On Tiamat

It’s difficult to write about Tiamat because most of Her myths have been lost to time. The one myth featuring Her that we currently have is incomplete in places and ends with Her being ripped apart by the hero Marduk in order to create our current world. Most Sumerian Polytheists believe that Tiamat is a dead Goddess who shouldn’t receive worship; the few who worship Her are either “fluffy-bunnies” looking for someone “edgy” to worship or angry people looking to express their anger in a very specific, dark way.

But does that mean that Tiamat doesn’t deserve worship? No. Definitely not. And I’m going to explain why in a bulleted list. That’s how I roll, man.

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• Tiamat isn’t truly dead because Gods don’t die.

That’s a common argument Neopagans use when they decide to worship Her. It’s often derided as a non-starter – one posed by “fluffy-bunnies” who don’t know what they’re talking about – but does the derision make this argument untrue?

I don’t think so. I have personal experience that tells me otherwise – swellings of erratic, chaotic energy, feelings that came out of nowhere and helped me know I wasn’t alone during particularly dark periods of the past year – but truthfully, I can’t transfer those experiences to other people. All I can do is tell you that I’ve had them.

If you’ve had them too – if you believe in what you’ve felt – then I don’t think anyone’s mockery can deter you. If you’re truly meant to become a Tiamat follower, then I have a feeling mockery isn’t enough to stop you.

• Tiamat is mentioned in various religious texts, including the Jewish Torah and the Christian Bible.

Tiamat is commonly referred to as the Goddess of the Primordial, Chaotic Sea.

When you view Her in that light – as the literal embodiment of ancient, pre-human life – then you see that the narrative surrounding Her isn’t quite as clear as we’d like it to be. She is mentioned in that guise through many forms of literature. Reverence and fear of the Sea is as universal as superstition within the context of human history.

From the New International Version of the Bible:

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ² Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

The word used to mean “the deep” in Hebrew is “תְהֹ֑ום”, which if I recall my Hebrew school correctly is pronounced very similarly to “Tiamat” in Sumerian. (I may not remember it well enough, guys. It’s been about ten years or so since I had any Hebrew classes.) Other words that mean similar things in prehistoric languages have similar pronunciations. 

Was Tiamat the root of that word, or a manifestation of the fear the word represents? Are those things one and the same? We can’t truly know. As I mentioned in a previous paragraph, most of the information about Tiamat died out with the Babylonian empire. We don’t have accurate information about Her, and it’s likely we never will. 

Which brings me to my next point.

• There are other Gods and Goddesses that had cults in antiquity and might have reflected the way Tiamat was worshipped before everything was destroyed.

Here are a few Gods and Goddesses who were similar in function to Tiamat, existed in roughly the same area and context, and had verifiable cults.

-Yamm, a God who was worshipped alongside Baal in the Levantine area.

-Nammu, a primordial Sea Goddess who was the Mother of the Gods in Sumerian Mythology. Most believe Nammu directly corresponds to Tiamat, though others who are far more educated in this topic state otherwise.

-Gaea, the Greek Goddess of the Prehistoric Earth and the Ancestral Mother of Life. Though Gaea doesn’t directly correspond to Tiamat’s function as a Primordial Sea Goddess, Her other functions remain the same.

Plenty of others exist that I just don’t have the time or patience to actually list right now. You have Google, you can obviously use a computer (or you wouldn’t be reading this right now), and I’m not your mom.

Tiamat was killed off in Babylonian mythology, but the other Gods mentioned above survived long after their initial hayday (though they were plenty demonized in Judeo-Christian mythology, of course). My question is: Was Tiamat killed off because no one worshipped Her, or was She killed off because the Babylonians didn’t want anyone to worship her?

Which came first, the chicken, or the egg? That’s up to you to decide. 

On Ceridwen

Ceridwen is wildly misunderstood and misrepresented in modern times. 

