The Natural Eco-Technological Theories of Viktor Schauberger

Viktor Schauberger's theories afford new insights into the naturally correct or naturalesque management of water. This encompasses its proper handling, storage, and conduction by means that promote its self-purification, the retention and enhancement of its natural energies and health. In this book, the close interrelationship between water and the forest (as a water-producer - not a water consumer) is examined. Also addressed is the problem of soil salinity and how this comes about through over-exposure of the soil to the radiance of the sun through deforestation and faulty agricultural practices, are also addressed. Indications are given as to how these may be avoided and overcome, due to Viktor Schauberger's radical and fundamentally new understanding of the coming into being and functioning of the groundwater table in relation to soil temperature.

As a natural organism, water is formed and functions according to Nature's laws and geometry, the latter exhibiting none of the elements of the straight line, circle and point, the basis of modern mechanical and technological artifacts. Reflecting Nature's principal constant, namely that of continuous change and transformation, the vortex epitomizes this form of open, fluid and flexible motion. Through his study of the vortices occurring naturally in flowing water and in the air in the form of cyclones and tornadoes, Viktor Schauberger developed his theories of implosion. It was through the research and development of these theories that he was able to produce spring-quality water and generate considerable energies in and with water and air.

In listing some of his accomplishments one could not do better than to quote from his book, "Our Senseless Toil", written in 1933:

"It is possible to regulate watercourses over any given distance without embankment works; to transport timber and other materials, even when heavier than water, for example ore, stones, etc., down the centre of such water-courses; to raise the height of the water table in the surrounding countryside and to endow the water with all those elements necessary for the prevailing vegetation. Furthermore it is possible in this way to render timber and other such materials non-inflammable and rot resistant; to produce drinking and spa-water for man, beast and soil of any desired composition and performance artificially, but in the way that it occurs in Nature; to raise water in a vertical pipe without pumping devices; to produce any amount of electricity and radiant energy almost without cost; to raise soil quality and to heal cancer, tuberculosis and a variety of nervous disorders... the practical implementation of this ... would without doubt signify a complete reorientation in all areas of science and technology. By application of these new found laws, I have already constructed fairly large installations in the spheres of log-rafting and river regulation, which as is known, have functioned faultlessly for a decade, and which today still present insoluble enigmas to the various scientific disciplines concerned."

Water and its vital interaction with the forest was Viktor's principal preoccupation. He viewed water as a living entity, the 'Blood of Mother-Earth', which is born in the womb of the forest. Our mechanistic, materialistic and extremely superficial way of looking at things, however, prevents us from considering water to be anything other than inorganic, i.e. supposedly without life but, while apparently having no life itself, can nevertheless miraculously create life in all its forms. Life is movement and is epitomized by water, which is in a constant state of motion and transformation, both externally and internally. In confirmation of this fact, water is able to combine with more substances than any other molecule and, flowing as water, sap and blood, is the creator of the myriad life-forms on this planet. How then could it ever be construed as life-less in accordance with the chemist's clinical view of water, defined as the inorganic substance H₂O ? This short description is a gross misrepresentation. As the fundamental basis of all life, water is itself a living entity and should be treated as such. Failure to do so quickly transforms it into an enemy, rather than the nurturer and furtherer of all life that it should be.

"This civilization is the work of man, who high-handedly and ignorant of the true workings of Nature, has created a world without meaning or foundation, which now threatens to destroy him, for through his behavior and his activities, he, who should be her master, has disturbed Nature's inherent unity."

Apart from the more familiar categories of water, there are, according to Viktor Schauberger, as many varieties of water as there are animals and plants. Were water merely the sterile, distilled H₂O as claimed by science, it would be poisonous to all living things. H₂O or 'juvenile water' is sterile, distilled water and devoid of any so-called 'impurities'. It has no developed character and qualities. As a young, immature, growing entity, it grasps like a baby at everything within reach. It absorbs the characteristics and properties of whatever it comes into contact with or has attracted to itself in order to grow to maturity. This "everything" - the so-called "impurities"- takes the form of trace elements, minerals, salts and even smells! Were we to drink pure H₂O constantly, it would quickly leach out all our store of minerals and trace elements, debilitating and ultimately killing us. Like a growing child, juvenile water takes and does not give. Only when mature, i.e. when suitably enriched with raw materials, is it in a position to give, to dispense itself freely and willingly, thus enabling the rest of life to develop. Before the birth of water, there was no life. But what is this marvelous, colorless, tasteless and odorless substance, which quenches our thirst like no other liquid? Did we but truly understand the essential nature of water - a living substance - we would not treat it so churlishly, but would care for it as if our lives depended on it, which undoubtedly they do.

