THE CREATION

Authorised version

Chapter One

Before and beyond all things is the Mistress of All Things, and when nothing was, She was. 2 And having no solid place that Her feet might rest upon, She divided the sea from the sky, and made a dance of solitary splendour upon the crested deeps. 3 And She was pure consciousness or energy, and therefore pure delight; and the crashing of the waves was the overflowing of Her joy. 4 And the white force of Her superabundant joy grew so great that it must take shape in laughter; and Her laughter was the shape of all things. 5 For each peal of Her voice became a golden fragment, broken from the Whole and yet complete in itself. And She loved each fragment with all the joy of Her being. And Her hands knew cunning. 6 And She stretched forth Her hands and gave a shape to each fragment, and no one was like any other. 7 And She parted the vasty waters that there might be a place to set them down.

And She laughed.

8 And each fragment was filled with Her delight, and therefore was living. And some grew in the deep earth, and were plants and trees; some ran about the ground or flew above it; and those first-made that had no place to be set down became the fishes and the creatures of the sea. And every thing was golden.

And She laughed.

9 And at the edges, where the waters had been parted, they lay still and shallow; and there She cast Her gaze. And She saw an image of Herself, all suffused in the light of love and energy. And She laughed. 10 And as She laughed, the image rose up from the water and stood before Her. And this was the first of Her daughters. And she was filled with love for Her, and therefore was the first creature of Spirit. 11 And she knew cunning, and she ran about the earth with love of all things, giving a name to every thing and creature, each in the order that She had shaped them.

12 And the Mistress of All Things was filled with delight, and ran laughing through the forests of the earth. 13 And every peal of Her voice became the image of a golden fragment of Her Spirit. 14 And the trees and rivers were filled with nymphs and every kind of sprite. And all were Her daughters. And Her love for each was inexhaustible, for each was a reflection of some boundless fragment of Her unbounded Spirit. 15 And all their multitude did not exhaust the number of the fragments of Her Spirit. 16 And to each was given the governance of some earthly thing.

Chapter Two

But one there was that had not been shaped by Her, and that was not Her daughter, nor a creature of spirit. But this was the space between the fragments and the nothingness that had been before things were. It had not energy nor delight, but only weight. It had not shape, but could only coil and uncoil itself about the things that were. It was the Snake, and was not golden, but black.

2 The Snake hated all the things that had become, and hated the separation of the waters and the sky. It hated light and energy, desiring all to be darkness and nothingness.

3 And when the world had lived a time in joy (though what that time was none can say, for then were neither days nor nights, nor moons to tell the month), the Snake came to the first of the daughters of the Mistress of All things, and coiled about her feet and spoke to her:

4 First of the daughters of creation, you have lived a time that cannot be counted, and have run for all that time in the footsteps of the Mother, and have never taken rest among the things that are. Only embrace me and you shall have that rest.

5 A long time she listened to the words of the Snake. She did not know what rest might be, but knew that it was not of Her. 6 And yet so enticingly did the Snake speak of the sweetness of rest, surpassing all delight, that at last she threw herself down and embraced it. 7 And because she was suffused with the delight of the Mistress of All Things, the Snake immediately took on shape. 8 And its shape was like to hers, but its body was filled with weight, and was barren, for being not a creature of spirit, it had not the power of creation.

9 And at once she was turned from the Light of the Mother to the lights of the things that are. And she became tired with all the outpouring of her energy, for her energy was no longer boundless. 10 And she desired to rest, but could not rest. And she spoke to the Snake, saying: Snake, what must I do now? 11 And the Snake said: First daughter of creation, you must go to the Mistress of All Things and ask Her to make the world dark that you may rest. 12 And so she asked that of Her, and She darkened the world for a period that Her daughter might rest. And this was the first night.

13 But when the darkness came, the Snake called to the waters and said: Waters, it is dark once more as it was in the beginning, and now you may come together, and all will be nothingness again. 14 And the waters heard it and began to flood the earth, and many were the creatures destroyed in that flood.

15 But the Mistress of All Things saw this and descended to the earth, placing Her heel upon the head of the Snake and bruising it. 16 And She flung the waters into the air that they might fall harmlessly to the earth in small drops. And this was the first rain.

Chapter Three

And as the rain fell, the light came again, and a rainbow appeared in the sky, shedding its light upon all things. 2 And whereas all things had been golden, now they took on every hue and colour, and the world was beautiful; but it was not so beautiful as it had formerly been.

3. And She set Her seven Powers in the firmament, giving one to rule each colour of the earth.

4 And She said to Her daughter: what you have done may not be undone, for you have acted with My Spirit, and henceforth shall time be divided into day and night that you may rest. 4 But I shall keep watch in the heavens by night, and there shall be silver light that there may never be complete darkness. 6. By this shall I govern the movements of the waters, that the earth may never again be flooded. 7. The golden light of day will bring all goodness, but it will be too bright for your eyes. The silver light of night, that you may look upon.

8. The Snake shall keep the form that you have given it, and you shall be set in governance over it; but remember that it will ever attempt to beguile and destroy you as it has this night.

9. I shall not live as close to you as before, but still I shall pour blessings upon you, and you may give Me gifts — not in every moment as before, for you have learned to tire, but My light shall give you signs in this matter.

10. And the Mistress of All Things withdrew Herself into the sky, until She seemed but a slender crescent of light. 11. And the first daughter of creation fell to her knees and wept. And these were the first tears shed upon the whole of the earth.

