For ten chapters the subject was what comes out of the water. This page is about what happens to it afterwards.
The objection you are thinking right now
The entire audiobook leads towards one goal. The water is to be empty, free of everything it has taken up along the way.
And now something is to be given back to it.
The objection is justified, and it dissolves the moment one looks closely at what is given back. No substance. No minerals, no additive, no powder, nothing that could be poured into a glass.
What is given back is movement.
Two questions put to the same glass
Before you stands a glass of distilled water. Two very different questions can be put to this glass.
The first question is what is in it. It leads to measurements, to conductivity, to residues. Distillation answers it more thoroughly than any other method.
The second question is how the same molecules stand in relation to one another. It aims not at the content but at the order.
Two libraries may hold the same collection. In one the volumes lie on the floor, in the other they stand in rows. The collection is the same. The difference is nonetheless far from small.
What the dipole means
From Chapter 1 you know the sentence that every water molecule acts like a tiny magnet. It carries a positive and a negative side, which is why it is called a dipole.
There this property stood for the power of dissolving, for that ability to enclose foreign substances and break them open.
It has a second consequence that is named less often. Wherever many small magnets lie together, they also align themselves with one another. The positive side of one seeks the negative side of the other.
Water is therefore never a mere heap of indifferent particles. It is a structure that continually orders itself and dissolves again.
And a structure that orders itself can be influenced by what happens to it.
Nature shows the way
Watch a mountain stream. Nothing about its course is straight.
It leaps over steps, turns around stones, throws off eddies that form of their own accord behind every obstacle. On the plain the river lays itself in loops, called meanders, and so takes the longest of all possible paths.
No water on this earth willingly moves in a straight line. Rain falls in drops, rises as mist, seeps through rock, emerges again as a spring, turns its way down the valley, evaporates and begins anew.
The pipe is the exception. It is the only stretch in the water cycle that man has built, straight, dark and under pressure.
The same water, two paths into the valley. One takes days and turns a thousand times. The other takes minutes and turns not once.
What distillation leaves behind
In the still, water passes through the phase change. It becomes vapour, rises, settles on the cool glass wall and falls back as a drop into the liquid.
In doing so it parts from everything. From lime, from chlorine, from the forever chemicals, from every substance it has ever taken up.
It also parts from something that appears in no measurement. From its history of movement.
What arrives in the receiving vessel is purer than any water nature holds ready, and at the same time quieter. It has no stream behind it, no eddy, no stone.
This is no shortcoming of the method. It is its inevitable consequence, and it is the reason for everything that still follows on this page.
What vitalisation means
Vitalisation means giving still water the movement it would have experienced on a natural path.
No more, and nothing else.
Think of the school experiment with iron filings. They lie in disorder on a sheet of paper. A magnet is passed beneath it, and they arrange themselves into arcs.
Nothing was added. Nothing was taken away. They are the same filings, in the same number, on the same sheet. Only their order is different.
It is precisely in this sense that the work is done here. The substance remains untouched, the purity remains untouched. What changes is the order.
How it is done
The process requires no device. It requires a vessel, a little time and a calm hand.
The vessel. Glass, unprinted, with a wide opening. A carafe suffices. It is filled to about three quarters, so that air remains above the water along with room for movement.
The vortex. Guide a spoon or a glass rod in a circle along the wall of the vessel until a funnel forms in the middle, reaching almost to the bottom. Hold it for half a minute. Then stop, wait until the water comes to rest, and turn in the other direction.
Seven to nine changes are a good measure. The change of direction is the heart of the whole, for in the stream the water turns the other way behind every stone.
The air. As it swirls, the funnel draws air down into the depth of the vessel. That is exactly what the stream does at every step. This is why the work is done open, never in a closed bottle.
The light. Place the carafe at a bright window for one to two hours, away from the full midday sun. Daylight suffices.
The rest. Afterwards the water stands, cool and dark, for at least an hour, gladly overnight. This time of rest belongs to the process as much as the swirling. The mountain lake below the waterfall is part of the same path.
Two things are to be avoided. Metal left standing in the water, and the refrigerator, because cold slows every movement. Room temperature is right.
The whole sequence costs ten minutes of attention and then a little patience. It can be repeated at any kitchen table.
What becomes visible and what remains open
What is visible first is the process itself. The funnel opening, the threads of air drawn downwards, the fine pearls that shortly afterwards stand on the glass wall.
Also visible is how the water comes to rest. It becomes clear and still, and the pearls dissolve.
What the distillers report concerns the taste. Freshly distilled water tastes flat, after the treatment softer and rounder. This is experience from many years of practice, gathered and passed on, and it is named here as what it is.
What remains open is measurement. For what is in the water, there are instruments in every laboratory. For the question of how the same molecules stand in relation to one another, there is no recognised measuring device.
Tradition is older than any measuring device. Whoever has ever drunk from a spring knows the difference that no number proves.
Two sentences therefore stand side by side. Purity is measurable, order is not. Both together make up the water this is about.
The final step
The path has an order. First take away, then give back.
First the water must be empty, for only in the phase change does it part from its past. Only then does movement have something to take hold of.
The vortex stands at the end. It is the final step, and it is the smallest. It requires a carafe and ten minutes.
The great step comes before it, and it requires a still.
Whoever wishes to walk this path to its end will find the glass and the training for it on the page Your Own Still.