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WATER AND THE SACRED WELL

Water is the one primordial element that underlays all creation myths and stories around the world. The Egyptian Heliopolitan creation story recounts that the sun-god Atum (Re) reposed in the primordial ocean (Nun). In Assyro-Babylonian mythology, first the gods and subsequently all beings arose from the fusion of salt water (Tiamat) and sweet water (Apsu).  The holy books of the Hindus explain that all the inhabitants of the earth emerged from the primordial sea.  At the beginning of the Judeo-Christian story of creation, the spirit of God is described as "stirring above the waters," and a few lines later, God creates "a firmament in the midst of the waters to divide the waters" (Genesis 1:1-6). In the Koran are the words "We have created every living thing from water."

Water divinities of various kinds appear in the mythologies of many cultures. And not surprisingly, the world abounds in sacred wells, springs, rivers, and lakes. Even within the Judeo-Christian tradition, which generally avoids the veneration of the various phenomena of Nature, there are numerous examples of sacred springs or wells, and rivers.   In most cases, the spring or river has acquired sacredness through connection with a significant or miraculous event. The water of the River Jordan is sacred because Jesus Christ was baptized in it by Saint John the Baptist [1. Jordan River 2. Jordan River]. The spring at Lourdes is sacred because of its healing properties in connection with the appearance of the Virgin Mary to Bernadette.  In some cases, wells such as the holy well at Chartres, or the Chalice Well at Glastonbury were already sacred in pagan times.

While sacred in their own right, sacred springs also draw attention to the sacredness of water itself, reminding the Christian, for example, that water is a symbol of grace (and as such is used for baptism). Water is also one of the four elements possessing fundamental characteristics. In the Canticle of the Sun, St. Francis of Assisi praises God for water: "Praised be Thou, O Lord, for sister water, who is very useful, humble, precious, and chaste." In many cultures, water appears as a reflection or an image of the soul. In Japan, water prefigures the purity and pliant simplicity of life. It can be both calm and animated, and the Japanese may contemplate the unruffled surface of a temple pond or make pilgrimages to waterfalls. The lotus-stream of the Buddha or Boddhisattva rises up from the waters of the soul, in the same way the spirit, illumined by knowledge, frees itself from passive existance.

In India, the sacred River Ganges embodies for Hindus the water of life. Bathing in the Ganges frees the bather from sin, the outward purification serving as symbolic support of inward purification. The source of the Ganges lies in the Himalayas, the mountains of the Gods, and descends to the plains of India as if from Heaven.

The identification of the sources of rivers, streams, springs, and wells as sacred is very ancient. Springs and wells were perceived as the dwelling place of supernatural beings, and stories and legends grew up around them. Often it was claimed that the waters healed the injured or cured the sick with the result that well or stream came to be regarded as a sacred shrine. The Roman philosopher Seneca declared that "Where a spring rises or a water flows there ought we to build altars and offer sacrifices." This was frequently undertaken.

In some cases wells or streams were oracular. Pausanias (VII, 21. 11) reports that a sacred stream in front of the sanctuary of Demeter at Patras served as an infallible mode of divination using a mirror. Wells and springs inhabited by spirits with the gift of prophecy were places of pilgrimage. The Celts venerated natural springs of water for their sacred and medicinal value and many examples of "holy wells" are known, many of them were later Christianized through rededication to a saint. This practice of venerating sacred wells continued into the Christian era in the West, though they were now referred to as "wishing wells."

Springs and wells also took the form of sacred fountains which were claimed to be the Fountain of Youth, or the Fountain of Immortality, or the Well of Knowledge. A Fountain of Youth was believed to exist in the newly-discovered Americas, and the Spanish conquistador Ponce de Léon set out in 1513 on an expedition to find it in Florida. In China, the water of the fountain at Pon Lai was believed to confer a "thousand lives on those who drink it," according to Wang Chia, writing in the Chin Dynasty (265-420 CE), and a similar reputation was attached to the springs of Mount Lao Shan.

