The Magic of Water Daxuan
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In the Taoist view, Water is never a simple element; it is a subtle force, a moving memory where the first moments of the world and the destinies of those who pass through it merge.
Within the great cycle of breaths, it represents silent depth, the dark matrix that welcomes, dissolves, transforms and reveals. Whatever it touches, it frees from its old forms and introduces into another state of being. One need only observe the way it shapes rock, slips into crevices, collects the reflection of the sky or engulfs the noise of men to understand that Water is the oldest teacher, older than trees, stones or gods.
In Taoist tradition, every gushing spring is considered the eye of a Dragon, every well a window into the realm of the ancestors, every lake a mirror in which the other side of reality can be glimpsed. Living water is not a passive substance: it carries the pulse of the world, saturates the valleys it flows through with Qi, and leaves invisible traces on everything it touches. Those who approach it in a state of inner readiness feel that time contracts slightly, that the air becomes thicker, as if a veil were moving between two realities.
Ancient traditions, whether Taoist or European, have recognised in springs and wells a special connection with healing. Water that descends into darkness and rises again charged with the forces of the earth symbolically returns to the origin of life. It renews what it touches, not by conquest but by dissolution; what opposes it is undone and reconfigured. In Taoist energy practices, immersion in cold water releases internal blockages by awakening the Breath of the Kidneys, the seat of Jing and deep vitality. In Western folk traditions, children were immersed in well water or fabrics were soaked and hung in trees to accomplish the same thing: giving the Yin of the earth the weight of the disturbance so that it could decompose there.
Healing through water is not limited to the body. In Taoist thought, the mind becomes clear when the inner surface becomes like a tranquil lake. The use of water mirrors, in which visions, omens or answers appear, is based on the same principle: water reflects what already exists in the heart, but which daily agitation prevents us from perceiving. In China, as in other countries, many forms of divination have been developed around this principle: still water that reveals, running water that carries away the useless, dark water that allows the still unformed shapes of intuitive knowledge to rise to the surface. In the moonlight, water even becomes a privileged instrument of revelation: it absorbs the silvery glow, breaks it up, recomposes it, and sends it back in the form of moving messages. This is why so many rituals, on both sides of the world, are held at full moon near wells or shores.
Water also has an essential protective function. It is said that a spirit, a negative influence or a troubled breath cannot cross moving water. Bridges, fords, marshes and rivers are thresholds where the nature of the world changes. For Taoists, crossing a river in a ritual is like passing from one state of being to another. In European traditions, throwing a possessed object into the water, entrusting a secret to the river, or using water to break a spell follows the same logic: water does not hold on to what should no longer be carried. Constant movement shows the human spirit the path to non-attachment.
Presences surround every body of water. Taoists speak of dragons, celestial serpents, guardians of springs, mist ladies, and river spirits. Western traditions speak of well fairies, river ghosts, lake horses, and fish women. Different names reveal the same perception: water attracts beings who live between worlds, who are neither entirely visible nor completely dissipated. They watch, observe, sometimes teach, sometimes test, always according to the inner quality of those who approach them. Those who approach them with arrogance or levity receive only confusion; those who approach with respect, silence and offerings often receive visions, healing or inspiration.
In Taoist tradition, as in popular practices, certain waters are considered particularly powerful: those that never dry up, those that spring from the foot of a black rock, those that turn red in spring, those that rise and fall with the moon. Even the morning dew is seen as a condensation of the Celestial Breath. The ancient masters taught that washing one's face with dew nourished the Jing, cleared the eyes and prolonged the youthfulness of the Shen. Here again, peoples far apart in space come together: everywhere, people bend down in the morning to gather the first breath of Heaven from the grass.
Water occupies a central place in rites of passage. Everything that must be reborn must first be immersed, either physically or symbolically. In internal Taoism, the cauldron of the lower abdomen is described as an inner sea where blockages dissolve and subtle life is reformed. Ancient stories, whether they speak of cauldrons of inspiration, prophetic wells or initiatory lakes, are metaphors for this process. The surface of the water represents the moment when consciousness leaves the old state without yet having found the new one. It serves as a threshold, a breath, a suspension; this is where transformation occurs.
Thus, the Way of Water teaches a wisdom that is imposed not by force, but by constancy. It shows how to move forward without clashing, how to penetrate without violating, how to transform without hurting. It reminds us that every obstacle eventually yields to patient gentleness, that every darkness can be illuminated by the reflection of the sky, and that every being can rediscover its origin if it agrees to dissolve for a moment into the great Yin.
