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In the Babylonian epic the Enuma Elish, Tiamat, a primordial dragon goddess is defeated by Marduk.
After her takedown, her body is violently divided up to make up the cosmos of the Babylonian world.
And with his merciless club he smashed her skull.
He cut through the channels of her blood,
And he made the North wind bear it away into secret places.
The text goes on to say that one half of her body becomes the sky and the other half the earth. Her crying eyes become the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Her tail, the Milky Way.
This marks a new order in the world with the younger gods taking over the maintenance of the Universe.
Since we are witches, let’s read between the lines and parse out the esoteric elements in this creation myth. Is it possible that Tiamat is a casualty of having her story told by the victors?
A Changing Landscape, Destruction, and War
Tiamat is a a primordial being, she was there before the before. She was there when there was only chaos and water, in other words before everything was differentiated and distinct.
As the story is told, together, with her consort Apsu, she gives birth to the first generation of gods.
Upset by the noise these newer gods were making, Apsu set out to destroy them, but not before consulting Tiamat. She becomes distraught and says:
“How can we destroy what we have given birth to?”
Apsu decided to go ahead with his plan, ignoring Tiamat’s distress. Her son, the god of magic, Ea/Enki steps in, deciding without Tiamat’s consent to capture and kill Apsu.
Ea and his consort then give birth to the storm god Marduk, marking an even newer generation of gods.
Tiamat’s elder children then express outrage over Apsu’s death and their frustrations with the younger generations of gods (which includes Marduk).
They ask her to avenge Apsu. Tiamat takes a new consort and creates 11 ‘monsters’ or ‘demons’ to rise against Marduk and the younger cohort of deities.
Tiamat’s 11 Magical ‘Monsters’
- Ušumgallu – A Great Dragon
- Bašmu – A Venomous Horned Snake
- Mušmaḫḫū – Exalted Serpent, sometimes Seven-Headed Serpent
- Mušḫuššu – Furious Snake
- Umū dabrūtu – Violent Storm Beast
- Ugallu – A Lion-Headed Storm Beast
- Uridimmu – The Mad Dog, sometimes Mad-Lion
- Laḫmu – The Hairy Beast Man
- Girtablullû – A Scorpion Man
- Kulullû – A Fish Man
- Kusarikku – A Bull Man
Despite this impressive repertoire of beings, Marduk still manages to be victorious in this war between generations.
Did you notice how many of the monsters Tiamat created are related to storms, snakes, dragons, and beasts? These are old allies of witches.
The Chaotic Waters of Initiation
Tiamat is associated with the water element, the salt water seas. She is called the Ummu-Hubur, which translate to ‘Mother WaterCourse’.
Some scholars such as Robert Graves have proposed that the demise of Tiamat tells the tale of a shift toward patriarchy from supposedly earlier peaceful matriarchal cultures.
As the Babylonian creation epic is a recounting of an older story, there is no telling how far back this narrative actually goes.
But let’s take a look at the magical dimensions present in this story. As magic deals with power and this was a shifting of power form the serpentine chaos elements of the Universe into one of order.
Tiamat’s body, a symbol of chaotic forces, literally becomes the structures of the world in which we live, the differentiated Universe.
What if we were to look at this as a shift in powers within the earth itself? As the cosmos re-ordering, discovering, evolving, and experimenting with itself?
Tiamat isn’t just some victim of patriarchy, although that is one way to read it, instead she is a fierce primordial source of chthonic power.
In her ‘defeat’ she is made into something new. She transforms, her body being sacrificed to make the landscape.
And like all change, there is incredible trauma and grief in this process of becoming, symbolized in her tears forming into the rivers.
There is paradox here
Through a transpersonal lens, we can read this story as one of human initiation. Humans (represented by the younger generations of gods in this case) are trying to make sense of and create order in the Universe.
In this process, they end up devouring the current order but also lose their creator and mother (Tiamat).
