“As there is more than one meaning attached to the stories of the creation and deluge, we say, therefore, that the biblical account cannot be comprehended apart from the Babylonian story of the same; while neither will be thoroughly clear without the Brahmanical esoteric interpretation of the deluge, as found in the Mahabharata and the Satapatha-Brahmana. It is the Babylonians who were taught the “mysteries”, the sacerdotal language, and their religion by the problematical Akkadians who – according to Rawlinson came from Armenia – not the former who emigrated to India. Here the evidence becomes clear. The Babylonian Xisuthrus is shown by Movers to have represented the “sun” in the Zodiac, in the sign of Aquarius, an Oannes, the man-fish, the semi-demon, is Vishnu in his first avatar; thus giving the key to the double source of the biblical revelation.
Oannes is the emblem of priestly, esoteric wisdom; he comes out from the sea, because the “great deep”, the water, typifies, as we have shown, the secret doctrine. For this same reason Egyptians deified the Nile, apart from its being regarded, in consequence of its periodical overflows, as the “Saviour” of the country. They even held the crocodiles as sacred, from having their abode in the “deep”. The “Hamites”, so-called, have always preferred to settle near rivers and oceans. Water was the first created element, according to some old cosmogonies. This name of Oannes is held in the greatest reverence, in the Chaldean records. The Chaldean priests wore a headgear like a fish’s head, and a shad-belly coat, representing the body of a fish.
“Thales”, says Cicero, “assures that water is the principle of all things; and that God is that Mind, which shaped and created all things from water.”
“In the Beginning, SPIRIT within, strengthens Heaven and Earth, the watery fields, and the lucid globe of Luna, and then – Titan stars; and mind infused through the limbs agitates the whole mass, and mixes itself with GREAT MATTER.”
Thus, water represents the duality of both the Macrocosmos and the Microcosmos, in conjunction with the vivifying SPIRIT, and the evolution of the little world from the universal cosmos. The deluge then, in this sense, points to that final struggle between the conflicting elements, which brought the first great cycle of our planet to a close. These periods gradually merged into each other, order being brought out of chaos, or disorder, and the successive types of organism being evolved only as the physical conditions of nature were prepared for their appearance; for our present race could not have breathed on earth, during that intermediate period, not having as yet, the allegorical coats of skin.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 