Wells and springs were often associated with a god or goddess and the sacred water dispensed there could ensure life, health, and abundance. The Babylonian moon goddess, Ishtar, was associated with sacred springs, and her temples were often situated in natural grottoes from which springs emanated. Sacred springs were enshrined by the Ancient Greeks who erected artificial basins and placed icons of the deity or deities nearby. Goddesses and nymphs were connected with certain rivers, springs, and wells by the Celts and Romans. Often the river was named after the goddess, such as the Shannon River, after Sinann,and the Boyne, after Boann, in Ireland, and the Seine, after Sequana, in Gaul (France). In 1963, at the Gallo-Roman Fontes Sequanae sanctuary at the source of the Seine, 200 wooden figures were exacavated carved from the heart wood of oak to represent all or part of the human body (heads, limbs, trunks; with internal organs carved in relief on wooden plaques). These ex votos indicate that the goddess of the sacred spring was believed capable of curing a whole range of infirmities.

A special sacred significance was attached to springs and wells whose waters could heal. In the New Testament, St. John (5:2) describes the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem, "surrounded by five covered colonnades," where a great number of disabled people used to lie -- the blind, the lame, the paralyzed" waiting to be the first to enter the pool "when the water is stirred." When in the mid-19th century soon after Bernadette's vision of the Virgin Mary, the water issuing from the grotto at Lourdes began to bring about cures in people, the spring was designated a place of miracles.

From these underground sources also bubbled forth mineral water which could be imbided or bathed in to effect cures. Later, these springs became baths and spas. The hot (120 degree Fahrenheit / 46.5 degrees Celsius) mineral springs at Bath in England were already being used 7000 years ago. The Celts subsequently established a shrine there dedicated to Sulis, and later the Romans built on the same spot a temple to Sulis Minerva (and renamed the town Aquae Sulis).

The Romans also developed other mineral springs. In Germany the waters at Aquae Aureliae became the famous spa of Baden-Baden ("bath bath"). In 218 CE, after defeating the Romans, Hannibal and his armies stopped to imbide the waters at Perrier in the south of France. The water at Evians-les-Bains, on the southern side of Lake Geneva, was discovered in ancient times; in 363 CE, the Roman emperor Flavius Claudius Jovianus stopped there on his way to Germany. The natural spring waters at Evians-les-Bains are marketed today as Evian. The waters at San Pellegrino in Lombardy in northern Italy have beenknown since Roman times. Rediscovered in the 12th century, one of the famous "pilgrims" (pellegrino means pilgrim) who came to take the waters there was Leonardo da Vinci. The spa was established there in 1848, and bottling of the water begun in 1899.

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THE CELTS AND SACRED WELLS

The Celts had a unique way of looking at water and wells. Water was the boundary between the otherworld and our world. It was the boundary between land and sky, similar in nature to the special time of dawn and dusk, noon and midnight. It was between land and sky. Caves, caverns, wells and springs were all boundaries or gateways to the otherworld and were all places to communicate with deity. Since the water came from the otherworld and/or deep from the earth it was especially blessed. Water that bubbled to the surface or that was steamy and hot was especially thought to have healing properties to pre-Celtic and Celtic as well as Roman settlers to these countries. Also, when you think about the Celts and where they lived, surrounded by water on all sides, you begin to realize that they more than likely realized the strength of water and how it could both destroy and heal. This is very powerful imagery.

At certain special places offerings have been made to wells and springs from time immemorial by those in search of healing or favours from the water gods or goddesses. I will be talking about these places later on this page. These offerings could be of rags and pins, garlands of flowers, something to represent the illness or favor asked or other small gifts to the spirits which people believed continued to preside over the water sources. Sometimes the church condones these actions, often times they did not, but the custom has continued to thrive even today. In the Republic of Ireland and the British Isles rag trees or "clootie trees" can still be seen with rags tied on the branches. These trees are located close to wells and the supplican asks for something (generally healing) and ties a rag to the branch of the tree. It is thought that by the time the rag rots off of the tree branch, then the request will manifest. Other people think that the tree itself bears the weight of the illnesses that people are trying to rid themselves of. Not all of these wells have rag trees, but many of them do. Many of these wells are still in regular
use today.

