Mainly for the initiated and the speculative.
This is no more than a syncretic speculation, but it feels right to me.
One day a few years ago, I was at the Chalice Well in Glastonbury, watching the water cascade down the Flow Forms and noting the to-and-fro swirls and rhythms of the water. I thought of the energy in the human body, and the Flow Forms reminded me a bit of a spine. It also reminded me of the patterning of Hermes' staff -- the Caduceus. Later I read John Wilkes' book, and learned that he had called his workshops, where the Flow Forms were developed, Virbela Workshops -- after the German word for spine. So, bearing in mind the water flow, and the Caduceus as a symbol of life energy and the healing process, I hypothesised that the shape of the vertebrae in the back serves as, and is intended as, a waveguide for the Vital Force. Wilkes seemed to attribute special significance to the swirling lemniscatory (figure-of-eight) movement which is so striking in some of the forms. This pulsating lemniscation is achieved purely by the form, and requires no power or motive input, and is fascinating to observe.
In his book, I also read how a Flow Form cascade, installed in the feed to a pool, appeared to induce fish to congregate near its outflow in preference to the outflow from a normal pipe, and to induce the pool to create a bacterial bloom earlier in the spring than did a pond without this special design of inflow. In other words, around the outfall of water which had experienced a lemniscatory motion and rhythmic fluctuation imparted by the Flow Forms, there seemed to be significant vitalising effects on the pool and its inhabitants.
This notion reminded me of something else. When first learning about adrenal fatigue (hypoadrenia), we were shown that one of its effects is to reduce/eliminate 'tail waggle'. Do this experiment: find a man/woman walking down the street, and discreetly observe or follow him/her. Watch his/her sacrum and hips. Do they move, or is their sacrum locked? If the latter, the walk is unlikely to be a sexy one. But if it moves, it seems usually to be in one of two ways: --
1) The sacrum may move forwards and back on alternate sides, as the person walks forward. OR,
2) The sacrum may tilt diagonally alternately to the right and the left, as the person walks,creating its own lemniscatory pattern.
Of the two, the latter is greatly more attractive and ' sexy ' than the former.
This led me to wonder if it may not be that the rocking lemniscatory movement which appears to impart something to water to which both fish and algae respond, does not perhaps have some important function in relation to the Life Force?
I have always been puzzled about the sacrum. Why is it the "holy bone"? I thought perhaps it was a remnant of its being used in Roman auguries, but on consulting a classics scholar I was told there was no apparent use of it in that way, and that it might more probably have been a Greek usage. However, that appeared to be a dead end as well. I have since found that it is also considered in other cultures - completely removed from the european tradition - to have a sacred quality.When the same view develops in completely separated cultures over a long period of time, I consider that prima facie grounds for suspecting they may relate to something real, even if that flies in the face of currently accepted common opinion.
I remember a lecture in which a speaker suggested that in the famous verse in Ecclesiastes ("Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern"), the term "golden bowl" refers to the dome of the skull, into which the Life Force descends from above. I feel this is probably wrong: I think it may refer to the bowl of the pelvis -- the bowl in which new life is nurtured and where presumably the life force, of which orthodox science and medicine are currently so lamentably ignorant, are anchored and focused.
The sacrum then becomes the point at which the life force -- the silver cord, with a lemniscatory movement of its two currents (Ida and Pingala in the Vedic tradition) around the central column (Shushumna) -- is anchored and focused into the centre of the bowl.
I do not think that it is coincidence that the womb in women, and in men the area known in the Taoist subtle body tradition as the Sperm Palace, are directly in front of the sacrum. This is the place where nature focuses, and possibly amplifies, the life force entering the body, and creates and nurtures new life. The holy bone, indeed!
The alluringly attractive movement of the pelvis which I mentioned above is, I think, no coincidence. Nor is it coincidence that in very many people, it disappears by midlife, when normally insemination, conception, pregnancy, and childbirth have ceased. The sacrum recreates the lemniscatory movement which in water seems to attract fish so much, and we may presume, amplifies the vitality of water --, and which is created by the Flow Forms replicating the waveguide functions of the human vertebrae.
(This raises for me the fascinating possibility that our anatomical understanding, detailed though it may be, is partial: some of the functions of our anatomy may exist only when it is in motion, and cannot be seen or understood by studying corpses, skeletons, and images. We do, of course. know that piezoelectric processes, for example, are important physiologically, and require movement and motion for activation. But if my speculation is correct, this would be a function of a different order altogether .
The possibility that motion in itself brings some of our physiological or quasi-physiological functioning into being reminds me of another anatomical/physiological problem which I think may currently be totally outside our comprehension and understanding, yet vitally important. I refer to the form and locations of our organs and systems. Somebody once asked me ' Why do the adrenals sit on top of the kidneys? ' I had no idea why that might be, and it had never even entered my head to ask. When I asked the same question of a learned and well-respected practitioner, he laughingly said "Well, that's just the way it is". But I don't think that Nature does things so casually. I suspect that each organ is the shape it is because that shape is intimately and functionally related to its activity in ways we do not yet comprehend. And similarly, though gravity obviously has an important part to play in,say, digestion and excretion, I suspect that the relative placement of the organs, particularly where they are proximal, is of deep significance).
So,I am suggesting that it may be that the quasi-lemniscatory motion of the two streams of the Vital Force are guided down the spine by the forms of the vertebrae, and come together in the focusing form of the sacrum, projecting that powerful energy into the bowl of the pelvis where (in the Taoist tradition) sperm arises, and indubitably new life is formed and nurtured.. The lemniscatory movement of the sacrum within the pelvis in the young and early middle-aged (very few older people seem still to have this movement in their anatomy) ha a function - which cannot be deduced from the inert anatomy - in creating and amplifying fertility and nurturing the unborn child.
Death supervenes when that Vital Force ceases to play down the spine and into the pelvis, for reasons of old age, illness, or trauma. The Silver Cord loses or releases its anchorage and focus in the Holy Bone, and is released from the Golden Bowl, which is the cradle of the Life Force in every one of us.