Some extracts of this final chapter... (by Jani Roberts c2000 All rights reserved) the whole book can be purchased and downloaded from this website.

Although I decided to put my priesthood back into the centre of my life when I returned to everyday life after coming out of hospital, but this was easier thought than done. My imagination would roll over helpless with laughter if I thought of knocking on the door of Westminster Cathedral to ask the Cardinal to let me back in. He would have wondered if I were kidding or mentally subnormal. No way they would have a vacancy for a priestess! I did not think it any use reminding them they taught that once ordained, if you said Mass, it would be a real Mass. No one could take this from you.

I had been to the services of Anglicans and charismatic Christians who had women priests but I was not at home with them. I had to be true to my instincts, inspiration and reason. I was not seeking to return to the priesthood because I needed a job - I was instead seeking to fulfil a prophetic mission. I now think I did not fully trust my inner bond with my Lover-God when I looked at these alternatives. I thought I needed some human props of appointment and community acceptance before I gave myself full-time to my vocation.

Instinctually I knew there had to be another way. What if I simply forgot about my preconceptions, forgot my guilt at not following a priestly vocation, forgot my conceits about being called to be in a priestly job - and simply looked at what my instincts told me?

When I did try asking my instincts a different path appeared. If I tried to visualise the path that most attracted me, the picture that came was not that of me presiding at an altar in a large building, but that of a track up a hill side through heather and small trees above a wild coastline. I would see myself as happily walking up this path carrying a small rucksack and trusting in providence to look after me. When I stopped to camp, a boulder beside my camp became naturally my altar as I simply thanked my Creatrix for wine and bread and for her presence. If I were meant to share such small rituals, as I thought I was, then others would appear.

I knew where these images came from. I was seeing in my mind's eye my ancestral lands on the western coasts of the British Isles. The life I was envisioning for myself was that of the Celtic women and men who really leave everything to give their lives to God - or to the Goddess in pre-Christian days. They set up their hermitages in the wildest coves or caves. They saw the face of divinity in nature. Their path had long inspired me - but for years I had put aside the thought of following them as a mere day-dream thinking I should be based in the cities where I could more effectively fight against social injustice. I thought it would be escapist for me to go to live in the wild.

...

On of the greatest of modern Christian mystics, the monk Thomas Merton blamed the Christian religious institutions for abandoning imagination, symbolism, enchantment and the sacred. He wrote a poem about this called "The Lion":

William Butler Yeats expressed a similar sentiment.

But I thought that there was no need to be so sad. The world of imagination and magic was still alive even if not within the establishment. Arcady lived. The horses raced the sky. As we created with our imagination, we shared in the divine creation. Creating this world was not something that simply happened at the beginning. It is something that is constant. Creation is the sustaining energy of our earth. When we create a painting, a book, a poem, a machine, a building, then we are putting our own energy into the divine creation. That is why it is important that all acts of creation are in tune with the magic of our universe.

For we can also create badly, poorly, with ill will or hatred, and when we do, then our universe suffers. We can create demons that haunt us. But how can we complain? We do not want to lose our creativity for without it we are not really human. Being human carries a terrible responsibility.

.........

....It was a timely initiative. People were looking for ways to rediscover the old European nature religion. Soon this grew into an open Craft practice. At first this was still overlain by aspects of the patriarchal society that surrounded it. Thus this version of the Craft became named after two of its leading male practitioners, Gardner himself and a man called Alexander. It was not called after the women of the Craft, such as Dorleen Valiente who composed many much loved invocations, despite it being a religious path that honoured womankind. It was also later called Wicca - a word ironically meaning "male witch"; "wicce" being the word for female witch.

I found that the flexibility of the coven I first joined was not shared by all. Some were more like the Churches or perhaps Freemasonry in that they had frozen their rituals composed around the 1950s and 1960s into one format that essentially never changed. They would repeat their loved words and rituals, putting their energy into the same forms, charging these with their magic. This was a change from the original intention and practice of the founders of Wicca, Gerald Gardner and Dorleen Valiente, who had hoped the rituals they helped create, would inspire others to do as they did. Some of their followers instead treated these rituals, not just as beautiful and to be treasured, but as sacrosanct and never to be changed. This was reinforced when books were subsequently published with titles such as "The Witches Bible".

