The Leviathan

I’m excited to share something a little different on Beached this week as I’m joined by the wonderful M. E. Rothwell of Cosmographia. Cosmographia is a newsletter dedicated to exploring the world through history, geography, and myth, and M. E. uses all three to tell the story of a terrifying sea monster. Enjoy…

Destruction of Leviathan — Gustave Doré (1865)

Then I saw a beast come out of the sea with ten horns and seven heads; on its horns were ten diadems, and on its heads blasphemous names.

— Revelations 13:1

Our relationship with the sea has long had a dual nature. On the one hand, the oceans provide us with sustenance, transport, and trade; on the other, they can pose mortal danger.

We see this duality reflected in the gods — sea deities like Poseidon (Greek), Ryūjin (Japanese), and Olokun (Yoruba), provided safe passage to sailors when pleased, or vengeful cataclysm when angered. The Baal Cycle, an Ugaritic poem of the ancient Near East, tells the story of a cosmic clash between Yamm, god of the sea, and Baal, god of the storm. Yamm is the brother of Mot, god of death, and represents chaos itself. He didn’t work alone; he had a servant called Lotan. But you probably know him better by another name.

The Antichrist sits on the Leviathan, from the Liber Floridus(1120)

In Canaanite-Phoenician myth, the Leviathan was a primordial sea serpent, said to churn the seas. So powerfully did the beast embody nature’s might that it found its way into Jewish mythology too. The Leviathan appears in the Old Testament in a few different guises: Psalms 74:14 describes how God killed the multi-headed sea serpent and fed its body to the Israelites, while Isaiah 27:1 portrays the monster as a serpent and symbol of Israel’s enemies. In Job 41, there is a lengthy description of the beast — “flames stream from its mouth”, “its breath sets coals ablaze”, “nothing on earth is its equal” — which is used to illustrate God’s powers of creation.

The Leviathan is sometimes associated with another primeval chaos-beast, the Behemoth - both of which were said to have been created by God at the beginning of time. The non-canonical Book of Enoch holds that the sea serpent Leviathan is female, while the land monster Behemoth is male. Later writings disagreed, holding that there were actually two leviathans — one male, one female. To prevent the two from breeding and filling up the earth with monsters, God slew the female and reserved its flesh for a banquet at the End of Days. 

Such a ferocious creature is surely to be associated with Satan himself, and indeed that’s the sense we get from the Book of Revelation. John describes a devouring dragon emerging from the sea, which raises other beasts from the earth, who were worshipped by the unrighteous — “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?”. In later Christian depictions, the Leviathan becomes a major symbol for the Devil, often appearing as the Hellmouth — the very gates of hell itself.

The Hellmouth, from the Toulouse Manuscript (c. 1220-70).

Hellmouth, from the Hours of Catherine of Cleves (c. 1440)

During the late mediaeval period, the Leviathan came to be depicted as a whale — an unfortunate association for the gentle giants. Later, as the cetaceans came under immense pressures from the commercial whaling industry of the 19th and 20th centuries, they were often portrayed in art and literature as semi-mythic beasts that represented nature’s unbounded power. Indeed, we can see influence of the Leviathan in Moby Dick — the 1851 Great American novel about a man’s quest for vengeance against the whale that bit off his leg. Melville even makes the comparison directly: “The great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last.” 

Whaling was an incredibly dangerous trade, the men risked their lives with every hunt, so perhaps it was only natural that they see their prey, or possible predator, as the Leviathan of the Apocalypse. Though we know, of course, that whales are anything but.

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Amie 🐋