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Water is a prominent part of many religious and spiritual traditions both East and West. It can symbolize a cleansing of the soul or even represent the divine. Virtually all religions - from Shintoism, Hinduism and Buddhism to Judaism, Island and Christianity - have stories of great floods in one form or another - floods that swept the Earth clean and allowed it to start again, refreshed and renewed.

Tibetan Buddhists use water for ritual cleaning of the hands, feet, face and mouth, while Zen Buddhists pour water at funerals in reference to the oceans and thereby symbolize the infinite. Shinto shrines frequently feature water basins for people to wash their hands in or drink from before entering a sacred space. Hindus consider water and the intersections of bodies of water to be of great spiritual significance, the Ganges river in particular. Funeral rites typically take place near or on bodies of water, and water cleansing rituals are common.

The Jewish use water for a number of symbolic cleansing rituals as well, from washing hands before and after meals to washing oneself after performing what are considered impure actions, such as coming in contact with the dead. Likewise, in Muslim traditions, water is often used for ritual purification and cleansing, though typically before rites of passage or other religious rituals. In Christian traditions water is used to baptize and thus initiate children and other newcomers to the religion - it represents a clean slate for the soul. Holy water is also used for various significant transitional rites of life and in ceremonies of death.

There are references to both floods and water-rites in various long-gone religions from the Americas, Africa and Asia, found in stone tablets or architectural inscriptions. Water has clearly been symbolically important to people all around the world since well before the beginnings of recorded history.

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