Memory of Water, Water as Memory

by Barbara Assandri
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Memory of Water Wendy Stavrianos

Detail of Memory of Water (From Millet to Lake Mungo) by Wendy Stavrianos

The memory of mankind is contained in water, a central substance of the origin of our planet, whose evolution has gone through a long process of 'emergence'. Water is also the means of development in any human being, if we assume that birth is prepared through a long gestation in water. The first life forms appeared more than three billion years ago in vast oceans as simple cells that continued to grow over millennia. Over time, ever more complex and different organisms have evolved, culminating in primates and humans.

Water is the most natural element on our planet, so it is inevitable that it has a significant influence on our biology and psychology. For being unstable and because of its connection to the life cycle, fertility, purification, and birth, psychoanalysis associates water with femininity and motherhood, and identifies it as a prototypical symbol of the unconscious, the seat of memory and repression. In his essay The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious analytical psychologist C. G. Jung establishes a close relationship between the soul of man and water, the deepest and truest image of our existence.

Water is, in fact, the custodian of a collective memory that, for being common to all humanity, has become an archetype itself, a matrix of a tradition that runs through people, places, and cultures. For instance, the Zuni, a tribe native to North America, believe that their ancestors resided in a village in the depths of a lake. According to legends, the first humans came from four caves in the underworld, known as Low Regions. At that time, the surface of the earth was a scary place, covered by water, shaken by earthquakes, and full of beasts of prey. The Sons of the Sun, without any pity for humans, dried and hardened the earth with lightening and then touched the animals in order to shrink them and to turn them to stone. The animals who managed to escape became the ancestors for today's animals.

Just as water is a symbol of birth for all philosophy and religion, for the mythical cosmologies and constructions of each community it is the repository of memory, it keeps track of all transformations it has undergone in the different stages.

The fascinating studies in this field seem to confirm some theories which refer to disciplines that are based just on the capacity of water to store information. Is it possible to think of water as having mnemonic capabilities? An affirmative answer to this question seems to be suggested by the fact that water has the geometric structure of a tetrahedron and therefore its molecules can asssume different forms which contribute to the construction of different structures from time to time.

Japanese scholar Masaru Emoto has cited empirical evidence of this phenomenon through his world famous photographs of water crystals. Having developed a special technique of refrigeration, in fact, he began to examine and photograph different types of water from different conditions and contexts, such as springs, lakes, swamps, glaciers. Then he came up with the idea of exposing the water to the vibrations of music, words (spoken or also just written on the bottles of the water samples), and even thoughts. The results of his experiments show that water crystals, treated like that, change the structure according to the messages they receive. The more or less harmonious organization of a crystal depends on the more or less balance of the reality with which the water comes in contact. The water treated with 'positive' words forms beautiful crystals, similar to those of snow, while the water treated with 'negative words' creates amorphous shapes that are free of any geometrical proportion.

The theory of the memory of water is also the basis of homeopathy, a science that shares some principles of the anthroposophical tradition and of the studies in the field of biodynamic agriculture. Indeed, during the preparation of homeopathic remedies, very small doses of a substance are brought into contact with the water molecules through agitation and diluted many times and stirred again until the active component will not even be available in trace amounts. The higher the dilution, in fact, the more powerful is the effect of a homeopathic remedy. The same principle is valid for the preparations used in agriculture as in the tradition of Rudolf Steiner: in these preparations the dilution of small parts of the product extends to all the water with which it comes in contact.

Without claiming scientificity and incontrovertibility of the data, all these facts undoubtedly represent a proof of the intense fascination that the qualities of water still have on us, whether we consciously structure studies and experiments, or we delegate the 'aquatic' content of our mind to the dream or myth.

(translated by Justine Levesque)

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