigenous Australia: views from the past and present
Liam M. Brady
8 Inca shrines: deities in stone and water
Marco Curatola Petrocchi
9 Dragon wells and sacred springs in China
Jean DeBernardi, Yan Jie and Ma Junhong
10 Sacred springs of the Tewa Pueblos, New Mexico
Richard I. Ford
PART IV Temporal powers, social Identity and sacred geography
11 Divine waters in Ethiopia: the source from heaven and Indigenous water-worlds in the Lake Tana region
Terje Oestigaard and Gedef Abawa Firew
12 Ori Aiye: a holy well among the Ondo of Southeastern Yorubaland, Nigeria
Raheem Oluwafunminiyi and Victor Ajisola Omojeje
13 Sacred wells of Banaras: glorifications, ritual practices and healing
Vera Lazzaretti
14 Yaksutŏ: Korean sacred mineral spring water
Hong-key Yoon
15 Sacred hierarchy, festival cycles and water veneration at Chalma in Central Mexico
Ramiro Alfonso Gómez Arzapalo Dorantes
PART V Medieval Europe
16 Between Fons and foundation: managing a French holy well in the Miracula Sancti Theoderici
Kate M. Craig
17 Finnaun y Doudec Seint: a holy spring in early medieval Brycheiniog, Wales
Andy Seaman
18 Gvendarbrunnar of medieval Iceland
Margaret Jean Cormack
PART VI Contested and shared sites
19 A higher level of immersion: a contemporary freshwater mikvah pool in Israel
Robert Phillips
20 Waters at the edge: sacred springs and spatiality in Southwest Finnish village landscapes
John Björkman
21 Memory and martyrs: holy springs in Western Siberia
Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby
22 Sacred and healing springs in the Republic of North Macedonia
Snežana Filipova
23 Water sanctuaries of Hatay, Turkey
Jens Kreinath
PART VII Sacred waterfalls
24 Sacred waters of Haitian Vodou: the pilgrimage of Sodo
Elizabeth McAlister
25 The Olympic Mountains and the sacrality of water in the Klallam world
Cailín E. Murray
26 Back into the light: water and the indigenous uncanny in northeastern Japan
Ellen Schattschneider
PART VIII Popular pieties
27 With sacred springs, without holy wells: the case of Estonia
Heiki Valk
28 The holy wells of Wychwood Forest, England
Martin Haigh
29 Holy wells and trees in Poland as an element of local and national identity
Wojciech Bedyński
30 Visiting holy wells in seventeenth-century Sweden: the case of St. Ingemo’s Well in Dala
Terese Zachrisson
31 The Buddha’s thumb, Nāga legends and blessings of health: sacred water and religious practice in Thailand
Rachelle M. Scott
PART IX Hydrology, stewardship and biocultural heritage
32 At the end of the field, a pot of Nemunai is boiling: a study of Lithuanian springs
Vykintas Vaitkevičius
33 Where does the water come from? A hydrogeological characterisation of Irish holy wells
Bruce Misstear, Laurence Gill, Cora McKenna and Ronan Foley
34 The holy springs of Russia’s Orel region: traditions of place and environmental care
Jane Costlow
35 Sentient springs and sources of life: water, climate change and world-making practices in the Andes
Astrid B. Stensrud
36 Flora, fauna and curative waters: Ireland’s holy wells as sites of biocultural diversity
Celeste Ray
Biography
Celeste Ray is Professor of Environmental Arts and Humanities at the University of the South, USA. She is the author of The Origins of Ireland’s Holy Wells and Highland Heritage: Scottish Americans in the American South, and the editor of volumes considering ethnicity and historical ecology.
In describing the extraordinary ubiquity of sacred water places around the world, this comprehensive collection simultaneously celebrates the rich cultural and historical diversity in the beliefs and practices through which people engage with them, celebrating water‘s essential role in generating life, health and societal wellbeing. A veritable wellspring of ideas.
Professor Veronica Strang, Institute of Advanced Studies, Durham University
