Beyond the Surface

excerpted from a larger piece

Tiamat is a personification of the abyss. She is primordial chaos. In the Babylonian creation myth, the Enûma Elish, she is ‘the beginning’ and from her spring the first of the gods representing land, water and other basic elements of our physical world.

Although her origins are debated, in every culture that is put forth as her possible birth place, the story is the same. She is without human form. She is as massive as the seas and very probably the essence of the sea. She churns and rushes and from her depths belches new life.

Although not a dragon, as we think of dragons today, she has always appeared serpentine to me. Pieces of being slithering, rolling over other pieces of being. When she ‘speaks’, it’s not words, it’s feelings, impressions that roll over you and engulf your entire being and quite possible two city blocks around you.

I do not, under any circumstances recommend that anyone work with her, really. Although mighty and catastrophically powerful, she has very little patience or consideration for humans and their lives are tedious and insignificant to her. The changes she brings are thunderous and as devastating as the entire being of her sea rushing upon the land.

When we speak, it is like the tiny whisper of an ant that she may not even hear. She gives her attention to humans on a whim that can change with the next tide that rolls away. One’s path must be a path that is significant to her, the liquid half of the planet, in order to even warrant a side glance. That makes me, on one hand afraid and on another, fool heartedly proud. And, perhaps because I am sometimes also a fearless glutton for punishment, I began working with her in 2006, a little bit here and a little bit there.