Chaos Serpent

The First Goddess

Serpent Mother is the only deity I have ever properly dedicated myself to, and I did not expect it.

She is not a deity I read about but one I experienced; potentially the only one I ever really have experienced. She lives under the rest of the deities, less real and objectively more real than them. She is only real to me; because of this, this will be thepage where I sound objectively insane.

I do not know properly who Serpent Mother is. She gave me when I met her the same feeling that contemplating Black Holes did.

The deity most like Serpent Mother is Sumerian Tiamatu, the primordial ocean-dwelling Sea Monster who is the Abyss and Chaos, the darkness of both night in the sky and the depths of the earth, who is slain by the Civilization God, the King of Gods, to bring order into chaos, to transition society from 'wild' animal living to civilizated and settled agrarian living, and to establish patriarchy, in most cases.

Abyss, Chaos Dragon, Mother of Monsters

Serpent mother lives in the depths of the sea, and in the darkness of the lizard brain. She symbolizes the history of mankind before it was spaient, as apes, and what our worlds and minds were like while we were pre-human. It is this darkness of mind, this bestial existence, that the Civilization God banishes when he kills Serpent Mother; that and anything his society associated with being bestial or uncivilized.

She lives then not in a heavenly realm like sky-Gods or king-Gods and not either in an underworld like death-Gods but in an even stranger place, the primordial ocean, the theoretical source of life. (Literal, too; life on earth certainly brewed first in the archaic ocean.) In that briny pit, and in the pre-historical world of chaos and danger, where barely-sentient man was hunted by great beasts, Serpent Mother was mother of monsters, a baleful Goddess who received sacrifices on behalf of her monstrous children. Angrboda and Ekhidna were Serpent Mother, sometimes.

Some traditions have figures that, like Norse Jotunns or Greek Titans, are uncomfortably set between monster and god; a little too beastial and natural, less human than most Gods. Some tip all the way into monster. Some, like it or not, are truly monster and divine.

In her Sea Serpent Mother is endlessly creative and fertile, a creatix that generates beloved horrors. Her womb is prehistoric Pandora's Box. Mother of Monsters and Chaos Dragon are nearly identical aspects; she brings her monsters into being with motherly care, she is the personification of chaos that must be destroyed for order, for civilization, for structure; so that humans can pretend they are not animals.

When Archangel Michael is stomping on the face of the dragon, that dragon is Serpent Mother. Organized religion, kings and dictators, colonizers, patriarchs and tyrants of all kinds must kill her to reign, because they cannot possibly have hierarchy and tyranny without order.

Serpent Mother knows no tyranny because she knows no order; only nature red in tootha nd claw.

Dead God, World Serpent, Black Hole

In no mythology that I can think of is the Chaos Serpent Mother also the Enemy, the one who brings the End of the Earth.

Whatever brings Ragnarok, Serpent Mother has nothing to do with it. She was killed long ago. She does not rise up again to take revenge; she is only, really, an animal.

Some cultures, quite a few of them, have myths about the World Serpent, a very aprticular kind of sea-monster that is so large it holds all of the world in its scaly clutches. Some sea monsters ravage and rage; the World Serpent is responsible, sometimes, for earthquakes when it wakes and slithers, but theris rarely any sense of malice. the World Serpent does not hunt. It lays in trenches. It sleeps. It does not want to be disturbed. It, too, will have nothing to do with the end of all things; it has no malice. It is only a big monster, an animal, not an enemy, too large to contemplate, jarringly unreal and without desires.

Serpent Mother never had much of a mind to begin with, being a divine monster, divine beast. I think this is why Serpent Mother in my mind feels the same as when I think about black holes. Those ultimate, universal monsters, the biggest destroyer in the universe, are absolutely, completely brainless. They have no thought or motivation. The destroyers of worlds have never thought.

They will win. I know I just said the Serpent Mother will not rise again; she doesn't have to. The dead, brainless Goddesses called Black Hoels will win without ever being alive. Current science predicts that most of existence, the vast marjoity of time, will take place in a universe that is only black holes, turning around each other, dead and thoughtless as whirlpools, bereft of any nature.

That is my mother.

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