I have a spiritual connection to water. I often wonder where this came from and why I long for water. I suppose it comes from living near to the sea. There is something very special about living near water courses, rivers and stream as well as the great oceans. The sound of the waves, of the trickling brooks is very restorative. I live in a rural area and in recent years I am appreciating the land and the history of the place I know as home, as familiar.

This place, like all places, has old holy wells, sacred springs, the challenge is to research the locations and go out and find their living waters underneath the newly constructed bricks, overgrown paths and hidden forgotten hillsides. I don’t doubt that all your places have holy waters waiting to be rediscovered and honoured with some sacredness as well.

One theme throughout my water “caching” endevours is that most of these sacred sites have had a name change or two in their time. Here, in my area there is a story of a spring that was names after a Roman Emporer’s mother, and still holds the name within the area, but the spring is lost to a farmed hillside, private land with the spring seeping into the grass. The wellhouse was deconstructed and moved indoors as an ornate structure, empty and barren.

When I look back in time this spring was named in the 14th century as Elen’s well, possibly the Goddess of the land that was honoured before the Romans inhabited this region.

These holy waters are intriguing to me, I have a deep curiosity about their traditions,  their keepers and what happened to the structures that surrounded them?

I imagine these holy wells and sacred springs would be used to gather the waters in Her name. The keepers would have been our ancestors, yours and mine. They would have honoured the sacred waters, used the water for healing, for blessing, for the births and death ceremony. They would have gathered as women by the waters, they would have gathered as community, as friends and family, kith and kin.

Women have had great connection  at the waters edge, they gathered the waters, worked at the waters, sang to the waters, and cleansed their emotions to the seas in chants and communal hymns to the waves that crashendoed back to them. At the streams they would have noticed the changing seasons, the plants,the trees, the birds habituated and the turning of the leaf. At the rivers they would have washed the clothes, stained the fabrics, honoured the water for all that was and all that they wished to be.

At the seashores they would have worked as communities for the catches of the week, they would have foraged for cockles and seaweeds. They would spend whole days and nights with fishing nets, mending and restoring, hauling the catches and batches for sale. They would know the cycles of the moon and the high tides and the changing of the seasons by day and by night.

So how do we honour our living waters, as women, as communities today?

Where are the clotty wells, the well wishes to the trees and the cleansing waters?

Where are the rituals to the rivers that sustain our lands and our fields of corn? Where are the prayers for the land and the harvests?

Where are the crones that honour the high tides to gather the seaweed for our menopausal bones? Where are the women with the knowledge of this land, this climate, these plant medicines, these berries and fruits of my land?

Where are the well-keepers that take care of the waters upon the land that I call home?

Where are your water-women, your well-keepers, that keep clean the areas of the waterways, that chant to the seas, that harvest the seaweed for you to eat for your medicine, that sing to your bones of old?

Where is the knowledge of the women of your land and mine? Where do we find the keepers of the waters once more?

I feel the answer to all this longing is within us all, if not us then who? Will you go look for your sacred springs of old, the lost wells and rediscover the sacred whispers of the waters that arise to greet you? “will the water spirits then return once more, saying “hello sister I have waited for you for so long, I am so happy to greet you and meet you at the water edge once more”.