A Water Ritual: Cleaning and clearing away the debris and welcoming the compassionate mercy of Goddess Kuan Yin
The Beginning
My relationship with water was born out of my initiation into motherhood. I have two boys, two years apart. The conflicts within my family began shortly after the birth of my second child.
What began as early days of intense sibling jealousy and spousal stress turned into months and then years. I was in a constant state of anger and distress, and it took a toll on every aspect of my health and wellness. Not only was I chronically anxious and angry, but I physically felt unwell. When my children were three and five years old, I came close to having a nervous breakdown. I was balancing on one leg, wobbling on the line of sanity and total chaos. I finally reached out to my primary doctor and got help with antidepressants.
The mood stabilizers allowed me to be present with my family without feeling like I was going to break. I began doing a bit of therapy, although nothing consistent. These attempts were band-aids, an emergency triage solution that enabled me to remain functional, yet deeply disconnected with life.
When my boys were six and eight years of age, they gave me a beautiful statue of Kuan Yin for my birthday. Kuan Yin is the Chinese Goddess of compassion and mercy, and this was the second time in a short period that I had been gifted her statue. I had always been a spiritual person, although since having children I had mostly lost that part of myself. By this point, I was reaching back to Spirit with the hopes of letting my devotion be my saving grace. Kuan Yin’s arrival was synchronistic. I had created a large garden in our home and tended the plants with reverence and love. I began to pray and meditate, followed by a practice of offering food, drink, and objects to my ancestors and the ancestors of the land.
When I received Kuan Yin, I lovingly placed Her in the garden and felt instinctively called to put a bowl of water in front of her and fill it with flowers. My prayers for peace and release flowed out of me through the waters of my body and into the bowl. Something deep stirred within, and my healing journey with water began.
Kuan Yin Altar in the Garden, Photo credit: April Aronoff
The Beginning
My relationship with water was born out of my initiation into motherhood. I have two boys, two years apart. The conflicts within my family began shortly after the birth of my second child.
What began as early days of intense sibling jealousy and spousal stress turned into months and then years. I was in a constant state of anger and distress, and it took a toll on every aspect of my health and wellness. Not only was I chronically anxious and angry, but I physically felt unwell. When my children were three and five years old, I came close to having a nervous breakdown. I was balancing on one leg, wobbling on the line of sanity and total chaos. I finally reached out to my primary doctor and got help with antidepressants.
The mood stabilizers allowed me to be present with my family without feeling like I was going to break. I began doing a bit of therapy, although nothing consistent. These attempts were band-aids, an emergency triage solution that enabled me to remain functional, yet deeply disconnected with life.
When my boys were six and eight years of age, they gave me a beautiful statue of Kuan Yin for my birthday. Kuan Yin is the Chinese Goddess of compassion and mercy, and this was the second time in a short period that I had been gifted her statue. I had always been a spiritual person, although since having children I had mostly lost that part of myself. By this point, I was reaching back to Spirit with the hopes of letting my devotion be my saving grace. Kuan Yin’s arrival was synchronistic. I had created a large garden in our home and tended the plants with reverence and love. I began to pray and meditate, followed by a practice of offering food, drink, and objects to my ancestors and the ancestors of the land.
When I received Kuan Yin, I lovingly placed Her in the garden and felt instinctively called to put a bowl of water in front of her and fill it with flowers. My prayers for peace and release flowed out of me through the waters of my body and into the bowl. Something deep stirred within, and my healing journey with water began.
Kuan Yin Altar in the Garden, Photo credit: April Aronoff
Kuan Yin and Water
As the Goddess of Compassion and Mercy, Kuan Yin is deeply tied to water and its miraculous healing abilities. Kuan Yin is known as a bodhisattva, an enlightened being who earned the right to transcend to heaven through her service to humanity. Yet She chose to stay behind until all beings were free from suffering.
Kuan Yin is often portrayed holding or pouring water from a vase in one hand and a willow branch in the other. The water in the vase is known as the Water of Life, capable of relieving suffering or sickness, while the willow branch is used to sprinkle the divine water across the world. Willow trees are often found by ponds or lakes and symbolize that which can bend but not break.
Lotus flowers represent purity and wisdom, whose roots begin in the depths of muddy ponds, rivers, or lakes. They rise to the surface each morning and bloom into beautiful flowers. At night they submerge again, only to re-emerge each morning in full glorious bloom. This daily baptism and rebirth continue throughout the flower's life cycle.
Other images of Kuan Yin show her standing on a lotus flower or riding a dragon on a body of water or with a sea of dragons representing strength, flowing water, life force, and divine transformation, connecting her deeply to these elements. Here Kuan Yin is known as the mistress of the sea.
It is through the energies of Kuan Yin and her connection to water that we experience forgiveness, compassion, and love. These energies are a gateway, a portal to powerful transformation through the alchemy of flowing water.
Other images of Kuan Yin show her standing on a lotus flower or riding a dragon on a body of water or with a sea of dragons representing strength, flowing water, life force, and divine transformation, connecting her deeply to these elements. Here Kuan Yin is known as the mistress of the sea.
It is through the energies of Kuan Yin and her connection to water that we experience forgiveness, compassion, and love. These energies are a gateway, a portal to powerful transformation through the alchemy of flowing water.
The Practice
I began a regular devotional practice to Kuan Yin by offering flower bowls filled with water and prayers.
