In keeping with Colquhoun’s personal spiritual landscape, I Saw Water is a syncretic novel: within its pages ceremonial magic, alchemy, pagan nature worship, and theosophical teachings all happily rub shoulders with Roman Catholicism. In fact, as was the case with Colquhoun’s earlier novel Goose of Hermogenes, the hermetic is embedded in the novel’s structure. In Goose of Hermogenes, progress through the chapters reflected the heroine’s progress through the stages of alchemical transformation. In I Saw Water, Colquhoun originally intended to represent the heroine’s spiritual advancement by ascending, chapter by chapter, through the sephiroth of the Qabalistic Tree of Life, from Malkuth in chapter 1 to Kether in the final chapter. Her notes show that she also considered associating the chapters with a Christian journey: progression along the Stations of the Cross or the Mysteries of the Rosary. In the final scheme, however, she rejected both the Qabalistic and the Christian paths, choosing instead to name each chapter after one or another of the geomantic figures.
Geomancy is a traditional technique of divination believed to have originated in the Middle East at some uncertain time in the past. It achieved some popularity in the twentieth century thanks largely to its advocacy by Golden Dawn–influenced magicians, but never to the extent achieved by another divinatory technique: Tarot readings. In geomancy, the inquirer generally makes a series of marks upon a sheet of paper, renouncing all conscious control. The resulting pattern is then classified according to a formula to produce one of a number of standard figures. Each of the geomantic figures is known by a Latin name and has a range of meanings, derived in part from its planetary and zodiacal associations.14 So, for example, the figure Laetitia, which Colquhoun translates as “Joy,” governs chapter 13 and signifies progression and happiness. For the chapter in which the heroine finally achieves complete separation from all her earthbound concerns, its relevance is clear.
Colquhoun’s adoption of the geomantic figures was a late decision, made after the basic structure of the novel had been determined. According to Israel Regardie, geomancy and other methods of divination are not used primarily to predict what is to come. Instead, they are used to facilitate the expression and growth of inner psychospiritual abilities by placing practitioners in contact with internal or external forces of which they are unaware.15 Colquhoun uses the figures, therefore, not to prefigure what might lie ahead, but as a commentary on the psychological state of her characters, their development, and their circumstances.
Despite these structural changes, the idea of a journey remains central to the novel, as all the characters are progressing, in their individual ways, toward their second death. The second death is a construct popularized in the West by the teachings of the Theosophical Society. Members of the society draw distinctions between a person’s physical body, their astral body, their mental body, and the immortal soul. There is no such thing as the finality of death as it is ordinarily understood; death is merely the laying aside of the physical body. The emotions and passions generated during life on earth continue to live on in the astral body until, with time, they become exhausted and fade away. When this process has finished, the second death takes place, but the soul survives and will later occupy another physical body. Over the course of many such cycles of reincarnation, the soul evolves until, ultimately, it dispenses with material phases altogether, existing only in a world of thought-forms.16
Sister Brigid, Charlotte, Dr. Wiseacre, Roli, and the novel’s other characters are in a dynamic state of disequilibrium and do not necessarily understand what is happening (some readers may share the feeling). This is because, although they are physically dead, their personalities are still active in the astral body and they continue to see, hear, think, and feel. But gradually the fact that physical death has occurred becomes inescapable. It is then that the second death can occur. This is the journey that the heroine makes during the course of I Saw Water. Arriving at Ménec as Ella de Maine, she becomes Sister Brigid for the duration of her stay at the convent. Once she has moved beyond the convent, she finally loses all sense of personal identity. Name and personality are attributes that, along with her possessions, she casts aside: “Everything is free and I am free of everything,” she says in her culminating insight (page 134).
THE PHYSICAL SETTING OF I SAW WATER
The place where people live their lives influences the nature of the lives they lead. In turn, those lives leave their mark upon the place. This is as true of inner, spiritual lives as it is of outer, practical ones. Religious beliefs and activities have a reciprocal interaction with the locality. Beliefs may be inspired or strengthened by natural features, and, conversely, beliefs and observances leave their imprint on the landscape—for instance, in the placement of devotional buildings and funerary monuments. As beliefs change over time, their history may be read in the archaeological record and in place names. There can be few places in Europe that demonstrate this more convincingly than Brittany, where the events in I Saw Water take place.17
Brittany is a region of northwestern France. It is a peninsula, jutting out from the mainland into the Atlantic Ocean. Its remoteness has led to cultural as well as physical isolation. Brittany has, for example, retained its own language, folklore, and musical traditions. Archaeologically, it is a highly ritualized landscape, containing prehistoric stone circles, megalithic tombs, and stone avenues in abundance. It was Christianized by missionaries from Wales in the sixth century and still possesses a rich diversity of saints and religious communities. Christian worship has left its physical mark in the erection of churches and the adaptation of pagan tombs. The Pardon—the celebration of a saint’s feast day, involving a procession, Mass, and feasting—is a uniquely Breton carnival.
For I Saw Water, Colquhoun drew heavily upon her personal knowledge of Brittany—its places, customs, and festivals. At the time when she was writing her novel, she was an active member of the British Druid Order. As a fellow Druid visiting from Cornwall, she was able to take part in the rites of a Breton Gorsedd (a large gathering devoted to spiritual, poetic, and musical celebrations) and attend at least one religious pardon in 1961.
Many of the place names in the novel are authentic locations in Brittany, although Colquhoun often adapts them for her own purposes. The novel is set on the island of Ménec, which Colquhoun identifies with the Island of the Dead. In reality, Ménec is not an island but the mainland site of vast prehistoric avenues of standing stones (fig. 2). Although the purpose of these enigmatic stone rows is largely obscure, their connection with Neolithic funeral rituals and beliefs is not in doubt. They, and many dolmens, are orientated according to astronomical events concerning the movements of the sun and moon. One of the most extensive of these alignments, containing more than one thousand stones and extending over four thousand feet in length, is known locally as the House of the Dead. In light of this, Colquhoun’s poetic identification of Ménec with the Island of the Dead is easily understood. Similarly, Cruz-Moquen, the name Colquhoun gives to a neighboring island, in reality is not an island either, but the site of a prehistoric dolmen that has been Christianized by the erection of a Calvary cross on top of its capstone (fig. 3). By adopting and adapting these locations, Colquhoun is indicating that they are sacred spaces of lasting spiritual significance. She locates the novel’s action in places that have been associated with worship, death, and rebirth since prehistory. Religious beliefs and ceremonies may change with the passage of time—pagan, Catholic, or neo-Druidic—but the sequence of changing observances over millennia provides a sense of continuity and natural order. More than that, because of their astronomical alignments, these places are tied to solar and lunar rhythms that predate and will outlast human presence.
From the outset, Colquhoun is at pains to emphasize the rhythms of nature. Sister Brigid, whose very name recalls the Celtic triple goddess, devotes her time to seasonal pastoral activities and to