The Fountain of Youth
by Lucas Cranach the Elder
Special waters can do more than restore health or reverse aging. In Norse and Irish mythology, drinking water provides wisdom. The Norse god Odin, for example, sought to drink from the sacred spring that flowed beneath the roots of the world tree, Yggdrasil. So eager was he for just one sip, he offered to sacrifice an eye to the giant guard Mimir. The exchange made good, with one gulp Odin gained eternal wisdom. Finn, the hero of Irish legend, gained his wisdom from water, as well. Rather than drink the water, though, he ate the Salmon of Knowledge, which had gained its wisdom from swimming in the waters of a magic well.
There is a Chinese variant of this tale involving the noted philosopher Huai-nan Tzu. It is said that in 122 BC he discovered how to distill the elixir of life. Upon drinking it, he was carried up to heaven. While ascending, he dropped his flask and spilled the waters. When his curious dogs and chickens drank from the magical puddle, they ascended to heaven as well.
These legends of magical waters that bestow eternal life, youth, or wisdom can have religious overtones, often related as allegory. Indeed, water carries great symbolism throughout the Judeo-Christian tradition. Consider, for example, the story of the woman at the well in the Gospel of John. On a trip to Galilee, Jesus passed through Samaria. Tired from his journey, he sat to rest beside Jacob’s Well. A Samaritan woman came to draw water and Jesus asked her for a drink. She replied,
“You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
On its face, Jesus is promising the same gift of eternal life as that sought by Ponce de León, the vizier Khidr, and the philosopher Huai-nan Tzu, but here the rebirth is spiritual, not physical. Simply drinking the well’s water will not save the woman or quench her thirst. She is not even thirsty. It is her soul’s thirst that Jesus offers to quench. Only full acceptance of his teachings, drinking the full glass of “living water,” will satisfy her spiritual needs. There is more than just intellectual understanding going on here. By taking the water Jesus offers into her body, her acceptance becomes visceral. Water thus becomes a source not of physical but metaphysical life.
The symbol of living water is repeated any number of times in
the Gospels. Later in the Book of John, Jesus stands before a crowd and declares, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth in me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” The symbolism appears in the Old Testament as well. In the book of Jeremiah, the prophet cries, “My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”
In each of these cases, by drinking the water, by taking the holy message within themselves, the drinkers become infused with the Holy Spirit and are, themselves, physically connected to the divine by their deliberate acts. Such a spiritual transformation through taking a symbol of divinity within oneself is not, of course, limited to water. Communion at Mass describes the same infusion of divinity into the supplicant through the forms of wine and a wafer, which represent the blood and body of Jesus.
Spiritual purification generally involves bathing or washing, rather than drinking, since this act symbolically cleanses the body of impurities. Christians do just this in the sacrament of baptism, which Jesus commanded his disciples to carry out following his resurrection. The significance of baptism varies among Christian denominations. In many, it serves the dual purpose of symbolizing both death and rebirth. Immersion in the baptismal font can represent the death of the past life of sins and birth into the Kingdom of God, hence the practice of baptizing adult born-again Christians. In Islam, too, water is used for spiritual purification. Many mosques have a clear pool of water just outside the walls, where ablution is required before praying. One can find similar practices among the ancient Greeks and the followers of Zoroastrianism.
In ancient Rome, sacred wells and springs also symbolized spiritual purification. They were cared for by priests and the vestal virgins. The virgins’ chastity obviously symbolized purity, but so did their connection with the spring waters. The vestal virgins were not allowed to drink water that had passed through the Roman water system. They only drank water from a marble tank situated in their temple that was filled daily from a sacred water source.
These chaste priestesses performed a ritual every year during the ides of May, at the full moon, intended to beseech the gods for the continuous flow of sacred spring waters. Their symbolic purity was complete—no contamination from sexual activities or waters entered their bodies.
I
NTERESTINGLY, MANY CULTURES HAVE A STRONG MYTHIC TRADITION
that presents the very opposite of the Fountain of Youth and spiritual rebirth. Rather than drinking water to provide eternal life, water now provides the means and a balm for death.
Rivers serve as the crossing point between life and afterlife in many cultures. In Greek mythology, for example, the spirits of the recently deceased must cross five rivers. The River Styx is the first boundary between earth and Hades, the domain of the Underworld. It was guarded by Phlegyas, and gods made oaths upon its waters. Gods that broke such oaths had to drink the river’s water, making them mute for nine years. The next crossing was the River Phlegethon, eternally burning. The River Acheron followed. Placing a coin under the tongue of corpses ensured the spirits could pay their deathly toll to the famed ferryman, Charon, for transport across the Acheron. Those who arrived without a coin were refused passage, and had to wander the river’s banks one hundred years before they could cross.
Approaching the end of their journey, souls then crossed the River Cocytus, the river of wailing. The final river, less well known in popular tales of the Greek Underworld, is the River Lethe, also known as the River of Oblivion or the River of Forgetfulness. Drinking its waters caused spirits to forget their life on earth. This amnesiac draught broke the spirits’ ties to the past and eased the transition to their new immortal existence.
Similar tales of amnesiac drinks to ease the passage of the dead are found in Nordic, Hindu, and other cultures. In Fiji, for example, the dead spirit must stop at a spring as he makes his way to the other world. Upon tasting the water, he forgets his lost life and friends, and stops weeping. This drink is called Wai-ni-dula, or the Water of Solace.
