This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
A body of water entry records a specific sea, river, lake or other named water feature considered for its documented religious significance, as a site of veneration, a setting for ritual bathing or purification, or the dwelling place of a specific water spirit or divinity a tradition names. Henry John Drewal's edited study of Mami Wata and related African and diaspora water divinities shows how consistently water itself, rather than only a temple or shrine built beside it, becomes the actual object of a documented devotional tradition.
An entry records a body of water's documented religious use, what ritual is performed there, when and by whom, and what a tradition specifically says the water itself represents or contains, since a body of water's religious significance and its ordinary geographic or economic importance are frequently two separate, both worth recording, facts about the same feature.
Where a body of water's religious significance has itself changed over a long documented history, gaining or losing importance to different traditions across different periods, the entry records that documented change honestly as part of the site's own history rather than presenting only its present day significance.