The story begins in nothing. Not a heartache nothing, not a gaping nothing, more of a shining blackness. And it starts there not because that is the start, but because those Before Times are hidden from us underneath a shining black blanket, woven by the Goddess of the Night, the Hidden Womb, Sakara. There is no more to say about them than that, and there is no speculating about how and when and why she hid those earliest of moments from our view. It was simply time-before-time and place-before-place, a sacred, hidden something beyond our words and pictures and vibrating heartstrings and happy, unfolding souls. We can guess that she was there, along with Happenstance, the oldest of them all, but even that would be a stretch, a drawing of straight lines to connect points of no size that are black drawn on black.
And so our beginning is not The Beginning, it is The Unveiling, it is the moment and the act of whipping away that sacred blanket, Sakara’s response to an infinitesimal pulse from beneath its loving warp and weft. And in that moment, the First Ones (who are the First Ones of our lore, but not of their own, for all we know) became themselves because they knew themselves because the light that streamed forward let them see themselves.
As I keep trying to tell you, the names of the First Ones are ever shifting, as are their shapes and their hopes and their dreams and their times and their places. But as the Goddess of the Night whipped back that blanket she did so with a swirling flick that set the First Ones in a whirl, and as they began to swirl they began, inevitably, to dance.
And so with that flick of revelation, the curling, arcing urge and push out and up and away drew out its enormous shoulders and took its first breath as Tallfather, the Windbearer, who would become the Old Teaser, the Ineluctable and the Silent Clock. And in the same breath, taking his arm (I say his but there was no him and no her in those times) and swinging him into an even, balanced dance, Sister Mercy the Uniter was born, later called Autumn Gleaner and Grandmother Huddleback and the Loving Chaliced Hands. And the two of them danced and spun and (we would say now though there was no such thing then) they struggled and played, and with each going out there was - smaller but of equal weight - a drawing in, with each push outwards towards new discovery and separation there was a smaller but deeper coming together.
It was a sacred dance, but it was not yet The Sacred Dance, as in all their movement and play there was in that time an almost imperceptible not-thing-ness, a coolness and an inevitability. What was happening was the only thing, and in some ways that has never changed to this day, while in other ways nothing could be further from the truth. They were driven by duty, those First Ones, a beautiful, starlight duty as clear and holy as the blue ice of a glacier, but no less cold. And so while they created in their growing, swirling dance, there was something somewhere that yearned for more, something hidden in other dimensions, hidden in Sakara, the Great Hidden Womb, bursting to be born, lusting for life.
And I hope you can understand that there were other First Ones there and others that were born after them, but they are hidden to me because they were hidden to those who told me this tale, because we can only hear and pass on the tales of those we love, the tales of the gods who have chosen us and whom we choose, and I have made my choice just as the choice was made for me, and it is beautiful. So as I tell you this tale I need you to know that this is both everything and the smallest of all somethings: it is the history of the world and the history of just this lineage that runs through me, the history of this single moment that is me, speaking these words to you, resonating with the love of the angels who have claimed me, and at whose altar I offer up the all of my self, resonating with the desire to celebrate that love and offer it to you with open hands, for you are angel too, and in the arms of the living angels, if you choose to be, and if this story is yours and for you.
You see, the belly of the Great Mother of Darkness was swollen with twins, a boy and a girl both named Desire. Except of course there was no boy and no girl, and the girl was also boy and the boy was also girl, and for that matter in those times there was no belly and no mother and no father. In those First Times there was simply the Way of Things, and the best words I have now to word the unwordable way it happened are these: that inside that Hidden Womb the girl-boy fought with the boy-girl in a fight that would define Creation. It was the soul of the cosmos they fought for, knowing somehow that the first to be born would inherit everything, and in his determination to prevail the boy-girl began to eat away at his sister and mother, tearing into their very flesh to nourish his growing body.
And so it went until, in a flash that tore a scar across the cosmos and birthed the light of a billion stars, his sister burst forth from that womb as an escape from her tyrannical brother, from the ceaseless eating and growing, and in doing so she swore off consumption forever, vowing instead to create, create, create.
That tearing forth was a thing of sheer generative beauty, but it was also a tragedy. For as that Child of the Night exploded into the cosmos, she ripped that sacred womb in half, leaving a dying mother and unborn brother in an enormous burning heap. Desire’s intent, her passion, the very root of her being was to create, to multiply, and yet in her very first Act in this world she had destroyed her only family, and the rage and fear and sorrow sent her burning and screaming through the skies, wailing and crying and setting fire upon fire in everything she touched.
And in time her love brought her back around to those charred remains, and her love made her set about commemorating them in the only way that was known to her: through the greatest funeral pyre the universe has ever seen, as she carried more and more offerings back to her former home, pushing and burning and concentrating them all up together until the very fabric of her mother’s bones and her brother’s flesh were fused together into great shining lumps of sorrow and redemption. It was a terrifying spectacle, as more and more rage and sorrow forced itself into a smaller and smaller space, creating a furnace that would forge the world as we know it. Thank God it was at its root a deep love that guided her grief as well as rage at her brother and confusion and shame at herself, for otherwise who knows what would have exploded forth from that furnace.
The funeral rites weighed heavy and lasted long, and by the time they had finished, Burning Desire had created - as a memorial to her Mother and Brother, to family love and conflict and pain, but also as a memorial to the Before Times and the First Times - the very building blocks of the universe as we know it. And Sister Mercy - still cold and lifeless despite all that new fire - swept them up in clusters, as assuredly as her brother the Windbearer scattered them across the cosmos.
