When I was a little girl, I used to tell anyone who would listen that I thought water was the closest living thing we have to whatever God is.
Stick with me, and by the end of this essay, you’ll have a deeper understanding of water and a daily ritual that may improve your relationship with money while bringing you closer to your own ancestral lineage.
Water Was Here First
I’m definitely one of those people that’s going to randomly tell you a fun fact; and ones about water are some of my favorites.
We’re about 70% water, the Earth is also mostly water, life grows in water, and water tastes like “nothing” while somehow being one of the most refreshing and essential things we consume. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, water supports nearly every function of the human body.
Imagine my amazement when I found out that, just like energy, water can’t be created nor destroyed. I learned that both biblically and scientifically, water was here first.
Many different belief systems describe water as emerging from the void, while scientific research suggests Earth’s water may have arrived on extraterrestrial dust grains billions of years ago, according to researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi.
I personally believe water to be ancestral memory, and that’s what I’m exploring in this essay.
There’s so much significance to water and what it means to us as human beings that I believe we’re simply too passive with this precious, finite resource.
Water, Wealth, and Memory
Listen, our water supply is intentionally at risk.
Specifically for underserved Black and Brown communities.
Black people have an interesting relationship with water because of the transatlantic slave trade and the generational memory carried through our history. Those waters created unimaginable wealth while denying wealth to the very people forced to cross them. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History details how the transatlantic slave trade transformed human beings into one of the world’s most profitable commodities.
I believe, for this reason, we have a complicated relationship with money, the language of this foreign land.
We know by now that receiving money isn’t just a physical outcome; it’s an energetic one as well. How much you make partly depends on your mindset around, and relationship with, money.
Yes, it’s always been a commodity, an exchange, and a way to purchase goods. But it’s not just that.
Let’s look at the correlation between water and money, and why, if you keep our water bad, you keep our abundance dry.
Money Wants to Flow
In the fifteenth century, Portuguese voyagers sailed to Africa intending to trade gold for spices, but an even more valuable commodity was found: African people. This resulted in what we know today as the Transatlantic Slave Trade. As the people who were treated as the primary currency moving along this current, we may have a strange relationship with financial exchanges, considering how the way we “earn” today is still rooted in many of those same systems.
Money, much like water, is most powerful when it moves.
It flows through banks. Yes, like the one you make deposits into.
Money circulates like currency, and having many streams, more often than not, creates financial flow. In fact, even the language we use to describe money borrows from water: cash flow, liquidity, streams of income, banks, resources…
As explored in Money Is Water, the parallels between water and wealth are deeply woven into the way we think about economics.
Just as a river meanders, life will too, and flow keeps the current at ease.
And money affords you options and ways out when life is like, DAM!
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Just like water takes the shape of its container, money does as well.
Credit, cash, check, wire, or any other liquid asset, when you improve your relationship with money, your resources become an endless well that continues to replenish itself.
Water Is Freedom
Water, like money, is a medium through which life itself is sustained. It is the foundation of all human life, and every major system depends on it to function properly.
Are we seeing the correlations?
Now, obviously, water nor currency is new to Black people.
Every ancestral civilization developed around rivers: the Nile, Niger, Congo, Mississippi, Tigris, and Euphrates. Water has always been the source of agriculture, transportation, commerce, trade, communication, and civilization itself. Researchers writing in the Academicus International Scientific Journal explore how water has long served as both a practical necessity and a profound spiritual symbol across cultures: Imaginary and Symbolic Forms of Water Between Spirit and Culture.
We have deep roots with water, both physically and spiritually.
Whether water is breaking from a womb, symbolizing baptism, or mopping a floor, for Black people it represents cleansing, renewal, healing, and restoration.
We wade in the water for survival.
The spiritual “Wade in the Water” is widely believed to have carried coded messages for enslaved people seeking freedom along the Underground Railroad. You can read more about its history through the United Methodist Church and Rooted Ministry. (I have an itch that these similar water codes will be necessary in the future. Drink your water. Stock up on your water. Find natural sources for your water. Safely store your water.)
We make it rain so that we recall our own overflow.
Water is freedom.
Water is ancestral memory.
Our ancestors have shown us, in many different ways, how water teaches stewardship before abundance.
You keep our water bad.
You keep our abundance dry.