The same is true for a magical initiation in which something must be given up in order for the new to take its shape. There is no right or wrong, good or bad here, this is older than that.
This process symbolizes a digestion of shadows and chaos, so it can be used in a more orderly and mature way. Think of Luke Skywalker after he finished his training. He was more grounded, focused, and precise and therefore could hold and manage more power, aka magic.
Redistributing Power
So what if this ordering and structuring has gone too far in our current iteration of reality?
Marduk’s desire to concentrate power and control and impose his vision of the Universe required a ‘defeat’ of chaos. But as nothing is ever completely destroyed, a spreading out of Tiamat’s powerful sea-dragon body was in order.
Using Tiamat’s body in this way seems less like an act of the spoils of war and more a deeper underlying message about the Universe.
Like in the Kabbalistic concept of the shattering of the vessels, the forces of Divine light could not be contained and during the creation of the Universe, broke into pieces.
Beneath the veneer of established order, the cosmos is truly a place of mystery. Like the iridescent reflections of the dragon’s scales, the truth of our reality appears to be built on something more illusive, chaotic forces (the un-manifest and undifferentiated) or The Void centered at the heart of it all.
So is this reality actually an experiment in differentiation, god experiencing herself?
Perhaps.
This doesn’t mean we can’t engage with life in a meaningful way and experiment, as gods ourselves, with how to bring repair, restoration, and balance to a system that has spun off course or played itself out.
The shattering of the vessels segues into the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, which means to repair the world.
It’s not that we are inherently broken or wrong for being. It is much more neutral than that. We are in this incarnate reality and can grow, learn, deepen, experience, and be with what is, in its fullness. In tragedy, in pleasure, in complete bliss; we all play a part.
We get to evolve, we can honor what is old or came before and make something new.
Awakening the Dragons
In older times, before the rise of Christianity, the living landscape of the Earth was commonly thought to be inhabited by the spirits of dragons.
And for many of us sorcerers, it still is.
What if we were to awaken these forces that are symbolized in Tiamat’s defeat? The dragons that went underground into the passageways of deep time, that formed the structures of the planet and the cosmos?
This is the goal of some kinds of land magic, opening portals to allow older, and likely wiser and more primordial forces of power into our current world.
This blending of ancient and new, creates something third, a kind of evolved magic. It involves a mutual working together with primordial forces and bringing it to life in our consciousness.
Restoring Balance
Witches are magical practitioners known for working in liminal spaces, grey areas, shamanic states of consciousness. Throughout history there have been witches described as ‘good’ and some as ‘bad’, but it isn’t so rigid in actuality.
Witchcraft is outside of mainstream religions for a reason, it is neither this or that. It is as author Lee Morgan calls it, ‘a deed without a name.’
Of course, you can still practice a religion and simultaneously be a witch. In fact, I’d recommend it for the protective qualities a religious structure can provide to a witch working with chaotic forces and primordial powers.
Our work is often shrouded in mystery. It is done in secret typically deep in the forest, in the middle of the night, and under the Dark Moon.
It comes in the form of private rituals, known only to the practitioner and the spirits and it is typically not spoken about in detail for this disrupts and disturbs the power.
But what we can do is share this glorious dance with each other. Together, we can speculate about what is a witch really and what powers, forces, and entities are we really working for? How far back does the magic actually go?
Something Even Older?
What if we are tapping an even older paradigm of power when engaging with the spirits of the land, the so called dragons inhabiting the interior dimension of the earth?
In earlier texts Tiamat is depicted with more ambiguity. Over time she is described more and more as a sea-serpent, dragon and monster of chaos.
What comes before the dragons, the giants, and faeries that inhabit and make up the landscape?
Magic is a mysterious medium. Something existed before the gods, before Tiamat and her consort Apsu, before the creation of the planet.
Before language, cities, and homo sapiens, before time itself.
And here we are, an exhale of creation, differentiated for the sake of experiencing oneness.
Sources
Cult of the Divine 
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