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Patterns in Comparative Religion – Mircea Eliade

Water is a bearer of seeds; earth bears seeds too, but in the earth they all bring forth fruit quickly.  Latencies and seeds may spend several cycles in water before they become manifest; but it can be said of the earth that it never rests; its work is to give birth unceasingly, to give form and life to whatever comes back to it lifeless and sterile.  The waters are there at the beginning and end of every cosmic cycle; the earth is there at the beginning and end of every individual life.  Everything emerges into being above the surface of the waters, and is once again reduced to its primeval formlessness as a result of a historical disaster – like the flood – or a cosmic one.  Every expression of life is the result of the fertility of the earth; every form is born of it, living, and returns to it the moment its share of life is exhausted; returns to it to be reborn; but before being reborn, to rest, to be purified, to be regenerated.  Water precedes every creation, every form; earth produces living forms