Those who follow the Way of Water learn to let go of what must go, to gather what must remain, to move like a stream between the stones of the world. In the silent depths, they discover not emptiness, but the perpetual birth of forms. Herein lies the most ancient teaching: water is not only a substance, it is the memory of the Dao and the first language of mystery.
Access to Mystery is never an act of direct will, but a subtle opening that occurs when the world ceases for a moment to be what it appears to be. This opening has a name: the Gate of Mystery, an invisible threshold that opens between the known and the unknown. Among all natural manifestations, none reveals this gate as clearly as water. Water is the element that holds nothing back, resists nothing, and takes on every form without becoming any of them. It remains present even when it disappears from our sight, and in its fluidity lies an ancient intelligence, capable of connecting what is separate and uniting what seems contradictory.
Approaching water with the right inner disposition is like feeling that its surface is a veil and that this veil can be lifted. The slightest gushing spring evokes the idea of an inner breath seeking a passage to the light. The slightest well, sinking into the earth, recalls the depth of the human body where essences retreat to preserve life. The slightest stream, gliding through the grass, seems to whisper a language we knew before we were born. In these places, the human spirit never remains quite the same: something older, vaster, begins to vibrate, and the boundaries of the familiar world suddenly seem permeable.
All traditions have perceived this numinous quality. What surrounds waters, whether clear or dark, inspires a feeling of a space detached from the ordinary. Time seems to slow down or expand there. Sounds take on a strange resonance, as if another echo were responding from behind the visible. The spontaneous gestures we make at the water's edge – leaning over, falling silent, reaching out, probing the depths – testify to the fact that the mind instinctively recognises a presence that transcends mere matter.
For Taoists, this presence is not an illusion but the manifestation of the primordial breath that circulates in the form of the Dragon. Where water springs from the ground, the Dragon emerges. Where water disappears, it retreats. Springs are like eyes, wells like mouths, rivers like arteries, and lakes like organs where Qi condenses. To approach these places is to approach the pulsations of the world, to hear in the sound of falling or flowing water a teaching as ancient as the formation of mountains.
What makes water so deeply connected to Mystery is that it is the primary material of transformation. It absorbs everything that falls apart. It nourishes everything that must be born. When it becomes vapour, it disappears without being abolished, and when it falls back as rain, it returns without being identical. Those who contemplate this cycle without seeking to interrupt it understand that each movement of water is an invitation to enter into the same process: to let the old forms of the mind dissolve, to rise with new clarity, and then to descend into an even deeper interior.
Folk traditions, for their part, recognised the presence of dreams in stagnant waters and the presence of spirits in flowing waters. They perceived that very old wells seemed inhabited, that certain streams diverted travellers, that remote pools enveloped intruders in torpor or clairvoyance. They warned against the hours when the veil becomes too thin, at dusk or dawn, because these are the moments when the Door of Mystery can be sensed most distinctly. It is not the imagination that is disturbed, but reality itself that reveals itself in its liminal state.
Water then becomes a guardian. It opens only to those who approach with the right attitude, neither too eager nor too distracted. It reflects faces but also states of mind, sometimes showing what has not yet happened or what has been forgotten. It does not speak with words, but with eddies, reflections, transparencies and obscurities. It carries within it a memory that nothing can truly erase.
Every time an intention, a secret, a pain or an offering has been placed there, something remains in its depths.
Thus, when we say that Water is the Gate of Mystery, we are not referring to a specific place, but to a way of being. Water is not only what we see: it is the state of consciousness in which things become transparent, the moment when the mind ceases to coagulate around its certainties and begins to reflect without distorting.
It is the inner space where we perceive the invisible not as an abstraction, but as a simply subtle reality. Those who truly contemplate it see their own nature reflected in the movement of the waves or in the tranquillity of a nocturnal pool. Those who pass through the Gate understand that it is not a passage to another world, but a passage to another way of inhabiting this one.
Water opens, not because it shows, but because it brings silence. And in this silence, the first spark of true knowledge is formed.
