How will these resources help you?

Throughout human history, civilisations have been built around natural sources of water, for example an oasis in the desert, a tidal port or the fertile floodplains of a river. With such an integral role in humanity’s development there is little wonder that water holds great symbolism within religious worldviews, for example: the Vedas state that ‘the waters are the foundation of all this universe’; the Torah states that in the beginning, G-d’s spirit ‘hovered over the waters’ before anything was created; Guru Granth Sahib calls water ‘our great Father’; Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as ‘the water of life’, and in the Qur’an, the word ‘Sharia’ means ‘the path to water’. This resource list will help the religion and worldviews teacher of KS3 and above explore some of the many symbolic meanings that water holds in religious traditions.