The Waters of Life

How can water purify a person? And what is purity, anyway? In both the Jewish and Christian tradition water is used at special times in order to make a practitioner spiritually clean and initiate them into the religious life… but why? We know that water can make us physically clean by washing dirt away, and so it seems here we have an obvious analogy to how water might make a person spiritually clean, and it would make sense but the purifying analogy does not take that route in Judeo-Christianity. Primarily, as in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, the metaphor is that of being buried and returning from the womb of death, the dying to the flesh and to sin.

Now, I want to clarify that this topic is not only for Jews and Christians, but an important subject to consider for people of any spiritual persuasion to gain an understanding of the metaphors of the mikvah and baptism which can be incorporated into just about any spiritual practice. We must begin by considering what it means to be pure. In order to understand what it means to be pure(taharah), we must first understand what it means to be impure(tumah) in this special sense. This ritual impurity (tumah) is treated like a kind of contamination in the old testament with the primary source of tumah being the grandfather of all impurity, which is to say contact with the body of a deceased person. In this view, God is the essence of life itself and one cannot go into the temple before God without risking death if he is in a state of tumah. The idea is essentially this, when you come into contact with that which is infected by death you in turn are infected by this death quality. Since God is pure life, his mere presence destroys death. For this reason, the priests of old and the people wishing to enter the holy temple grounds had to utilize a means of ritual purification in order to safely enter the holy of holies and the house of life more generally.

Now what is the essence of purification? Primarily it is this, whether baptism or mikvah, one is entering both a tomb and a womb. It is, to paraphrase Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, the mem between the aleph and the tav of truth (emet), which are the first (representing the past) and last (representing the future) letters of the alphabet. It is the present which is the gateway between what was and what will be. It is the collection or “gathering” of water descended from the river that poured out of the garden of Eden and which connects mankind back to Eden and to his original nature. In other words it is a hard reset. By entering the waters one experiences a kind of death and rebirth in which he or she ceases breathing while immersed in the feminine lower waters from which the earth sprang up in the beginning of creation, the womb from which they emerge as a new earth, a new creation literally dripping with new possibilities.

Now it’s worth mentioning that both mikvah and baptism have a number of special rites, blessings, and procedural elements that need to be correct in order for the purification to be considered official in the eyes of the presiding religious authority. For those not of either persuasion here are some key notes if you want to try out your own mini purification ritual. Your best bet for a Mikvah is a natural body of water; preferably a still body of water like a lake, as opposed to a running body of water, but any relatively clean and natural body of water will do in a pinch. Whether the water comes from a spring or rain is relatively inconsequential because both represent the flood waters in which the world was cleansed after the sky and earth were opened. The important thing is that the water cannot be drawn up, at least in the case of Mikvah, by any sort of manmade process. The water must also, ideally, be in direct contact with the earth which is the primordial mother. When you immerse, you should immerse every part of your body all at once and take the opportunity to be fully present in the moment. It may help if you practice zen meditation, because this sort of total presence in the moment is said to be reflective of the eternal nature of God reflected in the waters: that which is always now.

Also worth mentioning is the special case of niddah which actually forms one of the hypothetically more common reasons to go to mikvah. Niddah is separation, as in the separation that a woman is supposed to have from her husband during that time of the month and until after she is immersed in mikvah. Neither niddah nor tumah are sinful states, nor are they considered dirty per se. Rather, the issue of these states is that they are products of the fall of man which one is not supposed to bring either into the holy temple nor into the holy union between man and wife. The penalty for entering into a sacred space or holy union while in a state of tumah or niddah is to be cut off from the community. Do not read that as “socially outcast” from the community, as such a thing would hardly even be enforceable. Who could even keep track of when a man and wife have been together or the last time you touched something that was tumah? To be cut off, in this sense, is to be spiritually cut off until one has repented. One in a separated or impure state that enters a holy space is primarily cut off from their special connection to the divine until they do something to fix the situation. Rabbi Kaplan, being an orthodox rabbi, also makes the case that the separation of niddah promotes the health and vitality of a marriage because the temporary separation keeps the spark of the union alive; of course such a private decision is ultimately at the sole discretion of the married reader though I would be remiss not to at least present the rabbi’s teaching.

Death and rebirth rites such as mikvah and baptism are common to many spiritual beliefs and practices but can also be taken on a more regular basis for those practicing traditional forms of kabbalah, purifying themselves pursuant to goetic practice, or more generally at any time that you might need to purify yourself to enter into the presence of the divine. When you immerse, you enter the stream of life and bring yourself near to the heavenly realm; the garden of Eden. Such a heightened state of being has a wide range of applications. It also dovetails nicely into the practice of tzeruf which I will cover in another article for which one must be purified in order to avoid the risk of permanent insanity while pursuing higher states of consciousness.

If you remember nothing else about mikvah, remember this: tumah or impurity is associated with direct contact with death related objects, taharah or purity is the state that one enters when they are free of tumah, and one becomes free of the ritual impurity of death by immersing themselves in the waters of life and in the eternal present. The problem with tumah is not that it is bad in itself but that entering sacred space in an impure state causes spiritual separation from the source of life and requires repentance. Despite the religious nature of the traditional mikvah and baptism these practices can be open to anyone who relies on purification for various spiritual purposes.