The water of lustration or water of purification (Hebrew: מי נדה, romanized: mê niddāh) was the water created with the ashes of the red heifer, according to the instructions given by God to Moses and Aaron in the Book of Numbers.
[1] The Hebrew Bible taught that any Israelite who touched a corpse, a Tumat HaMet (literally, "impurity of the dead"), was ritually unclean.
The Jerusalem Bible uses the term lustral water.
[6] Thomas Coke noted that 'the heathens had their water of lustration with which to sprinkle themselves in token of purification', and thought this was probably borrowed from the Mosaic law.
[8] Annie Dillard, in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, drew from her meditations at Tinker Creek in Virginia the experience of flowing water as a cause of separation: