The Secret Doctrine 2.3.11

The Lord of the Lords came. From her Body he separated the Waters, and that was Heaven above, the First Heaven.

Here tradition falls again into the Universal. As in the earliest version, repeated in the Purânas, so in the latest, the Mosaic account. In the first it is said:

He the Lord [the God who has the form of Brahmâ], when the world had become one ocean, concluding that within the waters lay the earth, and desirous to raise it up [to separate it], created himself in another form. As in the preceding Kalpa [Manvantara] he had assumed the shape of a tortoise, so in this one he took the shape of a boar, etc.

In the Elohistic “creation,” “God” creates “a firmament in the midst of the waters,” and says “let dry land appear.” And now comes the traditional peg whereunto is hung the Esoteric portion of the Kabalistic interpretation.