Garden Flower Offerings with Goddesses, Photos provided by the author: April Aronoff
I would pick the flowers from my sacred garden and arrange them in a beautiful bowl. I committed to this practice. As I gathered the flowers and placed them in the water, I would fill the bowl with prayers to find peace within myself and my family. I was desperate and consumed, so profoundly angry with the chaos that motherhood had ushered into my life. Every act of chaos within my family brought back my childhood suffering, which I relived on a daily basis. Stuck in a loop of anger and suffering through the experience of having small children who were wild, aggressive, and out of control, my marriage was struggling to survive these storms.
Each week I would pour the water from the flower bowl back into the Earth and begin again. It was through this ritual that my life began to shift.
Kuan Yin and her water bowls were my lifelines. Over and over, I got down on my knees and prayed for Her to transmute my anger into compassion. With each bowl of water that I filled with prayers and poured back into the Earth, a piece of anger softened and released. My yearning for peace went deep - deep into my soul. My suffering was deep too, as childhood and ancestral sufferings often are. I knew this was the only path to grace, through the power of water. The alternative was not an option.
As I continued my prayers and offerings, I experienced more compassion for my family and less anger. My prayers and offerings were pure alchemy, a frequency of magic that like water, began to cleanse the anger. Slowly I cracked open steam began to rise out of me, coalescing anger and pain that were able to release through the alchemy of Kuan Yin’s water. As this release occurred, profound compassion and peace began to flood every crevice of my being. It was as if water was being poured and absorbed from within my soul. This spiritual anointing and baptism with Kuan Yin’s waters had been building for years. I was re-born.
Giving Back
My children are now teens, having reached the ages of fifteen and seventeen. There is still a rivalry, but they are also friends. Some days are wonderful while others are difficult. Remaining open to forgiveness and compassion through Kuan Yin’s water is something I must tend to each day. It is through that tending, the waters within my being flow - transmuting anything hard that enters my space. When I stop this tending, as happens with the busyness of life, the anger returns. Enlightenment in this modern age is a process.
Tending water is a calling. I do it, not just for myself and my family, but for the Earth and all of humanity. With climate change, water is at a dire point of remaining sustainable for all of life. Prayers, offerings, and lifestyle changes are essential if we are to go on to have access to clean water. My deepest desire is for humans to come together out of love for this planet to heal our waters. As I continue to offer prayers and flowers to the many water bowls scattered around my garden, I hold this vision in the highest light. It is my turn to give back to the water.
Read April's story of connection with the divine feminine and Kuan Yin and the Goddess helped her to heal. She also teaches us how to set-up our own practice too! #water #earth #goddess
How-to set up a home water practice
Here are suggestions for beginning a home water practice.
An altar is a designated sacred space devoted to practicing ritual. Feel free to change or add as it resonates with you.
Items for the Altar and Practice
Location. It can be a table or any surface, or even the ground outside.
A beautiful cloth that is water-inspired (optional).
A special or sacred vessel to hold the water.
Blessed or sacred water. You can bless it yourself to make it sacred. Simply make a prayer or blessing while spiraling your finger in the water counterclockwise. This brings the water molecules together (structures them) and infuses the water with your prayer.
Shells, sand, rocks, sticks, or other items from nature that come from a water source.
Water animal totems, such as pictures, objects, or representations of (ocean, river, or pond) water animals, including dolphins, whales, jellyfish, starfish, otters, beavers, etc.
Water spirit totems, such as pictures, objects, or representations of mermaids, selkies, water dragons, naiads, nymphs, or any water spirit or Goddess that resonates. Of course, I have Kuan Yin on my water altar!
Any object that has spiritual significance for you or is tied to water. I like to include pictures or objects of angels, statues of goddesses, pictures of my ancestors, feathers, and crystals.
Setting Up
Make sure all your objects and altar space are energetically cleared and cleansed. Some options include smoke cleansing. This involves burning rosemary, lavender, saint john's wort, or cedar and letting the smoke surround your objects and space. You can also take stalks of fresh or dried rosemary, dip them in warm salt water (homemade), and sprinkle them on the objects and around your space. You can also let the objects sit in sea salt for 30 minutes. All of these methods discharge negative energy from people, places, and things, leaving you with cleansed and cleared altar items.
Place the cloth on the altar.
Fill your vessel with the sacred water and fill it with flowers or crystals if you wish. Place it on the altar.
Begin to place the other objects where you feel called. Go where you feel guided. This is the best way to work with the energies.
The Practice
Sit in front of your altar.
Hold your water vessel, or place your hands on top of the vessel. Anoint yourself with this water where you feel called on your body. Suggestions can be your third eye, crown chakra, heart, belly, or feet. Anointing is a self blessing by placing the water on your body.
Make a prayer into the water for personal or planetary healing. You can also send healing to a specific person, place, or thing and direct it into the water. Ask that this happen for the highest good.
Another option is to take the water vessel outside and hold it up to the sky or place it on the Earth, invoking whatever connection to Spirit you wish to create. This is done through your prayers and intentions.
Pour the water into the Earth with a final prayer. Alternatively, you can place the bowl back on your altar and repeat this practice until you feel complete, and then pour the water into the Earth.
Refill the bowl and begin again.
Change the objects on your altar as you wish.
Water Feature with Blessed Mother Statue, Photo credit: April Aronoff
