TeHÔM, a Hebrew word signifying primeval waters over which darkness was superimposed. It characterizes chaos materially as a watery primeval element, but at the same time gives a dimensional association, "sea of chaos" or cosmic abyss. This Hebrew word for primeval flood probably has a linguistic affinity with Tiamat, the Babylonian dragon of chaos. Symbolically, TeHÔM responds to the Babylonian concept of APSU, which also signifies precreational waters of chaos. APSU and TeHÔM are symbols of aquatic chaos, a shapeless modality of cosmic matter and the world of the dead, everything that precedes life and follows after it. TeHÔM signifies a state of virtual existence, it is the "materia prima" in the sense of pure potential (potentia pura). Also it is the matriarchal pre-world overtaken by male patriarchy.

TeHÔM further points to a collective unconscious whose amorphous structure was projected through first cosmogony myths into the outer world as an archetype of primordial water, an undifferentiated state, out of which merges a world, i.e. conscious ego, under which TeHÔM (or the unconscious) always remains as an immense stratum. Mr. Gerhard Von Rad says about it: "Man has always suspected that behind all creation lies the abyss of formlessness; that all creation is ready to sink into the abyss of the formless; that the chaos, therefore, signifies simply the threat to everything created." But this dangerous side of the story does not cover the whole dimension of TeHÔM, because TeHÔM is dark and perilous depth of everything existing, but also the creative potential of limitless power. Daring to enter TeHÔM i.e. Tiamat and kill the beast, as Marduk did in the Babylonian myth of creation, signifies the individuals' courage and wisdom to face all of the negative contentswhich bind his being.