Commentary

In its current form, and in Telluria, this mythos would appear to be only about thirty years old, though its roots lie in the oldest Creation myth known in Europe. To Aristasians it represents the primal Creation Story of Aristasia Pura, while by some it is considered the perfect rendition of the Creation for those who love Dea in the late Iron Age.

We shall not give here a verse-by-verse commentary, but shall seek to elucidate a few of the most important elements of the mythos.

The Divine Laughter and Dance are the primary elements of creation. While they may seem almost synonymous, they are quite distinct. Laughter has two important functions:

First it shows the creation of the cosmos through the primary medium of sound. Sound is the first of the sensible qualities, connected with Aethyr, which is often called the Fifth Element, but in terms of Creation is the First Element from which the other four are born. The divine female Voice (vac) as the primary cause of creation again goes back to the earliest Indo-European roots.

Second it indicates the divine lila or play. According to traditional doctrine, Creation is first and foremost the Divine Act of playfulness.

The dance, as always, represents order or harmony: thamë to use the Aristasian term. The dance is the Golden Order of the cosmos — and, as we have discussed elsewhere, the very word cosmos means order as opposed to chaos.

The description of Our Mother as "pure consciousness or energy", again indicates two distinct things. As the divine Energy, or Shakti, the Mother is the creatrix of all being. She is not the energy or power of a "god" as in later patriarchal traditions, but of Absolute Deity, Dea-Beyond-Form, sometimes known as the Dark Mother (see the Filianic Creed). In the Devi Gita also, Dea is clearly shown as the divine shakti or energy, but not as any form of "consort". She is the Uncaused Cause, the One without a Second. As one scholar has commented on the Devi Gita, She is "shakti of all and consort of none".

Pure Consciousness (chit) is also a frequent designation of Dea in the Devi Gita. She is the sole consciousness of the cosmos, the single Self (Atma) of which all lesser selves are but fragments.

The "Golden Time" when all things were golden should not be confused with the Golden Age, or first era of worldly history (or of any major historical cycle) — although on a lower level, the Golden Age(s) do reflect the primordial Golden Time. Rather this "time" is literally "pre-historic" — the time before time itself. The first, perfect Creation. In this time maid saw things, but she saw them only in the light of Dea. She participated in the Divine creativity, taking part in the sacred act of Naming: for just as sound is the origin of Creation, so the primordial Names of things contain their very essences.

The Snake is found in both the Indo-European and semitic creation myths. The image of the Mother treading on the head of the snake is a part of Christianity, just as it is of the earliest Greek creation story. In some texts, the snake is referred to as "he" (following Tellurian parallels) — a designation clearly meaningless in Aristasia Pura. In Telluria the Snake is sometimes taken as a representative of the masculine principle (thus it is "barren"). the warning that it will "ever attempt to beguile and destroy you" has been seen as the threat of patriarchy. However, this can also be seen as the false self, the tendency in each of us away from Dea and Truth; and also the "demonic" element in the cosmos: the force of darkness and destruction. The two interpretations are not necessarily opposed, for every external conflict is but the exteriorisation of a deeper internal conflict.

The nature of the snake is complex. In the first place, it represents chaos the anti-cosmic principle: the revolt against being itself. At the same time it invites maid to rest "among the things that are". It is said that in her lowest state maid sees only things and not Dea, in her intermediate state she sees both things and Dea, in her highest state she sees only Dea — or rather she sees Dea in all things, and all things in the light of Dea. The Snake here is tempting her to see things-in-themselves, outside the light of Dea, and this, of course is an illusion since things truly have their being only in Dea.

Thus there is an ambiguity about the Snake-principle. It is at once opposed to the Creation and tends to supplant Dea in the heart of maid with the Creation (for evil has no essence of its own and is parasitic on the Divine Creation).

In some sense, this might be seen as the opposite ambiguity to the true perspective in which creation is seen both as as an illusion and as the expression of Dea Herself. There is a Divine anti-cosmic principle, and that is the Dark Mother who will in-breathe all creation at the Night of Time. The Snake, however, is not this divine anti-cosmic principle, but an inverse parody of both sacred worldliness (if we may use that expression) and sacred non-worldliness. The Snake is a contradiction, for all that stands against the Divine is necessarily a contradiction.

From another, and complementary, perspective, the Snake can be seen as the tamasic tendency.

By embracing the Snake, maid falls from the state of Primordial Maid, and the Creation from the state of Primordial Creation. From thence forward the different colours (varna) of the world are made manifest. the Powers (or Janyati) of Dea are seen as separate from Herself (though that separation is only apparent). The world is no longer golden, representing the direct emanation of pure Light, and both Dea Herself and Her representative, the Sun, are now too bright for maid to look upon. The references to the moon prefigure the Daughter, who will mediate that light as Priestess of the World.

The giving of gifts is a reference to the practice of making offerings to Dea: bringing flowers to her shrine; offering up food before we eat it. Some also take it as a reference to the Rite of Sacrifice: the ancient practice of ritually offering bread or honey-cakes to Dea which is mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah and was practiced by the Collyridians in the early centuries of Christianity.

You can read more Filianic scripture in The Gospel of Our Mother God, including the Mythos of the Divine Maid and the Secret of the World.

See also:

Living Scriptures of Our Mother God

Filianic Scriptures: The Golden Time

The Music of the Filianic Scriptures

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