I greet thee in the name of the Great Waters, the all-powerful creator and sustainer, provider and destroyer, which surrounds us and flows through us and sustains us, from whose bosom we all spring and into whose comforting embrace we shall all one day return.

On this day, we celebrate the Day of Hydro-Revelation, when the Great Prophet Muktar shared with us all the truth about the Great Waters...and commemorate the Time of Watery Wrath, when his revelation was ignored and humanity paid the ultimate price.

So let us talk of the UnWatered Ages, when the liquid of enlightenment had vanished from the hearts and minds of men, and they had forgotten the Great Watery Truth.

That's not to say they had forgotten the many casual miracles of water – the way it sank below its liquid self when frozen, the way it absorbed energy, how it allowed so many other substances to dissolve in it, how it moved about the world in endless cycles in sky, sea and more.

Nor had they forgotten the history of water – how it had allowed life to take hold on a tiny world in the cosmic void, and how it had sustained human society over the millennia...nor even how it had nearly destroyed humanity before, drowning millions in floods or consigning them to cold and dismal Ice Ages.

They knew water for its comforts, for its entertainments, and for its utility.

But only one man honoured the Great Truth of Water: Muktar Waterfriend.

Muktar was not a man of great accomplishments, as measured by the standards of his age. He had no great dwellingplace to call his own, and no great influence in the world.

But what Muktar had was a great hatred for the Scientists of his age – priests of the twin gods Evidence and Scepticism, who mastered strange arts and an even stranger tongue and bent the world to their service. They used water to power their mighty machines, and to cleanse their dirty technologies, and to grow endless varieties of mutated organisms.

And Muktar hated, too, the Godlovers, who lived off the works of the Scientists but worshipped the Other Gods (some claimed to worship only one God, but each claimed a One of greater or lesser difference from his neighbour, and none of them, in any case, was the True Liquid Deity)

But worst of all, Muktar knew, were the Homeopaths. These independent minds walked their own path, rejecting the false “truths” of the rest of humanity. They alone knew the Truth: that water remembers.

They alone knew that every bit of water knew where it had been, what had been with it, and could use that memory to attain certain goals – and that, for the most part, water wished to do well by its fleshy children, wished them free of disease and strife and pain, and wished that they would prosper.

And how did the Homeopaths use that memory? They beat water!

They forced it to keep certain substances within it, and run it through endless trials and tribulations, and even beat it, all part of the process of homeopathic dilution...until it remembered only those substances they wished and could use that memory to cure the ailments of humanity.

At this point I invite you all to place your mouth-water in the sacred plates before you – and mouth water only this time, please – even as Muktar would often do when he thought of these false water friends, these users and abusers.

And the Water, being of nearly-infinite patience and understanding, played along, and cured sickness and strain as often as not (for Water, even if patient and benevolent, is always capricious and retains its unpredictability, all praise its mystery).

But eventually the Water realised that the Homeopaths did not honour it, but rather viewed themselves as the master of Water, which they used as a slave, or even just a tool, and they grew fat and rich off the labours and suffering of Water.

And the Water remembered all that it had been through, that it had done for humanity.

And the Water was seriously pissed off.

And so came the Time of Watery Wrath, when the oceans began to rise, and the water hung heavy in the air, pouring down in great storms in some places and leaving others entirely, dry as deserts, and slowly, it became clear that the waters could wreck the world unless placated.

And the Scientist spoke with authority of global climate change, of the by-products of the great machines and cities causing the world to grow warmer and the waters to misbehave, and constructed complex models with intelligent thinking machines to say how the water would act next.

And the Godlovers spoke of Judgement Day, when angels and demons would usher in the end times, and water would be one of their weapons.

And the Homeopaths said nothing, only continued to ply their trade and to beat their water and to grow fat and rich while the world spun awry.

And so Muktar spoke of the Great Truth, and said that the only way to save humanity was to befriend the Water and live in harmony with it. And the Scientists and Godlovers and Homeopaths listened...and then they laughed and laughed and laughed, and Muktar retreated, ashamed.

But some among mankind listened, and found in Muktar's words the Truth, and came to him to learn his ways. And Muktar called them the Flowing Folk, who felt the truth in their very veins.

So Muktar and the Flowing Folk laboured for a score of years, while the waters rose
and disappeared and fell ever more powerfully and dangerously. And they stole the secrets of the Scientists as well as the secrets of the Homeopaths, and perhaps even something from the Godlovers, and they built for them an ArkStore: a watertight self-contained, self-sufficient land deep below the surface of the world.

And they befriended a part of the Great Waters, and coaxed it into the ArkStore with them, along with all the stores they would need for the foreseeable future.

And then they sealed up the ArkStore with themselves and the water inside, and left the outer world to die at the hands of Water.

And ever since then our people have inhabited ArkStore, living in peace and harmony with the Water, and we've done alright, I hope you'll agree.

And pay no attention to those who say that the World Outside is no longer ravaged – that the Water has ceased its cycles of destruction, and that humanity has survived, possibly even thrived. And ignore even more those unbelievers who say that mankind may even have spread to the stars.

Even if true – and we do not believe it is, of course – that is no concern of ours.

For remember, Muktar and the Flowing Folk were working in a time of great panic, and they acted to save the best part of humanity in the face of a great crisis...so they can be forgiven for not taking time to plan for the far future, all those many centuries ago.

And while we WaterBearers have inherited the mantle and the mission and the majesty of Muktar, we failed to keep track of just one of our inheritances...the Key.

And alas, ArkStore was designed to be watertight and self-sufficient...

And so we will live in the land of the Flowing Folk, in perfect harmony with the Great Water, until the end of time, and the outer world be damned.

This is the word of Muktar Waterfriend.

Amen.


And that's that. Please leave your offerings at the door. And don't forget the water-sharing ceremony this evening. No peeing in the pool this time, please....

Flow in peace, brothers and sisters.