When the first Christians came they found it hard to rid these areas of worship at sacred springs and wells. In the seventh century AD, the Penitentials of Theodoris said that "no one shall go to trees, or wells, or stones or enclosures, or anywhere else except to God's church, and there make vows or release himself from them." Even though the church had concerns about these practices, the inhabitants of these areas often continued and it was especially popular in rural areas.

Many of the Celtic saints, such as St. Brigid, are associated with wells. Often times the Celtic saints were exchanging places with the local deity of the well and given some of the same attributes as the local guardian of the well. At times the name of the saint and the name of the local deity were similar or the church just took the name of the deity and gave it a saintly prefix to make it more respectable to the church. Perhaps this is why we know so little about the lives of the early Christian Celtic saints.

Rivers were also thought to have special powers or were used for worship. Some rivers, like the Danube, have regained the name of the god/goddess that were important to that place. In the case of the Danube, the goddess recognized is Danu. A well near the river Tyne was dedicated to the water goddess Coventina and when the well area was excavated it contained close to 13,500 coins dating from AD 41 to AD 383. The well also contained inscriptions, pottery, a bronze dog and horse, pins, bells, incense burners and objects of jewelry. These were perhaps thrown in to ask Coventina for favors such as healing. In the Thames were also found objects such as swords and shields and other objects, some of which are now on display at the British Museum in London.

Why were the objects thrown into wells or water often damaged and why were objects left behind in the first place? 
The most practical reason was to prevent them from being stolen. If an object is broken it is less likely to be taken. 
To release the spirit of the maker or the patron god/goddess  To make a sacrifice to the god and goddess. If you sacrifice something special to you, something made of rare material or something made especially for sacrifice it was to prove to the gods that you were serious about your request or that you were grateful for the request granted.

As a form of barter - "I will give you this if you give me fertility, health, wealth, etc." Wells were thought of places where there is a natural in and out motion of energy. Water from some hot springs bubbles to the surface and water in rivers has a current. These were sometimes seen to show that the river "had a life of its own".

It's a way of creating a direct contact with the person giving away the "gift". This is especially true if the object was made by the person and also destroyed by the same person.

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FAMOUS WATER WELLS

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Airmed and the well at Slane

Airmed, daughter of Diancecht, was a great Celtic healer and herbalist. As a healer, Airmid surpassed her father in power, for while her father replaced the severed arm of the de Danannan king Nuadha with one of silver, she and Miach regenerated the flesh arm to perfect health (It was said that in order to rule Ireland, the king had to be "whole" and with the silver arm Nuadha couldn't reign until the arm was made of flesh again). Airmed's father, jealous because he could not compete with Miach's surgical skills or Airmed's powers of regeneration, killed his son . After that, Miach was buried and three hundred and sixty-five herbs grew through the grave, corresponding to the number of his joints and sinews. Then Airmed spread her cloak and uprooted those herbs according to their properties. Her father came to her and mixed the herbs, so that no one knows their proper healing qualities unless [she] taught them afterwards. Airmed's herbs, spread upon her cloak, were scattered by her father. If you are looking for answers for herbal healing, ask the goddess Airmed - she often helps those who question her baout the uses for herbs

Airmed, her brother and father sang spells over the well of Slane in Ireland. "Now their mortally wounded men were cast into it as soon as they were slain. They were alive when they came out." Their mortally wounded became whole through the incantation of the four leeches that were about the well. This gives wells their rebirth and healing aspects known even today. Welsh mythology also has similar stories of wells that heal or give knowledge.