I had quit a Christian priesthood tradition with a lineage going back the greater part of two millennia - so I was not too impressed when I heard of witches who boasted on a "lineage" going back 30 years to Gardner. I could understand and appreciate why they might wish to honour their teachers, but I could not see how such boasting would benefit the craft. I thought Gardner would have been horrified at this practice. The proudest lineage any witch can have is from Mother Earth.

.............

Another "in-between" aspect of the emerging Craft was the idea of some that the Third Degree celebration of the Mystic Marriage is best done between a priest and priestess, as it was a celebration of fertility. But fertility in nature is not limited to heterosexual means! All forms of this ritual, whether done alone or with a partner of either gender, symbolise the essence of this ritual, which for me is a celebration and realisation of the union between the human and deity. This is the source of our spiritual fertility. It can be equally expressed by gay or straight love. Most covens are today very open to all aspects of love.

This stress on the heterosexual goes back far. According to hostile Christian sources, the Eleusinian Mysteries celebrated for millennia in Greece had at its heart a ritual coupling of the high priest and priestess. Bishop Asterius of Amaseia just before the Eleusian Mystery temples were destroyed by Christians at the end of the 5th Century, alleged that during 'the descent into darkness", what happened was '"the venerated congress of the Heirophant and the Priestess, of him alone with her alone" and that the initiates regarded what was done "by the two in the darkness is their salvation." (Ref. 382 Myths). A sacred celebration of human sexuality was revolting to him.

.......

In the Renaissance period, the members of the magical orders, forced to be secret because of the Church's opposition, included alchemists who celebrated this same union between genders as a process that was likely to produce the "gold" of alchemic transformation by for a moment lifting the couple to a knowledge of a divine ecstasy. At their climax, male and female for a moment knew what it was to be bonded into one being, to be beyond male and female, to be the Deity beyond gender, to know what it was to be, as some put it, the sacred Hermaphrodite. (Ref. poem on p.)

Hildergard of Bingen, the forerunner of the Beguine of the 11th Century, wrote: "It is the power of eternity itself that has created physical union and decreed that two human beings should become physically one." The Alchemic text called "The Crowne of Nature" has the alchemic couple: "wrapped in each other's arms in the bliss of connubial union merge and dissolve as they come to the goal of perfection. They that are two are made one, as though of one body." (Q in Johannes Fabricius's Alchemy.) An early alchemic school, founded by "Maria the Jewess" wrote: "see the fulfilment of the art in the joining together of the bride and the bridegroom and in their becoming one." (203Trev). Such old Western Alchemic knowledge was passed on from the Renaissance secret societies to such groups that revived magical practices in the 19th century as the Order of Templars of the Orient (OTO) and Golden Dawn - and thus to Gerald Gardner and the modern Craft - rather than from the similar Indian Tantric practices.

....My own experience of this Mystic Marriage Initiation or "Great Rite" was utterly transforming, something I will never forget. It was a rite in which I as a woman became one with the Goddess to celebrate my bonding to the male God. I did this without a sexual human partner simply because I had none at the time and needed none.

Although I had experienced what it was to live as an hermaphrodite, I still had need for this ritual, for I do not identify with both genders. I knew myself as a woman who needed the male for completion. To me my self identity was beyond explanation. I had come to accept it was as much part of me as was the colour of my eyes. I believed my spirit had been born single gendered despite being in a body that had features of both, perhaps because that was how my brain was shaped, perhaps because that was my fate.

The ritual preparation started for me at the Winter Solstice when I volunteered during a semi-public ritual in London to be one of those calling down the sun-child...

then follows a description of the ritual including

After the calling of the God and Goddess into her, Jani then says...

I who am the beauty of the Green Earth and the silver moon among the stars and the mystery of waters and the desire of the heart of all, call upon you. Arise, come unto me.

For I am the soul of nature, who gives life to the universe. From me all things proceed and all things must return. Before me let thine innermost divine self be enfolded in the rapture of the infinite. Let my worship be within the heart that rejoiceth; for behold all acts of love and of joy are my rituals. And therefore let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honour and humility, mirth and reverence within you. For behold, I am with you, within you. You need not look elsewhere.