Six Water Rituals for Abundance
Water is a boundary, a messenger, a carrier of memory, and a spiritual conductor. And for our ancestors, it was something to honor, work with, and learn from.
Just as it takes the shape of the container it’s in, and just as ripples form in a cup of water sitting on a speaker, water responds to movement and vibration. Our ancestors understood that everyday actions were never “just practical.” They were practical because they were spiritual. I want us to hold onto this idea and begin intentionally integrating water into daily rituals that support our abundance.
1. Empty Yesterday
Place a small glass or bowl of water in a room to absorb negative energy. Every morning, “take out the trash” by disposing of the water to reflect renewal rather than spiritual stagnation.
Just as that water can be emptied daily, yesterday’s financial burdens, habits, or losses should not define your today.
Healthy wealth requires regular cleaning and regular replenishment.
2. Pray Beside Water
Place a glass or bowl of water beside your bed as part of prayer or dream work.
We often reflect before we rest, and water by the bed symbolizes preparing the mind and spirit for whatever tomorrow will bring. Water also appears again and again in dreams as a reflection of our emotional landscape. If you’re interested in dream symbolism, this essay on water as an emotional mirror offers an interesting perspective.
Financial success also, more often than not, begins with intentionality before action.
3. Protect Your Rest
Place a glass or bowl of water under your bed for spiritual protection or cleansing while sleeping.
I like to put a little rose in mine for sweet, loving dreams. I don’t know…I just do. 😂
Practices rooted in Hoodoo and other African diasporic traditions have long treated water as a source of spiritual protection, cleansing, and power. Lea Molina writes beautifully about that tradition in Hoodoo & Water.
Even when we rest, our unseen foundations support us.
Wealth is built the same way. The strongest financial lives are often sustained by invisible systems like savings, investments, emergency funds, and long-term planning.
As long as you’re making money in your sleep, you’ll need protection while you sleep too.
4. Speak to Your Water
My favorite, and easiest, water ritual is to speak intentions, prayers, and affirmations over my water.
Although I believe water stores spoken words, it’s less about changing the chemistry of the water and more about shaping the intention of the one who prays.
Interestingly, this practice has become widely known as the “water manifestation technique,” where people hold a glass of water while speaking intentions before drinking it. You can read more about it here.
Whether you believe the water changes or you change, I think the ritual matters.
This practice requires the same qualities we need when approaching money and opportunity: clarity, focus, and commitment.
5. Honor Your Ancestors
A clear glass of water is one of the most common elements you’ll find on ancestral altars because it serves as a conduit for communication. It represents hospitality, respect, life, clarity, and connection between generations.
Across many West African spiritual traditions, including Yorùbá religious practice, water is offered as a source of restoration, blessing, and communion. This research article explores the sacred role water continues to play within those traditions.
It’s often the very first offering because it’s essential to life.
Before wealth comes gratitude.
Water on the altar reminds us that prosperity begins by honoring the sources that made our present even possible: our ancestors, teachers, families, and communities.
6. Let the Shower Become a Portal
The shower itself is a portal.
Ritual baths are a time for prayer, meditation, and releasing emotion.
Before I step into the shower, I set the intention of what I want. Then I get in with the intention of washing off everything that does not align with that desire.
Every shower becomes an opportunity to cleanse fear, scarcity, and anxiety.
Financial transformation begins in the mind and spirit before it appears in the bank account.
Just as water cleanses the body, disciplined reflection can cleanse the limiting beliefs you may hold about money.
Make It Rain
Our ancestors rarely separated the practical from the spiritual.
Water cleaned the body, nourished crops, connected communities, transported goods, and served as a sacred element in ritual. To them, usefulness didn’t make something less holy. On the contrary, it actually reveals its holiness.
In much the same way, money is more than a medium of exchange.
It carries stories.
Values.
Opportunities.
Responsibilities.
If water teaches us to honor flow, stewardship, renewal, and intentionality, then those same principles can shape how we earn, spend, save, and pass on wealth.
And just as rivers flow into oceans, may our flow create larger legacies of abundance within our community.
The connection is not that money is water, but that the wisdom our ancestors associated with water offers a compelling framework for understanding prosperity today. A creatively rich life is built when ordinary acts are treated as sacred acts.
In other words…
Make it rain on them heauxs.
This essay explores the symbolic, historical, and spiritual meanings of water across various traditions. The rituals shared here are personal and cultural practices intended for reflection, not scientific or financial advice.