before and beyond all things is the mistress of all things and when nothing was, she was and having no solid place that her feet might rest upon she divided the sea from the sky and made a dance of solitary splendor upon the crested deeps and she was pure consciousness or energy and therefore pure delight and the crushing of the waves was the overflowing of her joy and the white pulse of her superabundant joy grew so great that it must take shape in laughter and her laughter was the shape of all things for each appeal 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 in her beauty and her hands knew cunning and she stretched forth her hands and gave shape to each fragment and no one was like any other and she parted the vasty waters that there might be a place to set them down and she laughed and each fragment was filled with her delight and therefore was living and some grew in the deep floor as plants and trees some ran about the ground or flew above it and those first made who had no place to be set down down became the fishes and the creatures in the sea and everything was golden and she laughed and at the edges where the waters had been parted the lay still in the shadow and there she cast her gaze and she saw an image of us suffused to her light love and energy and she laughed and as she laughed the image rose up and stood before her and this was the first of her daughters and she was filled with love but therefore was the first creature of spirit and she had cunning and she ran about the earth with a love of all things giving a name to every thing and creature each in the order of which she had shaped them and the mistress of all things was filled with delight and ran laughing through the forests of the earth and every appeal of her voice became the image of a gold fragment of her spirit and the trees and rivers were filled with nymphs and every kind of spirit and all were her daughters and her love for each was inexhaustible for each was a reflection of some boundless fragment of her boundless spirit and all their multitude did not exhaust the love of the fragments of her spirit and each was given the governance of some earthly state but one there was that had not been shaped by her and was not her daughter or a creature of spirit but this was the space between the fragments and the nothingness that had been before them it had not energy or delight but only weight it had not shape but could only coil and uncoil itself about the earth it was the snake it was not golden, but black the snake hated all things that had become and hated the separation of the waters and the sky it hated life and energy, desiring all to be dark and when the world lived a time of joy.... ... but what that time was none can say for then were neither days nor nights nor moons to tell the months the snake came to the first daughter of the mistress of all things and coiled about her feet and spoke to her, "first of the daughters of creation, you have lived a time that cannot be counted and have run from 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." 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 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. but because she was suffused with the delight of the mistress of all things the snake immediately took on shape 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.