After seeing many different motifs repeating themselves in different cultures and myths I started making some associations between them and tried to make sense of it all.
Just a warning: I’m not a scholar, nor a professional in this - I just like philosophy and theorycrafting and trying to make sense of how Reality and Magick works.
This is a meditation on repeating motifs of different cultures, especially Chaoskampf, where a “hero” slains the chaos-serpent; and the Hermetic Principles.
“Reality is a Dream” - Hermetic Principle of Mentalism
Marduk kills Tiamat and from the body makes the Earth and Heaven.
Yahweh defeats one (or two) Serpents (Leviathan) and castrates them. Then he proceeds to castrate the Serpent, and then goes on to separate darkness from light, sky from the ground, and so on.
Zurvan desiring offspring that would create everything, sacrificed for a thousand years (maybe like Odin who sacrificed himself for knowledge to himself) and Ohrmud (Ahura Mazda, light) and Ahriman (Angra Manyuu, darkness) were concieved as twins.
Note: I don’t consider the Abrahamic deity the main, central god of this world and reality - in these stories I view him as an archetype.
The “hero” or god from my perspective represents the Avatar of the All (or Eternal Mind of Hermeticism, main/leader god, “the Highest Face”). The whole dragonslaying takes place in Reality, which is the Dream of the All. In the beginning dreams are chaotic, but when one realizes that it’s all a dream (becomes lucid), they gain control, authority over it. The “hero” battles the serpent and emerges as victorious - from the body or body-parts of the Serpent (usually related to creation) creates something tangible and in the process separates order from chaos. (Heaven-Earth, Light-Dark, mental-material). Although the “hero” is victorious and gained authority, some parts of the dream remain unpredictable and chaotic which hints and the remains of the Serpent/Dragon (the “In-Between”, the Abyss, the Void; maybe the astral?).
Althought the Reality is Dream for the All or the Dreamer, it is hard and true reality for it’s subjects - each and every separate manifestation of the Dreamer.
How does this benefit the magician? The Kybalion states that the magician can use Higher Principles to gain control or authority over the Lower Principles.
Duality - Hermetic Principle of Polarity, Hermetic Principle of Gender
Becoming conscious, “awakening” inside a dream, realizing the power of authority One has over it and “battling the unconscious” or Chaos and then emerging victorious and harnessing the creative, infinite potential of the Chaos/unconscious. This is also a battle (well, battle is not the best word for it, maybe conflict or back-and-forth) between light and dark, masculine and feminine, but those pairings are sides of the same coin - 2 parts of the same being. The Dreamer takes conscious control over Reality and bends it to their will.
Speculation
In the past due to substance-abuse I had an experience where I saw the Eternal Mind from inside and experienced the “Oneness with the All”/“Everything is connected”. Years leater when I read the Kybalion and the Emerald Tablet, some of the gaps were filled, but still a lot of this is left to be understood. Concerning the nature of the Void/Abyss I have 2 theories:
At first the Void/Abyss either surrounds the One/Dreamer or is inside them - “the empty space between neurons” is the closest I can describe this which corresponts to some descriptions of the Abyss: doesn’t exist, but one must travel there at the end of their journey of initiation/pathworking. As Hermeticism states the “nothing exists outside the All”, then the first version where the All is surrounded by the Abyss becomes invalid. (Maybe the All is both themselves and the Abyss at the same time? conscious-subconscious) Using the Hermetic Principles, the most sound version seems to be the second theory, where the Abyss or the Void is in between/surrounds the manifestations of the Dreamer inside the Dream (Reality). Or maybe underlies it as a layer.
Just some keywords that popped into my mind, when pondering on the subject:
meditation, lucid dreaming, conscious control of the dream, awakening consciousness, creativity, becoming authority, creator, order from chaos, harnessing the infinite potential of chaos, separating “higher realms” from “lower realms” - the (mental) realm of mind and thought and the realm of material and substance, the masculine force vs the feminine force creating something, separation of the One into 2 aspects