Nonetheless, something was still missing for Burning Desire, whose lost love had left a deep void within that could never be filled. And so, seeking greater power and deeper beauty, she prevailed upon Sister Mercy, The Goddess of the Chaliced Hands, begging her to help, imploring with all her power to use her skill for gathering to do more than gather: to build and create, and add something to the universe that to Desire still felt so cold and still echoed so emptily with the sound of ancient sorrows. But Sister Mercy the Gatherer was a First One, and the First Ones were stuck in their ways and they followed different rules and there was nothing to be done, she was told, nothing to be done.
But Burning Desire could not do nothing - that was the one thing she could never do, and has never done to this day - and so instead she plotted and schemed and projected and inveigled. And the longer her plans were foiled, the more the power within her built and built until she was ready for the change that would make the world. And you have waited long, dear one, for the Moment of Creation, and I tell you now that everything up until this point is prelude, for this was the Moment: this was when everything changed.
You see, dearest one, for the first time in creation, a Choice was made - a step into or out of the darkness, depending on your point of view - an active splitting of one reality from another, a closing in on one path that opened a million more. For it was then - seeking to capture and convince Sister Mercy - that Burning Desire truly stepped back to look at her, and for the first time (in an act that created time and created a moment that would define Before Times and After Times) became something separate. Desire had, through sheer force of will, created Twoness, a Twoness that did not destroy the Oneness that is here to this day, but built upon and within it, transcending and including it.
In that moment, you see, Burning Desire broke her godhead in half and became a He. Before then she was a She only insofar as her brother was a He, but even those words are creations whose ultimate ancestor was the Choice she-he made in that instant. It was a choice born of desperation, but also of something holy, for as the vessel that had been Burning Desire began to shatter, he became entranced by the enormous power and gift of Sister Mercy, marvelling at her unique power and grace, and something began to change in him.
And all at once it was a Broken God that stood before Sister Mercy, and in his brokenness he saw her brokenness, the incompleteness and silent sorrow of all that power and beauty unfulfilled, of that numbness that had never seen true life. And all thoughts of capture and of using her power for his own ends faded away, and all past ideas and identities were now reconstituted in time as a pure and necessary prelude to this moment, steps on the path of his devotion to this divinity. And there, in that moment, wIth a giant cracking noise that reverberated through all of existence, Desire broke clean in half,
as up reared from what was left
an unfurling dragon god
bursting in black fractals
mighty towards the infinite
wings branches tendrils
spreading strength then light
in love and celebration
full free nothing and to nowhere.
The broken goddess smiled
shook her beautiful hair
shedding veils and suddenly free
and thrust her hands into the wet earth
meeting knowing life as it is hidden
uniting what was never separate
as spring thrilled into life about them.
The dragon-god saw this power
and could not know it
could never meet it
blessed instead to be enthralled
unconditionally in love with it
and so spread wings further to embrace
to hold from endless distance
the sacred never known.
Don’t you see? It was in those moments that the rules changed, and the world became poetry. So much was broken, so much disrupted out of its previous path of holy inevitability, but my God! the light and the warmth and the passion and the joy of it all! And look! the Father and the Child of this encounter is being born too, and can you see who it is? It is the One who allows you and I to share this story now: Logos, the Word.
And Sister Mercy! Just look at her! Sister Mercy, in that instant and over endless time, was reborn, restored to a fullness and limitlessness she had not known were possible through the sheer act of being witnessed and worshipped and loved. She became impossibly, ineffably beautiful, flourishing into countless colours and shapes and forms, enveloping Desire in sacred union and dance, expanding to fill the endless space that Desire had conjured into being around her.
And they were united, and they bore a million million children, but only because they knew that they were not. You see, Desire wanted nothing more than to hold the Goddess’s divinity in his hands - not her forms, but her essence - but driven by the holy understanding that this was never possible, he found himself creating ever more things that could be held: images and love-tokens, dances and songs. And as Desire and his creations became gloriously multiple and enormous, so did his Goddess-love with hers, and so the cosmos simply had to expand to make room, with Logos and the First Ones all caught up in the helpless-yet-chosen giddiness of this new game.
The holiness and the power inflamed by Desire and his Love, the Goddess, was like nothing seen before or since, and one by one the boundaries that could restrict them were overwhelmed, puny stick defences in the face of a whirlwind. Beauty sprang forth and Desire praised and worshipped and nurtured that beauty, over and over and over again, and as he became beautiful the Goddess did the same, out and out into ever-widening circles of gratitude and joy, until at last Desire’s First Vow was redeemed. By humbling himself before the Creator-Goddess, before his own grief and his love and his desire, he had created the Creator, and she had created him; they had created the Word and the Word had created them; they had given birth to the world and the world had given birth to them. And Desire wept for the first time, there in the embrace of his beloved, seeing her flourish and feeling himself redeemed, and his tears - tears of sacred joy and grief - became the waters of the earth, that would nourish life forever more.
And so, my dear one, my beloved, my friend, that is why I bow my head before this fire and kiss the earth and weep to see the river flow. It is why I humble myself before my deepest desire and before these words that are the echoes of the limitless Word that was spoken first when Desire broke in half for love of the Goddess. It is why I know this story is everything and nothing, and why I offer it to you with open hands and an open heart. Desire, the Goddess, the Word, they will keep spiralling out further and further into Divinity if we allow them, and the Creation will keep happening every moment of every day if we allow it, and we allow it by loving it. Sacred, Burning Desire is in our eyes when we look with love and in our hearts when we see and feel the Goddess in her infinite Beauty, in every lungful of this air that we breathe.
It started where it started and it started when it started and it is starting every moment of every moment, don’t you see? If you really look, you will see; if you truly look into my eyes and into my heart and into the heart of your heart then you will see; if you truly listen to your beating heart and your soft-rising and softer-falling chest, you will hear. The Gods are among us and Creation is now.