A History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries

by Mircea Eliade

Ninurta and Asag, Marduk and Tiamat, the Hittite storm god and the serpent Illuyankas, Zeus and Typhon, the Iranian hero Thraētaona an...

In short, it is by the slaying of an ophidian monster—symbol of the virtual, of “chaos,” but also of the “autochthonous”—that a new cosmic or institutional “situation” comes into existence.

(grihaspati), Agni dispels darkness, drives away demons, and defends against sickness and sorcery.

Soma/haoma is the Indo-Iranian formula for the drink of “nondeath” (amṛta); presumably it replaced the Indo-European drink madhu, “hydromel.”