1. The Mythic Abyss

When in the height heaven was not named,
And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name,
And the primeval Apsu, who begat them,
And chaos, Tiamut, the mother of them both
Their waters were mingled together,
And no field was formed, no marsh was to be seen;
When of the gods none had been called into being,
And none bore a name, and no destinies were ordained;
Then were created the gods in the midst of heaven
--Enuma Elish, The Epic Of Creation, L.W. King Translator

When considering a subject that is spoken of exclusively in the terms of myth and mysticism, it is well to remember that the subject at hand is, at least, understood metaphorically, human language being insufficient to describe precisely the concepts we are discussing. The Abyss is one such topic. Whether or not there is a “reality” (beyond the psychological) behind the myth is a subject which we will not explore, it being a subject better suited to philosophy. Still, we shall endeavor to keep in mind that we are speaking in symbols and therefore take care not to assign too much significance to our conclusions, at least insofar as lend themselves to practical consequences.

As discussed in Valentinian Christianity, the understanding of this essentially Gnostic mythography …can be understood in psychological terms… (and) are taken to symbolize psychological conditions and intra-psychic powers of the mind. (Because) our minds have lost their self-knowledge, we live in a self-created world that is lacking in integrity. The importance of this insight cannot be overstated. The map of consciousness is a map of God. It is, however, equally important to keep in mind that this is not the same thing as ordinary psychological pathology. Rather, it is an affirmation of the Hermetic axiom from the Emerald Tablet (of Hermes); As above, so below. Which is to say that consciousness is reflection, via an order of magnitude differential equal to -1 as in fractal equations, of the macrocosm in the microcosm or individuated self.
The Emerald Tablet “is the cornerstone of the Hermetic movement. The origin of this mysterious text is shrouded in antiquity, and even its name is a mystery, yet is has been an inspiration for alchemists and magicians for hundreds of years. The well known Hermetic axiom, “As above, so below” is derived directly from the Emerald Tablet. It may be the oldest Hermetic text known, predating both the Corpus Hermeticum and the Christian religion.” Therefore we may say, justifiably, that this concept is a key concept underlying Western esotericism. This concept is probably most widely known in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life glyph and is the foundation of much Esoteric theory, providing a map of the Cosmos, inner and outer, that can be used to climb the Mountain of God.

Gerald Massey as written extensivly concerning the evolution of myth, which he considers, with much evidence in support of his conclusion, to be Astronomical in nature. That is a key that he in turn uses to decode the myths as they pass through the various stages which mirror the advance of civilization and to map, so to speak, the psychic processes that have transformed our view of the world and even now continue to influence our undestanding of the universe and Man's place in it. The first modern myth cycle is often know as the 'Combat Myth' which describes the creation of the universe out of the chaos of the primordial state. While Christianity has inherited its mythology from the Hebrews who in turn were influenced by multiple sources, Egypt and Babylonia being the most important, there are traces of this mythology in the Hebrew scriptures as well as much more evidently in the "apocryphal" literature such as 1 Enoch. We shall, however, look at an older version of the Myth, from the Ennuma Elish in order to demonstrate the techniques by which we shall extract from these texts the theological substrate that will allow us to map the Abyss:
They banded themselves together and at the side of Tiamat they advanced;
They were furious; they devised mischief without resting night and day.
They prepared for battle, fuming and raging;
They joined their forces and made war,
Ummu-Hubur [Tiamat] who formed all things,
...
They bore cruel weapons, without fear of the fight.
Her commands were mighty, none could resist them;
After this fashion, huge of stature, she made eleven [kinds of] monsters. Among the gods who were her sons, inasmuch as he had given her support,
She exalted Kingu; in their midst she raised him to power.
To march before the forces, to lead the host,
To give the battle-signal, to advance to the attack,
To direct the battle, to control the fight,
Unto him she entrusted; in costly raiment she made him sit, saying:
I have uttered thy spell, in the assembly of the gods I have raised thee to power. The dominion over all the gods have I entrusted unto him. Be thou exalted, thou my chosen spouse, May they magnify thy name over all of them the Anunnaki."
She gave him the Tablets of Destiny, on his breast she laid them, saying: ”Thy command shall not be without avail, and the word of thy mouth shall be established."
-- L.W. King, ibid.

