23/03/2026
We gathered beneath the desert sky — women of many lands and lineages, drawn by the quiet pulse of remembrance.
This sacred water ritual, designed and led by Cynthia Sciberras, was an offering from the Australian women,
who carried their ancestors and waters across oceans — bringing their spirit, grace, and devotion to this sacred exchange —
to the women of Marwar, the desert women of the Thar,
who carry water in vessels on their heads, and in sacred stories held in their bones and breath.
It was a meeting of waters — salt and sand, ocean and desert, memory and song.
Before the ceremony began, we walked the 500-year-old ashram grounds, foraging from her edible garden — herbs, petals, leaves, seeds, and stones.
Together, we built our earth altar from what the land offered — an earthen mandala, humble and radiant, that became our compass.
At its heart we placed the Śrī Yantra — the sacred geometry of the Divine Feminine,
a map of creation and dissolution, of expansion and return.
It reminded us that water too moves in patterns — spiralling, remembering, returning.
We invoked the Indian goddesses, calling upon their grace and guardianship —
honouring Ganga Maa, mother of rivers and purifier of all beings,
whose waters have carried prayers for millennia.
Here, we placed our prayers — for all the waters, for mothers, for memory.
The central vessel gathered waters from many places, mingling as one body, one breath.
As chanting rose, we followed in silence, carrying the waters to the great Mother Tree,
who stood as altar and witness. There, we poured the waters at her roots —
an offering of gratitude, grief, and renewal. The earth drank deeply, as if remembering us.
Hundreds of years ago, water was not called water, but The Waters — living, sacred, sentient.
Now, once more, we remembered her that way.