Tonight we celebrate the feast of the waxing light, The Child Sun grow stronger as the days grow longer. It is the time of initiation, when the seeds stir in their dark sleep.

(All then spiral dance for Brighid..... chanting.. weaving and kissing...

Chant.

Fire of the heart, Chorus with each line.....She shines for all...she burns for all...

Fire of the mind,..

Fire of the Art,

Fire beyond time...

after nine spirals we stop.

The Initiation Ritual.

.... Jani standing in front of the Altar takes up the Cup and the Arrow.

She turns to all the members of the Circle.

I thank you for being with me this day, I thank you for your energy and love, May you all be ever one with the Goddess and God. And in thanks ----

She takes up her cord.

I give myself to the service of the Goddess and the God and bind me. Let all the powers assist me in being their true lover.

Jani places a ring on her wedding finger saying...

With this ring, I wed myself to the God and Goddess. I are they and they are me.

Jani sits on the edge of the Altar, arrow and rod crossed over her breasts.

She is given the cup part filled with wine and a second part filled cup of wine. Jani takes them and pours the wine from one into the other.

As wine is to the cup, so too is love of woman to a woman. When joined they bring the deep mystery of maidenhood, blessed ecstasy and wisdom.

Jani lowers the point of the arrow into the cup and says.

As the blade is to the male, so is the cup to the female. When joined they bring a completion, blessed fire and fertility.

Jani points the arrow up wards and says....

I who was born a woman able to experience life in both genders.

Thank the Goddess and God for their gift...

I, a woman, knew the plough, the phallus and the heat of the giving of the seed...

I who thus was enabled to live within the world of the patriarchy

I who encompass in one person the female and male

Give thanks for the great gift of living within and knowing the God.

I honour the God that shared with me his way of loving.

I give thanks to the God that made me his priest so I might know his magic.

I thank too the Goddess who in due time came to reclaim me, to slip me back into a female body, brought me home after my sojourn in the male world to be her priestess.

Jani takes the cup...

I chose the cup, the womb of life. I bring my female spirit to its true home.

...............

.... I was now free to respond to that nagging voice that kept on saying to me: "When are you coming to learn from your ancestors' lands on the wild west coasts?" I was now more willing to listen to that voice which said leave all and follow me that I spoke of at the beginning of this chapter..

I had been brought up to acknowledge my Irish ancestors. Later I had learnt that the lands in which they dreamed and worked included the west coast of Scotland, Argyle and part of the west of Wales. The latter land had always been of easier access to me, and it felt like home. My younger daughter had her birth rite in one of its mountain streams. The wildest places where hermits once lived seemed to call me. Part of my given name, Roberts, was at home among these hills as well as in Scotland and among English smugglers. The other part of my name, Farrell, came from Ulster - from my mother's father. I was also related to the McBrearties and the McArthurs who were the Scottish clans of my mother's mother.

Since the spirits of Wales refused to be ignored any longer, I fitted out my Lada station wagon so it could run my computer and packed into it a tent. I had no sooner decided to do this, then the Goddess made it easier for me. A friend had a large ex military Land Rover which he had not used for two years. It had been converted for the use of senior army staff and had under-floor gas heating, a toilet, fridge and cooker - and a table that could seat six as well as a roof that lifted to give more storage on its bunks.

If I were to travel like this, a dog would be a welcome companion and a protector - so I was also thrilled when Sarah, a woman I had spent much time with in Lyminge Forest, offered me one of her two dogs. Thus Storm, a black border sheepdog bitch with a white breast and tail tip came to live with me. She and I instantly bonded. We knew each other from the forest camps. All now was ready and we soon set out. I had everything I could possibly need in the Land Rover - including my laptop computer, everything but a bath.

I decided to head for the Prescilli mountains of South West Wales thinking that, if our ancestors thought them so special that they had brought from there the blue stones for Stonehenge, then they must have qualities that would make them well worth visiting.

Just after entering Wales, I stopped near the River Wye at an ancient sacred well I have mentioned above, with thorn trees by it festooned with new and old ribbons, each one symbolising a prayer or spell. Nearby stood three great standing stones. In the same village a massive outdoor stone altar of great age stands in what is now a churchyard.