"The Upholder of the Cycles which supports the whole of Life, is water. In every drop of water dwells the Godhead, whom we all serve; there also dwells Life, the Soul of the "First" substance - Water - whose boundaries and banks are the capillaries that guide it and in which it circulates."More energy is encapsulated in every drop of good spring water than an average-sized PowerStation is presently able to produce. " Indeed in accordance with the famous Hasenöhrl-Einstein equation E = mc² , in 1 gram of substance, or 1 cubic centimeter of water, 25 million kilowatt hours of energy are stored!

Water is a being that has life and death. With incorrect, ignorant handling, however, it becomes diseased, imparting this condition to all other organisms, vegetable, animal and human alike, causing their eventual physical decay and death, and in the case of human beings, their moral, mental and spiritual deterioration as well. From this it can be seen just how vital it is, that water should be handled and stored in such a way as to avert such pernicious repercussions.

"Science views the blood-building and character-influencing ur-organism" In Viktor Schauberger's writings in German, the prefix 'Ur' is often separated from the rest of the word by a hyphen, e.g. ' Ur -sache' in lieu of 'Ursache', when normally it would be joined. By this he intends to place a particular emphasis on the prefix, thus endowing it with a more profound meaning than the merely superficial. This prefix belongs not only to the German language, but in former times also to the English, a usage which has now lapsed. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, 'ur' denotes 'primitive', 'original', 'earliest', giving such examples as ' ur -Shakespeare' or ' ur -origin'. This begins to get to the root of Viktor's use of it and the deeper significance he placed upon it. If one expands upon the interpretation given in the Oxford English Dictionary, then the concepts of 'primordial', 'primeval', 'primal', 'fundamental', 'elementary', 'of first principle', come to mind, which further encompass such meanings as: - pertaining to the first age of the world, or of anything ancient; - pertaining to or existing from the earliest beginnings;- constituting the earliest beginning or starting point;- from which something else is derived, developed or depends; applying to parts or structures in their earliest or rudimentary stage; - the first or earliest formed in the course of growth.

To this can be added the concept of an ' ur -condition' or ' ur -state' of extremely high potential or potency, a latent evolutionary ripeness, which given the correct impulse can unloose all of Nature's innate creative forces. In the English text, therefore, the prefix "ur" will also be used wherever it occurs in the original German and the reader is asked to bear the above in mind when reading what follows. "'Water', when looked at as merely a chemical compound that provides millions of people with a liquid is absurd; from this point of view, it is everything but healthy water." But what does modern, de-naturised civilization care, as long as it receives a suitably hygienised, clear liquid to shower, wash its dishes, clothes and cars. Once down the plug-hole in company with all manner of toxic chemicals and detergents, all is comfortingly out of sight and out of mind.

"Our primeval Mother Earth is an organism that no science in the world can rationalize. Everything on her that crawls and flies is dependent upon Her and all must hopelessly perish if that Earth dies that feeds us."

Although the chlorination of drinking and household water-supplies ostensibly removes the threat of water-borne diseases, it does so, however, to the detriment of the consumer. In its function of water sterilizer or disinfectant, chlorine eradicates all types of bacteria, beneficial and harmful alike. More importantly, however, it also disinfects the blood (about 80% water) or sap (ditto) and in doing so kills off or seriously weakens many of the immunity-enhancing micro-organisms resident in the body of those organisms constantly forced to consume it. This eventually impairs their immune systems to such a degree that they are no longer able to eject viruses, germs and cancer cells, to which the respective host-bodies ultimately falls victim.

The appearance of AIDS, therefore, and the enormous increase in all forms of disease, cancer in particular, would have come as no surprise to Viktor Schauberger. Apart from the other inevitable disturbances to the ecology and the environment occasioned by humanity's unthinking activities, he foresaw it all as early as 1933. "For a person who lives 100 years in the future, the present comes as no surprise."  Apart from other factors (some cannot be defined quantitatively), encompassing such aspects as turbidity (opaqueness), impurity, and quality, the most crucial factor affecting the health and energy of water is temperature. As a liquid, the behavior of water differs from all other fluids. The latter become consistently and steadily denser with cooling, water reaches its densest state at a temperature of +4^o C (+39.2^o F), below which it grows less dense. In contrast, water's behavior is anomalous, because it reaches its greatest density at a temperature of +4^oC (+39.2^oF). This is the so-called 'anomaly point', or the point of water's anomalous expansion, which is decisive in this regard and has a major influence on its quality. Below this temperature it once more expands. This highest state of density is synonymous with its highest energy content, a factor to be taken carefully into account, since energy can also be equated with life or life-force. Therefore if water's health, energy and life-force are to be maintained at the highest possible level, then certain precautions must be taken, which will be addressed later.

