Tiamat, Babylonian Dragon Goddess

The dragon Tiamat is regarded as the mystery of Chaos, primal and uncontrollable, passionate in her unchecked creative energy. She is the frightening Unknown of "formless primordial matter" sacrificially recreated as the very beauty of Earth itself.

In Babylonian mythology, Tiamat is the creatrix of the celestial and earthly realms as a result of her violent demise. She is the primordial mother of all and the personification of the saltwater ocean,chaos embodied in the form of the ancient Divine feminine. Her union with Apsu, the personification of fresh water, created the first gods Lachmu and Lachamu (ie. silt) who, in turn, created a race of deities.

The "Enuma Elish" is an epic poem of creation written around 2000 B.C. The legend is inscribed on seven clay tablets and is approximately 1000 lines. It is said to be a chant to welcome the Babylonian New Year.The story unfolds with Apsu growing increasingly upset at the antics of their unruly children. Apsu decides to kill them, much to Tiamat's despair, but his plan is revealed and the deity named Ea kills him in his sleep. In a rage over the death of her husband, Tiamat vows to kill her descendants and creates an army of monsters in her grief. She assigns the god Kingu as her consort and convinces him to lead her army into battle.

The young gods became frightened and realized they were no match for the powerful Tiamat. They persuaded the god Marduk to champion them by promising him many things, including making him their supreme god and ruler of the universe.

Marduk kills his ancestor Tiamat by filling her with the winds and striking her vulnerable body, splitting her "like a shellfish in two parts." With her upper half he constructed the arc of the sky; with her lower limbs he created the Earth. Her arched tail became the wheel of Heaven, from her water came the clouds and her tears became the source of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Kingu also perished at the hand of Marduk, his blood and bones becoming the first humans.

The Tiamat myth personifies man's fear of the Unknown and the primal knowledge chaos can quickly turn to destruction. Early man was aware destruction and creation go hand and hand, but with the sacrifice of the Ego it has the capacity to become transformed into something poetic, beautiful and sustaining. Although man's physical form is created from the blood and bones of Kingu to remind us of our common and humble origins, we carry within us the breath of transformative spirit. Just as Tiamat's body became the life sustaining wellspring, our primal passions can be forged into positive creative energy if we so choose.