In that cosmological myths record the beginning of the universe they recapitulate the process of birth since in a deeper sense, the universe does come into existence when we are born, albeit subjectively. The life of each human being is a process of the darkness (i.e. the unconscious) that is within every person warring with the rational intellect in the course of a child’s growth into an adult. It can hardly be denied that the foremost cause of man to imagine the world had a beginning and what it entailed is largely derived from human reproduction; there is no inherent reason why the world must not be conceived as eternal. Therefore, I conclude that the foremost import of the ancient creation Myths is in the understanding of the "soul" of these periods, insasmuch as the myth is a projection of that soul onto the Universe. This is an idea we shall encounter in Hermetism's "as obove, so below" axiom and later, the Medieval Kabbalah and its offshoots. To our study here, the import is in the recognition of the Ego as the slayer of the chaotic pre-rational mind(5) which then (as the myth continues) fashions the world out of the substance of the primordial Chaos. Thus, we are always in danger, from the perspective of the Ego, of the "ordering" of that chaos to breaking down and unleashing the creatures of the Deep.

I do not wish to imply this is a "psychological" (in the modern sense) redaction of the myths but rather, that as humans began to evolve into the creatures we have become, our understanding of ourselves changed with us. Therefore, one might argue, the Chaos Monster of the so-called Combat Myth was previously the Great Mother, became the Typhonian Dragon and was eventually subsumed by the Solar Myth of the ego, which culminated in the Christian Mythos which is quite apart from the revelation of Christ, in that the "map" of the universe first evolved and then became concretized in the events of the Gospels. Whether these are "historical" in nature -wholly, partly or not at all- is irrelevant to this position. Further, it should be pointed out, as Massey chronicled extensivley, the mythos evolved. This particular cycle passed first through the stage where the Dragon(6) was slain by Anat, then through the Marduk myth and was retained, in variant formula through the Hebrew scriptures reaching its current state in the Revelation of John, the final book in the canonical New Testament.
Revelation 12:9 And the great dragon was cast down, the old serpent, he that is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world; he was cast down to the earth, and his angels were cast down with him.
Revelation 20:10 And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where are also the beast and the false prophet; and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
Revelation 20:14 And death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death, `even` the lake of fire. --(ASV)

As we might expect, the myth has now evovlved to the point where the Creation is remade, this time from the substance of the Father, which is to say, within the Light of the Pleroma. Thus the symbolic City of God (here Jerusalem) is created anew:
1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away; and the sea is no more.
2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven of God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.
3 And I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his peoples, and God himself shall be with them, `and be` their God:
4 and he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more: the first things are passed away.
5 And he that sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he saith, Write: for these words are faithful and true.
--Revelation Chapter: 21 (ASV) [my emphasis]

It should be understood that when we are speaking in the language of Myth, what we are recounting is the function of Cosmic principle, or Law, in operation within the field of Time. Therefore we can say with some confidence that the Apocalypse of John will never come to pass in history, or perhaps more accuratly, must come to pass over and over, as each individual becomes One with the cosmic powers here evoked with poetic imagry. We must each conquer the Dragon of Darkness and abolish chaos from our inner cosmos, thus restoring ourselves in the schema of the greater universe which, after all, never fell. It was only ever our relationship to it that was cast out of Eden and thus we became lost in the Wilderness.

1. http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/enuma.htm
2. Hoeller, ibid.
3. fractal : A geometric pattern that is repeated at ever smaller scales to produce irregular shapes and surfaces that cannot be represented by classical geometry. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2004, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
4. http://altreligion.about.com/library/weekly/aa121302a.htm
5. This would be an actual change in function,as in the "bi-cameral mind" theory.
6. See Forsyth, The Old Enemy