INSTITUT Veolia Environnement

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

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

Water: the "materia prima" of all ideologies

For Thales, these germs and animalcules are of a fundamentally aqueous nature. To explain all, there is no need to resort to mysteries. It is enough to observe this "materia prima" of all ideologies, the most common, the most banal and the most familiar, albeit the most vital substance: water. "Reality is attainable, at least if a rational method, based on observation and experience, is used:such is the rationalism of Thales, who must now be seen to belong by right to the world of philosophy as well as the world of science (1)".

With cosmogonies, however, rationalism is far from universal and seems to have mainly penetrated around the Mediterranean, in Greece particularly. In the various traditions which relate the religion and myths of China, the Five Sacred Peaks (wuyue) and the Four Rivers (sidu) are omnipresent. These renowned partners, Mountain and River, are at the core of all Chinese founding legends.For the Chinese, the functioning of the perpetually moving universe can be explained by the interaction of well known fundamental principles: the yin and the yang and the five instruments:wood, fire, earth, metal and water.

A specialist in Chinese folklore presents a syncretist view of the creation of the world:

"The legend of the creator of the world, Pangu, exists in an official version of the Han mythology and in several variations among the minorities of South-West China. A number of versions state that the giant Pangu took eighteen thousand years, and not seven days, to create the world and that when he died, his body was metamorphosed. His eyes became the moon and the sun and his blood filled the rivers and seas. In the tales told by the Yao and Miao minorities, Nüwa -half woman and half serpent who gave life to the first human beings- and Fuxi, one of the three sovereigns of the Han mythology, were the two sole survivors of a deluge which submerged the world... Although the Deluge theme is treated differently, it is to be found in both Han folklore and the folklore of the minorities. Chinese folklore provides the details of major meteorological and cosmic disasters in human experience (2)."

The versions of Creation given by other cultures, however far away in geographic and linguistic terms from the Middle Kingdom, all to some extent follow the same lines and present similarities, a proof of their common humanity, and testify to the need all men have of understanding their origins and explaining their environment. They are also proof of the prominent role played by water, the world over in every culture.

In a number of civilisations, as above in China, the Deluge theme is present. For the Jews, water is the element chosen by the Almighty to punish those who have been at fault, hence the Deluge. A notable exception, ancient Egypt does not refer to the Deluge:the annual Nile floods brought, together with silt, hopes of an abundant harvest and the fertile silt was held in such high esteem that the robe of Anubis, the jackal-headed god of embalming (and therefore of resurrection) is of the same dark colour. Moreover, the Nile is so vast -Paul Claudel speaks of the "Nile's dual containment"- that it has always been able to buffer major meteorological disturbances.

Michel Serres sees a particular significance in the Deluge—an example of universal eschatology, perhaps? "The primitive scene of the Deluge, for example, so frequent in many religions, which perhaps describes some form of physical marine transgression, is too much concerned with peace, doves and olive branches to be anything but a warning, almost consciously, that our human rivalries may endanger the planet and life itself, as evidenced by the universal rising of the waters and the gathering of the animals in the Arc.Though there is no mention of culpability or moral prohibition, these scenes seem to warn that a collective and global destruction is in our power: the seas rise (3)."

(1) Marcel Conche, "L'eau et les philosophes", Sciences au Sud, Spécial 2003.

(2) Guillaume Olive, "Les contes des peuples chinois", Hémisphères, n° 26, September-October-November 2004, p.10

(3) Michel Serres, "Retour au Contrat naturel", Presentation at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, 2000. For a long time, the Deluge was seen as a supreme punishment inflicted by the Heavens on men guilty of bad deeds and sins: in France in 1680, it was thought that the return of Halley's comet would bring the deluge in its wake.