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Report n°5 : "Water : symbolism and culture"

Water: myths, cosmogonies, symbolism and culture

"Symbols are part of the lexicon, but they represent more than words, vocabulary and concepts. They enable philosophical thought to reach or at least to aim for, the elusive:originality and finality, the absolute derived from the relative, God and the devil..."

Henri Lefebvre

"The past is past, we say, but that is not true, the past is always present"

Maurice Maeterlinck

Pre-Socratic philosophers and the Ionian school, considering the creation of the world, proposed an arche, and Thales claimed water as the first principle because everything comes from water and returns to it. Thales taught that our Universe is no more than a bubble of air within a mass of liquid. The philosophy of the ancient Egyptians was very similar; they believed the source of all life to be the primary mass of water personified as Nu, the origin of the two sacred rivers: the Nile which is the giver of life and the Sky upon which sails Ra, the sun. In the boundless depths of this primordial liquid float the germs of all things as the Egyptian priests related in the papyrus scrolls that have come down to us.