Mesopotamia
Tiamat, of the Babylonian Epic of Creation (first millenium B.C.E), is an ancient sea goddess who gave birth to all. Part glistening serpent, part winged animal, her image may superficially appear more dragon than demon. But within, she holds the essentioal DNA of all demonic species: the dark, creative, turbulant, protean spirit of the unconscious deep.
Lore
When skies above were not yet named
Nor earth below pronounced by name
There was water...
and Tiamat mingled her salt seas with fresh waters of Apsu, her consort, and bore populations of gods who lived within her darkness until finally Apsu could no longer bear the disorder and clamor of the young gods. He attempted to destroy their offspring. Naturally, enrage, Tiamat collaborated with her son and destroyed Apsu. Generations passed until her great-grandson, the solar god Marduk, challenged hger dominion.
Marduk was a perfect hero. He had four eyes and four ears and could breathe fir. In preperation for the battle, Marduk made a bow and arrow and a huge net. Carrying a spell on his lips, an herb in one hand that worked against Tiamat's poisons, and a mace in the other, he mounted his terrifying strom chariot and marshaled the seven winds to follow him into battle.
Tiamat was infuriated. From her rage came forth monstersm demons, horned snakes, bull men, fish men, filled not with blood but venom. Her army was radiant and terrible. She appointed Kingu, a monster offspring, to be her spouse and to lead her brood into battle. But Marduk challlenged her to single combat. He caught her in his net and then sent evil winds toward her. She opened her mouth like a mammoth cave to swallow them, but the winds were of such power her jaws were forced to remain open. The winds distended her belly. Marduk entered and saw within her an entire army of gods, snakes, and demons. He shot his arrow. It split her heart in two. She perished. He stood on her body and smashed her skull with his mace.
Then Marduk slices Tiamat in two like a cosmic clam, and rainsed one half of her to become the roof of the sky. He bolted it to hold the waters in check. With her lower half, he created the earth above the subterranean waters. From her eyes he created two rivers; from her udder, mountains and foothills. From her saliva he made rain and clouds; from her poisons, fog. After Marduk named each thing and set the stars and gods in their places, he created man out of the blood of Kingu, posionous spouse-creation of Tiamat.
This Epic of Creation was read annually at the Babylonian new year's festival, and since most of it featured the slaying of Tiamat by Marduk, the supremem god of their pantheon, the story was naturally told from his point of view. The ancient goddess is seen as demonic in the eyes of the new hegemony: male sun god defeats dark feminine life force of chaos and creates civilization.
Yet without her essence nothing could be created. Tiamat is primordial chaos. Home Sapiens can only walk about and build civilizations in an ordered universe, and so Tiamat must be divided and named, but within an of Tiamat is all life. From this inchoate broth come tides, fish, birds, flowers, weeks, night and day.
Water is, with rare exception, seen as female and quintessentially Tiamat, and its anarchaic, untamable spirits surface globally. Despite its terrific dangers, we also arise from these fertile depths both in body and consciousness.
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