Drinking special waters eases the passage of those who remain to mourn on earth, as well. The Tring Dayak people in Borneo cannot drink ordinary water when in mourning. Instead, they drink only “soul water” that has been gathered from the leaves of vines. Presumably this pure liquid, untouched by the soil, is a lingering connection with the pure realm the recently departed have now entered. In northern India, following a funeral, the elder Kacharis of Assam pass out
santi jal
, the Water of Peace. Drinking this terminates the mourning period. After a funeral, the Chaco Indians of the American Southwest drank hot water.
Burials in the famed Indian River Ganges make quite physical the role of drinking water and passage from this life. According to tradition, the dead person’s family carries the body to the banks of the river. Here, water from the Ganges is poured into the corpse’s mouth. Only at this point is he laid upon the death pyre and the structure lit. His ashes are then scattered in the river, taking his spirit to rejoin the cycle of reincarnation.
Just as drinking the water of oblivion eases passage into the world of darkness, the inability of the dead to drink water can make the passage a torment. This is clearest in the Greek myth of Tantalus. One legend recounts that Tantalus was honored by an invitation to dine with the gods on Mount Olympus. He stole ambrosia and nectar, however, and shared it with other mortals. Another version recounts that he invited the gods to dine and served them a stew of his own son Pelops. Demeter, mother of Persephone, was the only one hungry enough to eat the meat, which turned out to be Pelops’s shoulder. When Pelops was restored to life, part of his shoulder was replaced by ivory crafted by Hephaestus, surely one of the earliest examples of joint replacement surgery.
Whichever tale one relies on, Tantalus made the gods angry, which is never a good idea. As punishment, upon his death, Tantalus was imprisoned chest deep in a lake in Tartarus, the deepest region of the Underworld, condemned to suffer from eternal hunger and thirst. Just in front of his mouth hung a tree branch heavy with luscious fruit, but every time he tried to eat, the branch would pull away. Every time he tried to drink the lapping water just beneath
his parched lips, the waters would recede before him. This was his cursed fate for all eternity, providing us the word for unsatisfied desire: “tantalizing.”
T
HE TALES OF THE
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OUNTAIN OF
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OUTH, THE
R
IVER
L
ETHE, AND THE
spring beneath Yggdrasil all involve mythical waters that do not exist, or at least have not yet been found. But many legends of drinking water are tied to local wells and fountains, places that actually do exist and can be visited. Stories from around the world speak of specific wells with healing powers that can cure the sick and restore movement to the lame, eyesight to the blind, and fertility to the barren. These are holy wells, and they marry the myth to the real.
There are few universals in the human condition, but sacred wells may be one of the rare constants. They have been found in virtually every culture around the world and in virtually every era. From earliest times, natural water sources have been linked with mystical healing and powers. An archeological site in Wales, for example, uncovered a vast temple complex extending across more than eighty-five acres. More than thirty times bigger than Stone-henge, the oval site is one and a half miles long and once featured 1,400 massive oak pillars, each towering twenty-three feet high, with a pristine natural spring at its center. Researchers say it had been in continuous use for 4,700 years before it was overrun by the Romans. Archeological digs in Europe have uncovered evidence of religious worship at springs since the Neolithic Period.
One can understand why a natural spring would appear miraculous to premodern people. How the water came to the surface could not be easily explained. The minerals, carbonation, heat, and smells coming from springs would have been mysteries. Surely these had mystic origins, but special origins were rarely enough. Those special wells also held special powers. Particular springs offered particular benefits. Below are some of the most notable examples compiled by a chronicler of sacred wells.
• Insanity was cured at St. Maelrubha’s Well on an island in Loch Maree, Scotland. Reportedly, the “patient” was dragged
behind a boat and rowed twice around the island, then plunged into the well and made to drink the water—all of which produced the cure. However, drinking from Borgie Well near Cambusland, Scotland, produced insanity.
• Those seeking relief from toothaches would go to a healing well on the Scottish island North Uist. They were required by tradition to remain silent and not to eat or drink until they reached the well, where they then drank three handfuls of the healing water and said, “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”
• Additional holy wells known for their gifts of fertility can be found on the Isle of Skye. One ensured the birth of twins, while another ensured the fertility of cattle.
• The Northern Pomo (Indians living in modern-day Northern California) used a spring that they called “child water” to facilitate pregnancy. It was thought that if a married woman desired a child, she should drink from this spring.
• The holy well at Sommested in Iceland offered healing but would lose its powers if a horse washed in the well.
• At the aptly named Holywell in Wales, those seeking a cure would enter the bath waters three times while saying the Rosary.
The list of sacred wells and how to obtain their specific benefits could go on for pages. In a sort of hypochondriac’s fantasy, one can find wells that cure the full spectrum of maladies, from blindness and soreness of the eyes to rickets, lameness, whooping cough, leprosy, paralysis, and an assortment of other ailments. Some of these cures defy modern medical explanations and seem downright silly to a modern reader. A placebo effect may exist, but surely mental illness cannot be caused or cured by drinking from a well, can it?
As with many enduring legends, there is a kernel of truth here. Natural spring waters often have high mineral content that do provide therapeutic value. Lithium dissolved in spring waters, for example, can treat mental illness. While modern medicine may help explain the curative powers of sacred springs, the more interesting question is how ancient people explained the waters’ powers prior to chemical analysis of their contents, indeed how they explained the very presence of the waters. In a society with
no understanding of modern disease, there had to be another explanation.