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Bath

Bath was a spa called Aquae Sulis and legend says that the early British thought that it was the work of Giants or wizards. It was dedicated to the Romano-British cult of Sulis Minerva. Sulis was a local Celtic deity while Minerva was a Roman deity. Bath is a mineral spring beside the River Avon. Water gushes from the ground at a rate of a quarter of a million gallons per day. Celts more than likely thought that they were miraculous - the sheer amount of water bubbling to the surface as well as the heat involved made this a very special site. At Bath, the god is Sulis (Either meaning either Solar or according to R.J. Stewart in his book "Waters Of The Gap" translated as "gap".) was equated with Minerva by the Romans but the Celtic Sulis remained a dominant partner. Sometime in the 1st century Roman engineers converted the shrine at the springs into a great ornamental pool, enclosed within a building which was done in the style of a Graeco-Roman temple, theatre and bath suite. 

The central focus of the cult at the temple at Bath was the springs. Found inside were 16,000 coins, dating from the Iron Age. Curses in Latin had been thrown into the springs, dedicated to Sulis.

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Chalice Well

According to Christian tradition, the Essene Joseph of Arimathea settled near Chalice Well having brought the chalice or Holy Grail there in CE 37. There is a thorn tree in chalice well gardens where Joseph of Arimathea placed his staff- there grew a Hawthorne tree. Glastonbury itself has quite a tradition - Glastonbury Tor has on top a church from the 13th century and it is said that there have been settlements on the Tor since the 4th century. The waters of the Chalice Well have never been known to fail. It was the only source that kept on working through a drought in 1921 -22. Under the well lid (The lid had some interesting symbolism itself, click HERE to find out more about the design on the lid), 25,000 gallons of water gush upwards to the surface of the Earth every day filing several human-built small-room-sized subterranean chambers. Red or Blood Spring, a constant supply of red, iron bearing waters considered by many to have healing properties. The waters of the Well became widely known in the 18th century for their curative powers and for many years Glastonbury was famous as a Spa town. Pilgrims came from far and wide to drink and bathe in the healing waters as they do this day. Since anemia was often a problem for women in the 18th and 19th century, the rich iron in the water was a sure cure.

NOW let us visit one of the most sacred spots in Wales:

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St. Winifred's Well

Holywell (Treffynnon) is "the town of the Holy Well." There is good reason to believe that at the time of the poet of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, it may have been also referred to as Holy Head (Sir Gawain may have stayed at Basingwerk Abbey at the bottom of the Greenfield Valley before he found his way across the Dee to the Wirral Peninsular; that there is another town called Holyhead, far to the west has confused generations of scholars and critics unfamiliar with the local history). The Greenfield Valley is important in Welsh industrial history and its Heritage Trail is well worth a visit, as are the remains of Basingwerk Abbey, founded in ll3l as a Savignac Monastery but mostly demolished as a Cistercian House at the Reformation with its parts scattered throughout the area to be relocated in many local churches.

But it is to the holy well at the upper end of the Valley, just before the steep climb up the town itself, that we make our pilgrimage. The well itself, formed from a mountain spring, is housed inside the shrine of St. Winifrid (Gwenffrwd or Gwenfrewi) regarded as the finest surviving example of a medieval holy well in Britain. The legend of St. Winifrid is responsible for the erection of the present shrine on a site chosen originally chosen by St. Beuno for a chapel. When a local chieftain named Caradoc attempted to rape Beuno's niece Gwenffrwd, she ran to the chapel for sanctuary but though she failed to reach the doors, her refusal to submit to  her pursuer caused him to cut off her head in his rage. The head rolled down the hillside, a spring miraculously appearing where it came to rest in a deep hollow. Beuno reattached Gwenffrwd's head, and she lived to become an abbess and later, a saint. Would-be rapist Prince Caradoc, meanwhile, fell dead under the saint's curse.

The well formed from the spring then became a place of pilgrimage visited by, among others, Richard I, to pray for his Crusade; Henry V (both before and after his famous victory at Agincourt), who came on foot from Shrewsbury; and King James II, who came here to pray for a son (a prayer which was granted by the birth of the Old Pretender). It is bitterly ironic that the success of his prayer led to James's deposition from the throne, for the British Constitution would not allow a Catholic heir. 

