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Water is an indispensable physical commodity for all human civilizations, but it has also had a profound spiritual significance for thousands of years. Water features prominently in the Bible, perhaps the single most important book that has shaped Western Civilization. In the Bible, water represents life itself and is the physical carrier of the divine spirit. It was antecedent and prerequisite for the very creation of the cosmos. Water has been the means of spiritual cleansing, and through the sacrament of baptism, the means by which spiritual rebirth was facilitated. Water in the Bible can also be the instrument of mass death, but when water brings death, it is death to evil. Water has been held sacred in all human cultures, religions, and civilizations. It is the modality for purification, rebirth, and restoration, and the source of all potentiality. Recognition of its universal value unites us in a common humanity that transcends time and space.
David Deming (Sat,) studied this question.