While Water is recognised as the Gate of Mystery, it is also one of the oldest healers in the world. No other substance acts with such consistency, discretion and depth. Where fire consumes and wind disperses, water infiltrates, purifies, dissolves, carries and makes life possible. In Taoist thought, it corresponds to the Kidney, the root of vitality, the reservoir of Jing and the primary source of internal balance. When internal water flows, the body rejuvenates and the mind regains its clarity. When this water becomes cloudy or stagnant, perverse energies take hold, pain crystallises and perception becomes clouded. Thus, healing with water does not consist of seeking an external power, but of attuning oneself to the way in which it reveals what, within oneself, has strayed from the Dao.
The ancients said that water never attacks what it regenerates. It does not correct, it restores. What it removes, it does not tear away: it unties. Cold water awakens the depths; hot water softens the internal pathways; stagnant water keeps the memory of wounds; running water carries away what no longer has a place. Each form has its own language, and healing consists of understanding that language and allowing it to work without haste. The Taoist master recognises in water the very principle of transformation: the ability to bring everything back to a state where life can reorganise itself.
There is a special moment in the experience of water, when the body surrenders completely to its presence. Immersion, even brief or partial, causes a relaxation that is not only muscular: the usual density of the mind becomes fluid. The inner boundaries, usually so rigid, dissolve just enough for old tensions to rise to the surface or vanish in a movement that escapes conscious control. This process, which some traditions have ritualised in the form of sacred baths, silent ablutions or repeated passages around a pool, is identical in essence to what internal Taoism calls ‘returning to the root’. When one returns to the root, even for a moment, blockages that seemed immovable lose their hardness and are carried away.
Spring waters, in particular, have always been considered to possess a special virtue. Emerging from the depths, they have not yet encountered the defilements of the outside world. Their freshness is not only physical: it bears the signature of a perfect, intact, unmixed Yin. Ancient healers said that drinking water that has just emerged is like absorbing a fragment of the origin of the world. Each sip contains the echo of a time when the breath was not yet divided, when life and mystery were not separate. This belief is not naive, for those who taste truly pure water feel a subtle movement deep within their belly, like a door reopening or sleep being interrupted.
It is common in popular traditions, as in Taoist arts, to associate a gesture or object with water to increase its therapeutic power. A stone placed in the stream before being applied to the body, a piece of cloth dipped in consecrated water before being tied around a weakened limb, an herb picked in the morning and infused in rainwater—all these gestures obey the same principle: water absorbs and transmits. Water is not only a vector; it becomes the place where intention, the essence of the plant, the breath of the practitioner and the condition of the patient come together to form a new configuration. When water is called upon to heal, it works both in the visible and the invisible, in the flesh and in memory, in sensation and in destiny. What it touches, it reinscribes into the continuity of the world, where breaks can be mended.
Healing through water is never separate from healing of the spirit. Those who seek to cure their ailments by approaching sacred water already place themselves in a special state of mind: they renounce their agitation for a moment and accept that something else is at work within them. In this way, healing begins even before contact with the water. The simple act of walking towards a wet place, hearing the sound of a hidden stream, smelling the scent of moss or soggy earth, prepares the mind to lay down its burdens. The murmur of water acts as a natural incantation. It draws attention inward and diverts the mind from its usual fixations.
Taoists say that water teaches healing through its very attitude. It does not contradict itself. It does not oppose. It does not impose. It envelops. It welcomes. It transforms without violence. Everything that truly heals follows this path. It is not force that liberates, but the ability to let go. It is not effort that restores, but the dissolution of excess. Water does not heal by adding something, but by removing what hinders. It does not give health as one offers an object: it simply allows the living to remember how to breathe when they are no longer contracted.
Thus, when Taoist masters speak of the Art of Water Healing, they are not referring to a technique, but to an agreement. To heal oneself with water is learning to imitate its movement, to embrace its patience, to recognise that what seems frozen within oneself is only so because the mind clings to old forms. Water reveals that nothing is meant to remain still. When its teaching is integrated, the body becomes fluid again, the mind becomes spacious again, and the breath regains its natural axis.
Healing through water, ultimately, means returning to a state of original flexibility. It means allowing the inner world to become once again a landscape where Qi flows freely. Water never imposes its healing: it offers a path, and that path leads us back to primal simplicity, where life flows smoothly, like a stream that never wonders how to cross the stones that stand in its way.
The Magic of Daxuan Water
1. Sacred springs and wells: the gateway to the depths
This first part explores the places where water springs forth or sinks into the ground, understood as points of access to the invisible. Springs, wells and ancient fountains have always been perceived as nodes of power, ‘gateways’ through which the human world and the spirit world meet.