I then followed the Wye into the mountains along its wide and beautiful valley. Near its head, at the monument to the death of the last prince of the Welsh to fight for his country's freedom, Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffuff, I washed my face with water from the same well where his severed head was washed. His Bard, Bleddyn Fardd, sung of him around 1280: "Man was killed for us, who ruled over all, Man who ruled Wales, boldly I'll name him, Manly Llywelyn, bravest of Walesmen, man not enamoured of too easy a way." P165 wv That night I slept not far from this in a wild dark valley full of the noise of a rushing torrent. I woke up by rocky pool overhung by small Welsh oaks with twisted trunks, dressed in bluish green lichens and mosses. The new leaves had not quite come and the branches were still decorated with the last of Autumn's russet leaves. Around me daffodils brightly spoke of Spring.

I had picked from the map a cove near the mountains as my destination. When I saw its wild headlands lit by a sun setting over the Irish Sea, I found myself grinning with recognition. It was a perfect place. It was if we knew each other. Next day after I and dog had explored the bay and I was back at work on this book, a woman started chanting on the beach. When she climbed back up, I introduced myself, and she immediately said: "Well sometimes you must need a bath. My back door is always open. Please feel free to come any time whether I am at home or not." I grinned and thanked my God and Goddess for looking after me so well.

This cove is called Caebwr. It is watched by the earthworks of an ancient small fort and from a field half a mile back by a three legged cromlech., a massive boulder supported on three others - the remains of a burial mound,. It was heavy, solid, reliable, a reminder that our ancestors have long loved this land.

I used this cove as my base over the next few weeks. The Welsh made me feel welcome. I had many a discussion about the land. Some of the many whose first language was Welsh told me the ancient stories. The woman who had made her bath available told me her favourite place was an ancient oak wood in the mountains. She spent much time there and felt she had found there the place that was the heart of its magic. I wondered if I should go there but decided I should first explore this wild coast and then the still wilder mountains from which the Stonehenge stones had come.

I had not travelled like this in these islands before - and I felt somewhat apprehensive that I might suffer from the stigma that travellers were often accorded in the media. I understood that local people who loved their wild places, did not want to see them invaded and possessed by vehicles parked over a long period. Thus I never stayed in one place for very long. This was no great hardship. I am an intensely curious creature and always have liked to see what was around the next corner. Only once did anyone who spoke to me at Caebwr make me feel at all unwelcome. This was when a man gave a courteous warning that local authorities would be sure to come and evict me. No one ever did - but I never stopped for long.

He made me feel nonetheless uneasy. On reflection I thought that this was ridiculous when so many others had made me welcome. I clearly had a fear that I still needed conquering so I started a song about being a coward. I then picked up a stone, attached to it my fears and threw it away into the flowing water. As I threw it I was reminded that I was oned with the Goddess, a priestess loved by her and therefore a person who belonged in her wild places.

One of the first places I wanted to visit was the large bay nearby named after the pagan Goddesses varyingly called Bridget, Bree and Bride, to whom the first Christians gave the title of a Saint rather than try to demonise her. I arrived at her bay on a wild evening, deep mist coming off the sea, great waves breaking below. I felt I had arrived home and sung out a greeting to the Bay of Bridget:

Then I scrambled down to discover a well dedicated to another Saint called Non. A plaque by the well told the story of how this well was said to have been miraculously formed when she gave birth at this spot to St David, the patron saint of Wales.. Visitors had thrown money into its water as a gift and prayer. A statue of the Mother of God, Mary, looked over the well - a confirmation of the traditional female status of sacred wells.

Near to the well stood a ruined ancient building dedicated to Non and containing a simple old Celtic Cross. This is a symbol that goes back to pagan times. It unites a sacred circle, the wheel of life, a symbol of both the sun and of women, with a cross representing the four quarters, the four elements and the four festivals as well as for Christians the cross on which Jesus died.

