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Genesis Athargatis is the oldest memory of water before it learned to divide itself. She is not a goddess who arrives later with temples and names, but the condition that makes arrival possible. In the oldest stories she belongs to fresh water, not the sea—springs, pools, rivers that have not yet chosen direction. She is fertility before agriculture, abundance before ownership, the liquid intelligence that knows how to gather without conquering. Before names, before vessels learned how to hold, there was water that had not yet decided its edge. The floor was stone only because water remembered it into being. From a high window light entered like a first thought—hesitant, golden, unsure whether it meant warmth or witness. Flowers loosened themselves from a vase as if gravity were only a suggestion, and practiced falling as a way of learning. This is where Athargatis dwells—before and as—תֹּהוּ וָבֹהוּ (tohu va-vohu), the wild, pre-mythical abyss of fresh water. Not sea, not salt, but the original sweetness that knew reflection before depth. She does not rise; she gathers. She does not speak; she allows. The room thickens around her presence. Paint behaves like earth remembering rain. Impasto becomes geology. Each petal carries more weight than its color suggests, a small insistence on meaning. Water strikes stone and does not shatter; it opens. Sound becomes surface. Time turns granular. Nothing is centered because nothing has yet claimed importance. Steps interrupt the pool, not to cross it but to ask questions of it. Shadows lean away from their sources. Balance is only a rumor, circulating softly. The view is inward and splendid. Leaves float like answers that arrived early. Splash patterns resemble constellations that forgot the sky and settled for the floor. Creation is not an explosion here, but a careful spill—an abstract expression written in motion rather than line. Three directions hold the world together: upward to the window where light rehearses origin, forward where water spreads its quiet argument, downward where stone learns softness. Gravity pauses, listens, resumes differently. For a breath, water falls upward. Flowers hover, deciding whether to become memory or sediment. A golden glow lingers in the air, tasting of pollen and minerals, coating everything like a blessing without instruction. This is older than style, older than myth. Athargatis remains. תֹּהוּ וָבֹהוּ does not close. Genesis continues—not finished, only begun—each drop rehearsing the future, each flower learning how to mean more than itself.
תֹּהוּ וָבֹהוּ — וְהַהִתְחָלָה נִשְׁאֶרֶת פְּתוּחָה
Formless and void—
and the beginning stays open.
There was a presence that behaved like liquid long before liquid agreed to be itself.
It hadn’t selected a role.
It hadn’t filled out a mythology.
People kept giving it names the way you give nicknames to weather, hoping one would stick.
It preferred inland water.
Not the dramatic kind that pretends to be infinite.
Small waters. Baths. Springs. Places where a body remembers it has edges.
Desire before it learned manners.
Pleasure before anyone installed a warning label.
Before labels, before jars, before anything learned how to stay put, a room happened.
The floor was solid only because moisture had voted for it.
Light slid in through an opening like it was unsure whether it had missed the start.
Plants slipped from their container, curious about falling, testing it like a rumor.
This was the address—inside tohu va-vohu—that early confusion where nothing had decided what it meant yet.
Not disorder.
More like everything showing up without a script.
In certain old baths the water still hums with it, even after centuries of lectures about guilt.
Someone once decided joy needed supervision.
The water listened politely and kept doing what it was doing.
Sometimes the presence wore a beard and pretended to be a star buried under the floorboards.
Sometimes it let a tired god wander past, thinking about beginnings the way people think about first dates that went strangely well.
There was a time when no one had been separated yet, when reflections were shared without argument.
Water met stone and neither objected.
Noise turned into texture.
Minutes crumbled into something you could almost touch.
Nothing stood in the middle.
Nothing asked to be in charge.
Fragments drifted like answers that arrived before the questions were finished.
Ripples mapped themselves into shapes that forgot about the sky entirely.
Nothing exploded.
Something spilled and nobody rushed for towels.
Brightness lifted.
Water wandered outward.
Rock learned patience.
Gravity paused, reconsidered, and continued under revised guidelines.
For a moment, everything leaned the wrong way and felt correct.
A warm shimmer stayed behind, not symbolic, not instructional.
Older than stories.
Older than rules.
The presence didn’t leave.
Tohu va-vohu stayed open.
And the beginning went on doing what beginnings do—
not concluding,
just moving,
quietly remembering it had once been water before it learned any other trick.
