ABSTRACT
The meanings attached to water raise very fundamental issues. Cast as the ‘source of life’ and as a metaphor for ‘life time’, water imagery is used in thinking about cycles of life and death, and microcosmic and macrocosmic circulation of various kinds. It is presented as a metaphorical ‘sea’ of life, and as the psychological sea of the unconscious. All represent the creation of life in literal and symbolic terms, and all, because they are ‘matters of life and death’, are also linked metaphorically with death and reconciliation with nature. Of all the questions about water quality and meaning, the most fraught are those concerned with ‘other people’s substance’. The meanings with which waste substances are imbued help to explain the deep horror that people have of foul flooding (floods bringing sewage).
