Water linked traditions in the Early World
Life depends on water, but for thousands of years, it’s also played a role in many religions. The earliest known example of this is the Great Bath at Mohenjo Daro in the Indus Valley civilisation in Northern India and Pakistan. Nothing is known about the religion of these people but this impressive structure, which dates to the 3rd-millennium b.c.e, is believed to have been used for purification rituals. The Vedic religion, which arose in north-west India, also used water for purification and as it’s believed to have succeeded the Indus Valley culture, it may have adopted this custom from them. The Vedic religion, in turn, was an influence on the Hindu religion whose first phase dates to that era. Purification with water is an import tradition in Hinduism. There are tanks at every large Hindu temple, and it’s customary for followers to bathe in sacred rivers.
Purification with water is an orthodox Jewish ritual that’s performed in a pool of water called a mikvah. Isreali archaeologists recently discovered well-preserved remains of a number of ritual baths near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem which would probably have been used by Jewish pilgrims before they entered the Temple. Holy water, sanctified by a priest, is used in Christian baptism rituals and legend has it that Jesus was baptised in the River Jordan by John the Baptist Water is also used for purification in Shinto, Taoism, and Buddhism and Druids celebrated their secret rituals near lakes on the festival of Samhain. There are numerous sacred lakes around the world and votive offerings have been found in them and in rivers and bogs. In Celtic Europe, there were many sacred springs but they later became Christianised There are also thousands of sacred wells in the British Isles whose water was thought and to cure ailments. In Central America, the Maya purified themselves in a water temple, and the Aztecs bathed regularly
Prince Bladud, the ninth king of the Britons, was reputedly cured of leprosy after bathing in Bath’s hot muddy waters and he was so thankful that he founded the city of Bath. It was customary for the Romans to bathe in public baths and after they colonised England, they built a great temple near the city’s rich mineral rich spring which supplies the Roman Baths It was dedicated to the goddess Sulis Minerva who reputedly had healing powers.
Inti Raymi was a nine-day New Year festival in Peru which was celebrated on the June solstice (winter in that part of the world) and colourful New Year ceremonies took place in Cuzco, and elsewhere in the empire. The Incas associated Lake Titicaca with the Creation and Titicaca Island was thought to be the place where Viracocha created the world. On Inti Raymi, priests on the island conducted rituals around a sacred plaza and purified themselves in water at the Fountain of the Incas. Elsewhere in the country, the gates of dams were opened to allow water to flush through the valley to cleanse the land in preparation for the coming year.
Water was associated with the Creation in several early religions, and also in the Bible. ( Gen. 1:1-2:3) , and the tradition of the Primeval Land which emerged from the Primeval Sea was popular in the Old and New Worlds.The First Land was often represented in the form of a stone, or earth, structure. Examples of this are the Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl in Teotihuacan in Mexico, the Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia, Silbury Hill, in England, Creek Mound in West Virginia, U.S.A, and the Akapana in Bolivia in South America.
Several Old and New World peoples had legends of a series of past ages each of which ended in watery destruction after its people became evil. Following the upheaval, the next age commenced and life started all over again. Although we don’t know who the evil people of the previous age were, what appears to have happened was enacted in an annual, allegorical, Egyptian play. The Egyptian temple was the place of creation, the Primeval Mound, and its sacred lake represented the Primeval Sea. Edfu was one of the places where the battle between Seth and Horus, reputedly occurred and the event was enacted on Edfu’s sacred lake. Battles with clubs were fought on this lake between these forces of light and darkness. According to the Hindu calendar, the present era began in 3,102 b.c.e around which time there’s evidence of flooding, and climate change, in many parts of the world. This appears to be the Great Flood that’s mentioned in hundreds of early deluge legends and which ‘cleansed the world’ by drowning the evil people of the previous era. Did this catastrophe, I wonder, influence the custom of purification with water in the present era?
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Leonard Farra The Pleiades Legacy (The Stone Age)Blurb 2010
“” The Pleiades Legacy (The New World) “ “
“ The Pleiades Legacy (The Old World) “ “
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“ Egyptian Myth and Legend “ “
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by Leonard Farra author of the Pleiades Legacy series.
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