Almost all mythic cosmogonies begin with water. It is the primeval element, "the face of the deep,: the formless potentiality that preexists the created world and sustains it's being. "Water flows," wrote the religious historian Mircea Eliade, "it inspires, it heals, it prophesies. By their very nature, spring and river display power, life, perpetual renewal; they are and they are alive.

Mircea Eliade, God Is Love by Brian Doyle