8. The Nature of Water

The Upholder of the Cycles, which supports the whole of Life, is
WATER. In every drop of water dwells a Deity, whom we all serve;
there also dwells Life, the Soul of the 'First' substance — Water —
whose boundaries and banks are the capillaries that guide it and in
which it circulates.
Viktor Schauberger^1

Our Earth is the planet of water. Seventy percent of the world's sur-
face is covered by water. Our bodies are seventy-five percent water.
It is essential to all life. Yet, our present science understands little of
its real nature. We have no respect for water; we use it for transport-
ing inappropriate substances, usually waste and pollutants. We
destroy its complex structures by driving it through turbines, pipes
or straightened riverbanks. We treat it as a commodity. Viktor
Schauberger called it a living organism,'the blood of the Earth,' and
insisted that in its various forms, as blood, sap or water, it is the
basis of all life.
Viktor Schauberger was known as 'The Water Wizard' because
he made profound discoveries about its nature. His principal pre-
occupation was with water as the key to all life, and its vital rela-
tionship to the forest. He saw water as the foundation of all
life-processes and the channel that nourishes and energizes all life.
He also recognized it as a living entity, whose main function is to
accumulate and transform the energies originating from the Earth
and the Sun. The source of all our problems, according to
Schauberger, is our failure to regard water as an organism; we
arrest its creative processes and when it becomes our enemy it can
do enormous damage.
As a young man, searching for inspiration in his beloved forest,
Viktor was sitting quietly by the bank of a pristine stream when
he unexpectedly found that his consciousness entered the water. It
connected with an intelligence in the water that spoke to him. It
told him what movements it needed to make in order to stay
healthy, and under what conditions. It was from this mystical
experience that he built up his awareness of how healthy water is