Conceived in the cool, dark cradle of the virgin forest, water ripens and matures as it slowly mounts from the depths. On its upward way it gathers to itself trace elements and minerals. Only when it is ripe, and not before, will it emerge from the womb of the Earth as a spring. As a true spring, in contrast to a seepage spring, this has a water temperature of about +4^oC (+39.2^oF). Here in the cool, diffused light of the forest it begins its long, life-giving cycle as a sparkling, lively, translucent stream, bubbling, gurgling, whirling and gyrating as it wends its way valley wards. In its natural, self-cooling, spiraling, convoluting motion, water is able to maintain its vital inner energies, health and purity. In this way it acts as the conveyor of all the necessary minerals, trace elements and other subtle energies to the surrounding environment. Naturally flowing water seeks to flow in darkness or in the diffused light of the forest, thus avoiding the damaging direct light of the sun. Under these conditions, even when cascading down in torrents, a stream will only rarely overflow its banks. Due to its correct natural motion, the faster it flows, the greater its carrying capacity and scouring ability and the more it deepens its bed. This is due to the formation of in-winding, longitudinal, clockwise - anti-clockwise alternating spiral vortices down the central axis of the current, which constantly cool and re-cool the water, maintaining it at a healthy temperature and leading to a faster, more laminar, spiral flow.

To protect itself from harmful effects of excess heat, water shields itself from the sun with over-hanging vegetation, for with increasing heat and light it begins to lose its vitality and health, its capacity to enliven and animate the environment through which it passes. Ultimately becoming a broad river, the water becomes more turbid, the content of small-grain sediment and silt increasing as it warms up, its flow becoming slower and more sluggish. However, even this turbidity plays an important role, because it protects the deeper water-strata from the heating effect of the sun. Being in a denser state, the colder bottom-strata retain the power to shift sediment of larger grain-size (pebbles, gravel, etc.) from the centre of the watercourse. In this way the danger of flooding is reduced to a minimum. The spiral, vortical motion mentioned earlier, which eventually led Viktor Schauberger to the formation of his theories concerning 'implosion', creates the conditions, where the germination of harmful bacteria is inhibited and the water remains disease-free.

Another of its life-giving properties is its high specific heat - lowest at +37.5^oC (+99.5^oF). The term "specific heat" refers to the capacity and rapidity of a body to absorb or release heat. With a relatively small input of heat fluids with a high specific heat warm up less rapidly than those with a lower specific heat. How strange then, and how remarkable, that the lowest specific heat of this "inorganic" substance - water - lies but 0.5^oC (0.9^oF) above the normal +37^oC (+98.6^oF) blood temperature of the most highly evolved of Nature's creatures - human beings. This property of water to resist rapid thermal change enables us, with blood composed of 80% water, to survive under large variations of temperature. Pure accident so we are told, or is it by clever, symbiotic design ?! However, since we are used to thinking about temperature in gross terms (car engines operate at temperatures of 1,000^oC (1,832^oF) or so and many industrial processes employ extremely high temperatures) and despite the fact that we begin to feel unwell if our temperature rises by as little as 0.5^oC (0.9^oF), we fail to see that non-mechanical, organic life and health are based on very subtle differences in temperature. When our body temperature is +37^oC (98.6^oF) we do not have a 'temperature' as such. We are healthy and in a state that Viktor Schauberger called 'indifferent' or 'temperature-less'. Just as good water is the preserver of our proper bodily temperature, our anomaly point of greatest health and energy, so too does it preserve this planet as a habitat for our continuing existence.

Water has the capacity to retain large amounts of heat and were there no water vapor in the atmosphere, this world of ours would be an icy-cold, barren wasteland. Water in all its forms and qualities is thus the mediator of all life and deserving of the highest focus of our esteem.

"To Be or Not to Be: In Nature all life is a question of the minutest, but extremely precisely graduated differences in the particular thermal motion within every single body, which continually changes in rhythm with the processes of pulsation. This unique law, which manifests itself throughout Nature's vastness and unity and expresses itself in every creature and organism, is the ' law of ceaseless cycles' that in every organism is linked to a certain time span and a particular tempo. The slightest disturbance of this harmony can lead to the most disastrous consequences for the major life forms. In order to preserve this state of equilibrium, it is vital that the characteristic inner temperature of each of the millions of micro-organisms contained in the macro-organisms be maintained."

The Number 1 enemy of water is excess heat or over-exposure to the sun's rays. It is a well-known fact that oxygen is present in all processes of organic growth and decay. Whether its energies are harnessed for either one or the other is to a very great extent, if not wholly, dependent on the temperature of the water as itself or in the form of blood or sap. As long as the water-temperature is below +9^oC (+48.2^oF), its oxygen content remains passive. Under such conditions the oxygen assists in the building up of beneficial, high-grade micro-organisms and other organic life. However, if the water temperature rises above this level, then the oxygen becomes increasingly active and aggressive. This aggressiveness increases as the temperature rises, promoting the propagation of pathogenic bacteria, which, when drunk with the water, infest the organism of the drinker.

