Hidden Messages of Water

Masaru Emoto. The Hidden Messages of Water. Hillsboro, Oregon: Beyond Worlds Publishing, 2004. 157 p.

Convinced that Hamlet was entirely correct that there is more in heaven and earth than philosophy (or theology) dreams, I am, out of principle, more credulous than most, but even I am a skeptic about The Hidden Messages of Water. Emoto, a Japanese writer who holds a doctorate in alternative medicine from the Open International University, makes some eyebrow-raising claims about water. He thinks that homeopathy works because water can “remember” dissolved substances even after they have been removed by distillation. He says that water breathes. Emoto has conducted his most thorough experiments on water crystallization. He plays music in the presence of a beaker of water, or writes a message on a slip of paper, tapes the paper to the side of a beaker of water, and puts the beaker in the freezer. When he examines the crystals, he finds that nice words (Thank you! Danke! Merci!) and Air on a G String produce beautiful crystals, while insults (You fool! You make me sick! I will kill you!) and rock music produce ugly crystals. Apparently, water can read, in several languages. And you just don’t want to know what happens when somebody shouts insults at a beaker of water. Emoto convinces when he celebrates the truly astonishing properties of water: Where would we all be, after all, if water were not the nearly universal solvent it is? (Answer: Dead, or at least in the hospital.) But The Hidden Messages of Water is mainly valuable for its crystal photography, which will delight both the credulous and the cynical. But I have to admit that water and me, we have similar tastes in music.