Some people, like my very educated and intelligent girlfriend who shall be referenced a lot on this blog, don’t believe Ceridwen was a Goddess at all. Her first known appearance came in 14th century England, long after any Pagan religions died out following the institutionalization of Christianity. My girlfriend, who was raised Pagan and has a lot more information behind her than I could ever hope to have, believes that the worship of Ceridwen jn that context is mostly a poorly conceived Wiccan phenomenon.

(My girlfriend does not like Wiccans, guys. Fair warning.)

Others – mostly Wiccans and neo-pagans pulling strongly from a Wiccan base – believe Ceridwen is a Goddess of inspiration and reincarnation. This might be true if one assumes She was ever a Goddess in the first place, but it ignores the very basic reality that no one who read Her myths would ever call Her a happy – or necessarily willing – mother. The pregnancy that gives Her many of Her epithets began with theft and ended with the baby literally being thrown into the sea.

Let me explain.

According to Wikipedia,

According to the late medieval^[8] Tale of Taliesin, included in some modern editions of the Mabinogion, Ceridwen’s son, Morfran (also called Afagddu), was hideously ugly, so Ceridwen sought to make him wise in compensation. She made a potion in her magical cauldron to grant the gift of wisdom and poetic inspiration, also called Awen.

The mixture had to be boiled for a year and a day. She set Morda, a blind man, to tend the fire beneath the cauldron, while Gwion Bach, a young boy, stirred the concoction. The first three drops of liquid from this potion gave wisdom; the rest was a fatal poison. Three hot drops spilled onto Gwion’s thumb as he stirred, burning him. He instinctively put his thumb in his mouth, and gained the wisdom and knowledge Ceridwen had intended for her son. Realising that Ceridwen would be angry, Gwion fled. Ceridwen chased him.

Using the powers of the potion he turned himself into a hare. She became a greyhound. He became a fish and jumped into a river. She transformed into an otter. He turned into a bird; she became a hawk. Finally, he turned into a single grain of corn. She then became a hen and, being a goddess (or enchantress, depending on the version of the tale), she found and ate him without trouble. But because of the potion he was not destroyed. When Ceridwen became pregnant, she knew it was Gwion and resolved to kill the child when he was born. However, when he was born, he was so beautiful that she could not do it.

Her daughter, Crearwy, was one of the most beautiful women in the world; however, Her first son, Morfran, was so hideous that Ceridwen had to create a potion to make him wiser to compensate, and Her second son was literally the reincarnation of the servant who stole Her first son’s birthright. Ceridwen was literally forced to carry this unwanted son to term (presumably because abortion didn’t exist then), and then found Herself so overcome by maternal love that She couldn’t bear to kill the son She never wanted to give birth to in the first place. That son, whose name was Taliesin, was rescued by a Welsh prince and later became one of the most famous and long-lasting British bards to ever live.

What do we call that, class? Yeah, we call that reproductive coercion.

Supposedly, Taliesin obtained all his creative and artistic prowess from Ceridwen’s cauldron. This is why many modern Pagans consider Her to be a Goddess of reincarnation and inspiration; but the truth is, that creative and artistic prowess wasn’t bestowed willingly by Ceridwen. It was stolen from Her.

Does that mean that Ceridwen didn’t create that artistic inspiration? No – in fact, one could argue that the inspiration Taliesin obtained wouldn’t have existed had it not already belonged to Ceridwen in the first place. However, worshiping Her as a Goddess of Inspiration and Reincarnation glorifies Her victimhood. It makes Her unintentional and undesired contributions more important to historical records than anything else She ever did. If other myths about Her ever existed in the first place, they have died out in the millennia or so that has passed since their inception, making the worst moment of Her life our only way of seeing Her. We have no idea whether or not She was truly a Goddess (though Her continued survival certainly suggests so). To be quite honest, seeing people overlook these aspects of Her wig me out. 

I don’t think it’s appropriate for anyone to worship Ceridwen in the guise most people give Her. That’s why I won’t do that on this blog. When I mention Ceridwen, I include every piece of that myth and a healthy amount of UPG to go with it. That’s what Ceridwen – Her myths, Her personage, Her perspective – deserves.