"Thus the development of micro-organisms and the opportunities for their propagation are simply a result of the condition in which the respective sickening macro-organism finds itself, which will be attacked by these parasites and which eventually must fall victim to them if its inner climatic conditions are no longer strictly regulated."

But this aggressiveness is not confined to the domain of oxygen alone. When water becomes over-heated, due principally to the increasingly widespread clear-felling of the forest, the health-maintaining pattern of longitudinal vortices changes into transverse ones. These not only undermine and gouge into the riverbanks and embankment works, eventually bursting them, but also create pot-holes in the riverbed itself, bringing even greater disorder to an already chaotic channel-profile.

According to Viktor Schauberger, water subjected to these conditions loses its character, its soul. Like humans of low character, it becomes increasingly violent and aggressive as it casts about hither and thither seeking to vent its anger and restore to itself its former health and stability. However, due to the senseless malpractice of the clear-felling of forests, we are destroying the very foundation of life. For with the removal of the forest, two very serious things happen:

1. During its flow to the sea, the water warms up prematurely to such an extent that it is warmed right down to the channel-bed. No cool, dense, water-strata remain and the sediment is left lying on the bottom. This blocks the flow, dislocates the channel and results in the inevitable, often catastrophic floods. Yet we still have the effrontery to call these awesome events 'natural disasters', as if Nature herself were responsible. Furthermore, due to the broadening of the channel, even more water is exposed to the sun's heat, resulting in over-rapid evaporation to the atmosphere. In many cases this overloads the atmosphere with water-vapor, which it is unable to retain in suspension. Deluges follow.
2. With the forest-cover now removed, the ground also begins to heat up to temperatures much higher than normal and natural. Dry soil heats up as much as five times faster than water. This has a two-fold effect:
       a). The rejection and repulsion by the warmer soil of any incident rain-water, whose temperature in this case is generally lower. Cold rain will not readily infiltrate into warm soil. This results in rapid surface run-off and no groundwater recharge. The soil dries out.
       b). An increase in pathogenic microbial activity, harmful to plant life.

The upshot of all this is more flooding, reduced groundwater quantity and lower groundwater table. One flood therefore begets the next in rapid succession. But since there is no groundwater recharge, the water-balance and natural distribution are completely upset. The remaining trees - the vital retainers of water - die, leaving the land barren and desiccated with the necessary sequel of drought. The less the tree-cover, the more extensive the flooding and the longer the period of drought, of water-lessness, which is synonymous with life-lessness !

Unnatural, quantity-inspired forestry practices, ignorant of Nature's laws, and the over-warming of the soil arising from massive deforestation are the primary causes of the deterioration in water quality, climate and the sinking of the water table. The channeling of water through straight, unnaturally constructed, trapezoid canals, steel pipelines and other misguided systems of river regulation also force the water to move in an unnatural way and accelerate its degeneration and increase its disease-carrying capacity.

"Wherever we look the dreadful disintegration of the bridges of life, the capillaries and the bodies they have created, is evident, which has been caused by the mechanical and mindless work of man, who has torn away the soul from the Earth's blood - water. The more the engineer endeavors to channel water, of whose spirit and nature he is today still ignorant, by the shortest and straightest route to the sea, the more the flow of water weighs into the bends, the longer its path and the worse the water will become. The spreading of the most terrible disease of all, of cancer , is the necessary consequence of such unnatural regulatory works. These mistaken activities - our work - must legitimately lead to increasingly widespread unemployment, because our present methods of working, which have a purely mechanical basis, are already destroying not only all of wise Nature's formative processes, but first and foremost the growth of the vegetation itself, which is being destroyed even as it grows. The drying up of mountain springs, the change in the whole pattern of motion of the groundwater, and the disturbance in the blood circulation of the organism - Earth - is the direct result of modern forestry practices. The pulse-beat of the Earth was factually arrested by the modern timber production industry. Every economic death of a people is always preceded by the death of its forests. The forest is the habitat of water and as such the habitat of life processes too, whose quality declines as the organic development of the forest is disturbed. Ultimately, due to a law which functions with awesome constancy, it will slowly but surely come around to our turn. Our accustomed way of thinking in many ways, and perhaps even without exception, is opposed to the true workings of Nature. Our work is the embodiment of our will. The spiritual manifestation of this work is its effect. When such work is carried out correctly, it brings happiness, but when carried out incorrectly, it assuredly brings misery."

There is only one solution! Would we live and ensure a sustainable future then we must plant trees for our very lives, but far more importantly, we have a duty to do it for those of our children.

There is so much important information about and by Viktor Schauberger, I encourage you to look deeper.