Psyhwyash'e
Spirit of rivers and springs — feminine, mercurial, life-giving.
Mythology
Psyhwyash'e is the presiding power of running water: the spring the village depends on, the river that both feeds and drowns. She is described as beautiful and changeable, generous to those who approach her properly and pitiless to those who foul her.
Women drawing water addressed her before dipping. In drought years a girl was dressed in leaves and carried to the river in a rain procession — a rite that survived in the Hantseguash observances into the twentieth century.
Sacred Correspondences
- ·Springs, rivers, wells
- ·Fertility and childbirth
- ·Healing waters
- ·Change and mood
- ·Fish and river stones
- ·Riverbanks and fords
- ·Springs and wellheads
- ·Rain-swollen streams
- ·Flowers set on the water
- ·A ribbon tied at a spring
- ·Silver — a coin, a ring
- ·Clearing rubbish from a bank
- ·River blue-green
- ·Silver
- ·Reed brown
- ·Three (source, course, mouth)
- ·Nine
- ·Never foul, dam, or pollute a spring or stream.
- ·Do not take water without a word first.
- ·Do not swim or wade in anger.
- ·Do not remove stones from a spring's mouth.
Establishing a Relationship
Adopt one specific body of water near you — a creek, a spring, a stretch of river — and visit it in every season. Speak to that water, not to water in general. Clean it.
Bring your grief and your indecision to her; she is the deity of things that move and change. Do not expect consistency in return.
A Ritual
- 1Go to your chosen water at first light with an empty vessel.
- 2Kneel or crouch at the edge and greet her by name before touching the water.
- 3Set a flower or a strand of ribbon on the surface and let it go downstream.
- 4Fill the vessel in one smooth motion, without splashing.
- 5Ask your question aloud, once, and listen to the water for as long as you can stand.
- 6Take the water home and use it — for bread, for washing, for a plant. It must not be stored or hoarded.
Rituals presented here are respectful reconstructions drawn from ethnographic description and contemporary Khabze practice, compiled by an outsider for educational purposes. Practice varies by family, village, and diaspora community.