ABSTRACT
Water’s compelling effects upon the senses extend to what most informants regarded as the third sense, that of touch. The most constant ‘quality’ of water is that it is not constant, but is characterised by transmutability and sensitivity to changes in the environment. The Dorset study suggests that many people find the visual and aural characteristics of water literally mesmerising. The mesmeric qualities of water are of particular interest in considering sensory perception and the creation of meaning. The fact that water’s properties remain constant, whether in microcosm or macrocosm, facilitates metaphorical leaps from immediate, small-scale ideas, to larger social and global systems. Water appears as a matter of life and death, and as the substance of spiritual, social and physical being. In visual terms, water ‘meets the eye’ in shapes and forms too diverse to enumerate, and which range in scale from the immediate to the infinite.
