ABSTRACT
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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|26 pages
Ancient influences
chapter 3|9 pages
Life and death from the watery underworld
part II|36 pages
Stewarding curative waters and caring for pilgrims
part III|43 pages
Genii loci and ancestors
chapter 7|13 pages
Freshwater sources and their relational contexts in Indigenous Australia
part IV|46 pages
Temporal powers, social identity and sacred geography
chapter 11|7 pages
Divine waters in Ethiopia
part V|26 pages
Medieval Europe
chapter 16|7 pages
Between Fons and foundation
part VI|46 pages
Contested and shared sites
chapter 20|10 pages
Waters at the edge
part VII|28 pages
Sacred waterfalls
part VIII|51 pages
Popular pieties
chapter 30|10 pages
Visiting holy wells in seventeenth-century Sweden
chapter 31|8 pages
The Buddha’s thumb, Nāga legends and blessings of health
part IX|54 pages
Hydrology, stewardship and biocultural heritage