My GF and I have been doing water sharing cerimonties for a 3 years.
At first just the 2 of us, then we added my best friend. I've also helped 2 other couples do their own, but not with us.
As I want them to be life long and really meen something we take it very slow. There are a couple of close friends who may eventualy be added in. And at burning man this year helping another couple (close friends) do it.

We don't do it exactly like the book, books never matching real life. But take the concepts and meening. We don't always do the sexual part and have added some other bonding type things to the mix.

So far it's worked out well as an alturnative to the legal and religious typical marrage.

I have at one time been lucky enough to have 2 water-brothers (both female water brothers, but water brothers none the less). One decided she didn't want to play anymore. :-(

So the remaining two of us are waiting, waiting, waiting for another. We've met plenty of people that were close, but not quite. Maybe we're too picky, but then....... waiting is.

Ye are God,
Otter

my two brothers and i served together in bosnia. that's just background, not basis. after i got out i needed some help. i was having trouble dealing with things and called one of them. he moved from texas to join me in mississippi the next day. since then, he and my other brother have been there for me and i for them many times. we had no formal ceremony, just an understanding that whatever was needed would be found. that has sometimes meaned some real sacrifices by one or more of us. but that is what you do when your family needs help. i don't know how to give more help than that. but i hope i have helped some.

I read Stranger when I was 15, and over the next few years, there were only three people with whom I had what I thought was a true understanding, and a bond of water brotherhood. I have drifted far from most of them. One I am still in touch with, and we talk on the IM. We're friends... I don't know strongly he feels, but I sttill consider the bond we have unbreakable (even though he recently "married"), and would do anything he asked of me. I feel the same way about the others. One is a woman who may still be angry at me, but I love her the same none the less in absence, and long for her a little when I see her log on to the IM. The other, I simply haven't seen in years... I should try and get in touch with him.

They are a comfort to me in this time of lonliness, even though they are are not really in my lives, they are still my water brothers.

Well, it happens that I have 175 water brothers. :) My closest water brother is my wife, and together we run the Order of the Mithril Star (mithrilstar.org), a mostly online group where water-sharing is our principal sacrament.

I find this thread interesting. The way Heinlein describes water-brotherhood in his book, it strikes me as being a bond closer than most marriages. Mike, after all, would die instantly if one of his water brothers told him to do so. It's true that some groups might use a water-sharing ceremony, but in the spirit that Heinlein meant the term, I wouldn't make a person a water brother unless I loved them enough that I was willing to die for them, at minimum.

Here is the OMS (mithrilstar.org) take on Water sharing:


Lesson 11: Water Sharing (In the OMS)
Original by Adam Rostoker and El Arseneau
Revised and edited by AD Ceridwen Seren-Ddaear




"The more you love, the more you can love -- and the more intensely
you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love.
If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority
who are decent and just." ~~ Robert A. Heinlein

The principle "sacrament" of the Order is Water Sharing. You are already familiar with this from Lesson 6, but you may be wondering: Where did it come from? What does it mean? In this lesson we will try to answer that.

If you've read the late Robert A. Heinlein's novel, Stranger In A Strange Land, you already grok the answer to this question (and you probably grok "grok"). If not, you should have by now. It is probably the most important spiritual work of our time. The novel involves Valentine Michael Smith, whose parents were on a mission to Mars, and left him an orphan there. He was raised and educated by Martians within the wildly different (from our own) Martian culture. Water (at least in the novel) is at a premium there and so water is sacred. To share water with someone is to share something precious and vital. You don't do this with just anyone. You only offer water to someone you would cherish. This is more than friendship; more than marriage; more than love. When you share water you are entering into a lifetime covenant. This is the very essence of perfect love and perfect trust. From this point on everything you are and own belongs to your new "water sibling," and vice versa. This is the ultimate in Communism, since you are sharing not just possessions but mind and body as well.

Once you have shared water with one or more persons, you have created a covenant with them, and (via "catanative assemblage") to anyone they have shared water with, and so on, and so on. So far I have been able to trust my waterkin (those I have shared water with directly, and those who have shared water with others I have shared with) to do the right thing. To be there when I have needed them, and to have helped when I needed help. In cases where waterkin have made mistakes, and those mistakes have cost me money, I am thankful that they were able to reimburse me in full, even if it took some time. I hope that I have been the same way to them.

We are trying to build a community of trust and love. A community where when one person feels hurt, the others will try to help in what ever way they can to heal that hurt, whatever it may be. We want our Groves to be places of refuge from the mundane. The home of a Grove leader should be a place where any member can drop in at any time, and be welcomed, fed, and of course offered water. Since we have become an international group now (we have members throughout the US, Canada, Australia, England and even Portugal), those of us traveling should be able to find hospitality among the waterkin wherever they go, and help when they need it.

Sex? Well, I hope we can be that close, I really do. Although I love all my waterkin, there are definitely a few I would simply never ask, and if they asked I would politely say "no." In any large group, there are going to some you are attracted to, and some you aren't. That's just human nature. No one should feel compelled have to have sex with a water brother.

In any group it takes time to build trust and love. If there is a frequent turnover of members, that process will take longer. On the other hand, some people will just "click". It's all good. Waiting is.

I guess what I am getting down to is this: if you decide to share water with someone, do not do it with the expectation of sex (either at the time or in the future). It just might not happen, and anyway, it's totally the wrong motivation. The same goes for being offered water. If you choose to accept, do not do so with the expectation that either now or in the future you will have sex with that person.

Grok? Share water because you want to add someone to your Grove; to your family. Accept water because you want to be part of that person’s family. That's right: a Grove should, first and foremost, be a "family" functioning out of perfect love and perfect trust. All the other stuff we do; ritual, divination, magick; that's the icing on the cake. The substance is "family," and "community." These are the things we strive to create in OMS.

Sharing Water can be done as part of a complex ritual, or as a simple rite by itself. The solemnity and seriousness of the rite should be preserved in either case.

In actual practice, the Order recognizes three distinct levels of water sharing:

TRIBE Level: Sharing water with other members of the Order or the RDG, either at a public gathering or an online ritual or gathering. (Water sharing as part of the rite of Ordination falls within this level).

CLAN Level: Sharing water with members of a Grove of their making or choosing, as well as with the Tribe.

NEST/FAMILY Level: Sharing water with members of their own polyfidelitous "Nest", as well as with the Clan and Tribe.

(NOTE: Each of these three levels implies a progressively more intimate level of commitment)

Yay1 My husband and I did a specific water thing at our wedding, and it has expanded to include our mutual girlfriend and another couple in spirit. Friend me!