We study the healing rites associated with wells, offerings, the role of protective trees, traditions of silence, ritual movements around the basin, the use of pins, fabrics and personal objects, as well as the power conferred by the presence of a guardian of the place.
This part forms the foundation of the course, as it teaches how to approach water with respect, attentiveness and connection.
2. Pools, ponds and lakes: mirrors of the threshold
The second part deals with still waters, whose smooth surface becomes a subtle boundary between worlds. These waters have a symbolic depth: they attract, disturb, hypnotise and reveal often ambivalent presences.
The study focuses on magical practices associated with natural or man-made pools, the use of stagnant waters as receptacles for influences, rites of banishment or removal of evil spells, nocturnal initiations near lakes, and visionary experiences reported in these places.
It also addresses strange phenomena—sounds, illusions, altered states of consciousness—understood as manifestations of the spirit of the place.
3. Rivers and currents: the art of letting go
This section focuses on moving water. It is associated with the release of burdens, dynamic purification, the dissolution of obstacles, and the symbolic transport of evil or disease.
Rivers teach us to let go and embrace continuous transformation.
We learn how to entrust a problem to the current, how to create enchanted waters from stones heated and immersed in the flow, how to use a river to break a spell, protect ourselves, reveal a lie or guide a destiny.
We also study the rites of healers, charms passed down through Romani traditions, and taboos related to crossing white water.
4. The sea: the realm of primordial forces
Coasts, tides, storms, and the immensity of the sea are the subject matter of this module.
The sea is perceived as the greatest magical power of water, linked to destiny, creative chaos, irresistible change, and pacts with spirits.
It focuses on banishment rites performed at low tide, the practice of selling winds, maritime protection, charms against drowning, fossils and corals used as amulets, storms invoked or diverted, as well as sea spirits, mermaids, guardians and intermediary beings.
This section reveals how the sea represents the raw power of deep Yin, capable of both giving and taking away.
5. Dew: celestial water
The fifth section focuses on dew, considered a subtle, light water, directly derived from the celestial breath.
It is renowned for its virtues of beauty, regeneration and protection. In magical history, the dew of the first of May is the most sought-after; it is used to clarify vision, purify the skin, heal certain bodily weaknesses, protect against the evil eye or act on the fertility of the land and livestock.
This module teaches the traditional way of collecting it, the use of fabrics, silent gestures, secret routes, as well as its function in pastoral witchcraft rituals.
6. Enchanted waters: creating, blessing, transforming
This part teaches how to prepare consecrated or charmed waters.
It is about understanding the absorptive power of water, its ability to retain an intention, the breath of a ritual or the essence of a plant.
You will learn the processes for blessing water without a priest, immersing metals, stones, fossils and medicinal herbs in it, or charging it with words, silence, heat or light.
This section links folk magic to ancient ritual processes: healing waters, protective waters, exorcism waters, waters that carry influence.
7. Hydromancy: reading the messages of the world
This section introduces the art of divination through water in all its forms.
Still waters serve as mirrors, running waters reveal trajectories, and distorted surfaces offer visions and omens.We study reflection techniques, apparitions, bubbles, floating objects, colours, shadows, metals melted in water (molybdomancy), eggs thrown into water (oomancy), and the spontaneous movements of fish in certain wells.
This module develops the ability to perceive the emergence of signs rather than projecting a prefabricated meaning.
8. Water spirits: guardians, deities, liminal beings
The eighth part focuses on entities associated with water: dragons, mermaids, nymphs, water horses, night hags, healing deities, well spirits, and guardians of springs.
We study their role, their manifestations, their demands, their potential dangers, and how to approach them according to ancient traditions.
These beings embody the living relationship between humans and the subtle world. Learning the magic of water involves learning to live with them, to honour them, to avoid offending them, and to recognise their signs.
9. Water and traditional witchcraft: the circle, the cauldron, and initiation
The last part addresses the most esoteric and initiatory dimension: the place of water at the heart of witchcraft.
It explores the use of water to purify a circle, open a passage, awaken internal forces, prepare a ritual, or consecrate tools.
It also covers magical baptisms, initiatory immersions, the relationship between water, symbolic death and rebirth, the use of water in supernatural tests, protections, exorcisms, and the role of cauldrons as matrices of transformation.
This section bridges the gap between popular magic and inner work, revealing that water, in ancient traditions, is also a symbol of fluid consciousness that serves as a gateway to the Otherworld.
The course is available this month, in December, and I am asking for €500.