In the twelfth Century, the religious house at Shrewsbury (where she had spent the remainder of her days as abbess) acquired Winifred's relics, and her shrine there became a popular place of pilgrimage, but at The Dissolution, her bones were scattered by the agents of Henry VIII (The one finger that survived was then taken to Powys Castle and from thence to Rome, only returning to Britain in l852). In the early l5th Century, the Pope granted the right to sell special indulgences to all pilgrims visiting Holywell to the monks at Basingwerk, who took charge of the well up until the Reformation.

About l490, Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and mother of Henry VII had a new two-storied chapel built over the star-shaped well, which is covered by an ornate vault and surrounded by a processional passage. A long bathing pool fed by the spring lies outside, in the courtyard. Just below the surface of the water you can see the stone of St. Beuno upon which he taught Winifred or upon which he bade farewell to her. In the valley below the well are a number of stones said to be stained with Winifred's blood or covered with a fragrant red moss miraculously renewed each year. .

St. Winifred's Well is the only shrine in Britain that has an unbroken tradition of pilgrimage since the early Medieval period. Because the well was regarded as medicinal as much as religious, the chapel escaped the merciless destruction of the Reformation itself. On Nov 3, l629, St. Winifred's Day, over fifteen hundred people gathered at the chapel, and it has continued to be an important place of pilgrimage for Roman Catholics ever since, despite many attempts to stop the practice, including the shutting down of many of the town's hotels and hostels by Chester justices in l637. At that time, the walls of the chapel were also whitewashed and the safety railings around the well removed (more than one historian has queried -- "so that pilgrims might accidentally drown?")  

Only two years after King James's visit in l686, the holy well and the chapel in which it was housed were ransacked by supporters of the ardent Protestant William III. It was once again restored, and in l774 was visited by the well-known literary critic Dr. Samuel Johnson on his journey around North Wales. The learned, but prudish doctor remarked on the indecency of a woman bathing there, yet the popularity of the shrine continued to attract pilgrims, over one thousand visiting during the first year of a new hospice opened in the l880's. During the last one hundred years, the shrine has received a new lease of life after centuries of Protestantism (and therefore neglect) mainly from visits by Irish immigrants residing in Liverpool (only an hour's road journey distant).

Since World War II, the automobile and the motor coach (and up until the early 60's the railroad) have brought many more pilgrims (mainly from Liverpool and Manchester, but some from all parts of Britain and the Continent) to partake of the healing waters and to undergo the ritual of passing three times through the inner well. This custom may date from a Celtic practice of triple immersion or it may result from a prayer written by a l2th Century prior of Shrewsbury who cautioned that more than one immersion may be necessary for a cure. The author once met a legless man who was on the side of the road begging a ride to the well to be cured; the poor fellow had ultimate faith in his quest.

For those inclined to believe in such, the waters at Holywell contain miraculous healing powers. For many centuries, these waters came from an unfailing spring, gushing mightily from the earth, producing three thousand gallons a minute at a constant temperature of 50 degrees. Because of extensive mining operations, however, on nearby Halkyn Mountain in the first quarter of this century, the author's great uncle, a Holywell surveyor and civil engineer (whose first name was Caradoc, incidentally), warned the Holywell Town Council that the waters feeding the spring were likely to be diverted and that the well would dry up. This is what consequently happened, so that today's pilgrims see a bubbling spring fed from the town's municipal water supply forced through an artfully concealed pipe at the base of the well.

Despite the source of today's holy well, the sanctity of St. Winifred's remains, and though it is not housed in an elegant or great cathedral, it is a vital stopping place on our pilgrimage to the sacred places of Wales (The author himself was baptized with the same water in the Church of St. James, on the site of the original chapel of St. Beuno erected just above St. Margaret's Chapel).

Only a few miles from the English border, the pleasantly-situated little town of Holywell is also a most fitting place to end our journey to the sacred places of Wales which began in Newport, at the cathedral of St. Woolos. From Holywell, it is approximately one hour by modern highway to Manchester Airport.