I meditated on this ancient sign and felt that it would be appropriate to use it in ritual instead of that other symbol of the elements, the five pointed star of the pentragram (spirit being added to the ancient four of earth, fire, air and water.) The Celtic Cross is everywhere in the land I love. For me it symbolises the sacred beliefs of both my pagan and Christian ancestors.

Non's ruined chapel was guarded by standing stones on all four sides, suggesting to me that it had been a holy place from long before Christian times. One stone had on it what are said to be the finger marks left by her when she pushed against it while giving birth to David. If this story is so ancient that it is honoured with standing stones, then perhaps this myth about St David has a more ancient form. Could it be that the ancient myth underlying the Christian myth is that here on these cliffs the Goddess Non gave birth to Dyfed, the name of this part of Wales, that in legend it was here that Dyfed had its birth place? Was Non was the Mother giving birth to the king or high priest of the land. Was the spring was her breast milk?

So I found myself chanting to the horse that grazed around Non's Sanctuary;

When I walked east along the cliff tops from this chapel, I found carved into a great rock on the cliff top another Celtic cross. This one had in its centre the sun, with its flames radiating out between the quarter marks. It was simply a cross - for one arm was not extended beyond the circle as it is when Christians draw it. (Although that form too has an ancient pre-Christian symbolism - it is found celebrated in the great Celtic Cross stone circle of Callendish in the Hebrides (a name meaning Islands of Bride.) This cross seemed most appropriate for cliffs above a bay dedicated to Bride - for the Sun was one of her symbols. Her name Bridget comes from the Celtic bree-saigit meaning "the bright arrow" - the sun shot across the sky. Another of her symbols was the white horse that runs the sky.

A woman who had Welsh as her first language took pleasure in explaining to me other ancient myths about this land. She pointed past Non's Well and the Chanter's Headland to an island and said that is where the ancients slept when enchanted for over 20 years. She pointed also to where the giant boar ran ashore in the epic of the Mabinogian leaving a great cleft in the cliffs that now hosts a harbour. It was a marvel to me that the Welsh language had preserved such stories. It reminded me of the stories of creating Ancestors in the Aboriginal dreaming sagas.

........

My final trip on the west coast of Wales was to the north, to one of my favourite great Welsh peaks. I wanted to visit what is for me the Great Circle of the Old Ones, to ask them for strength and to be simply with them in awe and wonder. This great circle is the cwm at the heart of Calder Idris.

I started climbing up at dawn. It seemed not long before I was passing the great white quartz boulder that guards this valley. Soon I was in sight of the deep blue lake with which the valley ends. When I stood on its grassy shore, it reflected as perfectly as a mirror the mountain peaks around it..

The elements were set around me. I had climbed up from the east - that side alone was open to any breeze. The sun was rising into the south. The lake was the water in the west. The highest of all the peaks, Calder Idris, was the earth in the north. I acknowledged the presence of the Elders and Elements. There was no need to cast a circle. It was cast aeons ago by glaciers.

I asked to be allowed to listen to them. I bared my feet, exposed my skin to the mountain underneath and its energy. I had come to remind myself of the strength of the powers with whom I am bonded; To remind myself that their strength is mine. To learn not to fear. To learn to trust. I spent much time meditating by the lake and thanking the Goddess for the blessings I had received in Wales..

..........We can learn much from the patterns that appear in our lives when we follow our instincts. They can reveal to us the dreams that underlay our creation and helped shape us - and something of the Divine Energy that sustains us. If we do have a Creating Parent, it seems that She may also "dream" a destiny for us.

.........

There are so many signs, so many myths, within which I find myself dancing. My very travelling way of life now is so much that of the Gallae, the priestesses of Cybelle, but I did not chose this way to mimic them. It came naturally. The Gallae apparently believed, as Jackie and I did when our children were young, that owning property was an obstacle to spiritual progress. Ref. 108b of b. They travelled in caravans and took from one place to another a small shrine of the Goddess. If a Gallae had a true home, it would be the mountain forests considered sacred to Cybele. Such places are my home. They ate meat believing, as I do, that all food was alive and died that we might live, therefore that all food is sacred. They preferred food gathered directly from nature.

According to the ancients, a person who became a Gallae, a transgendered priestess or shaman, was fulfilling a destiny ordained before birth and revealed by dreams or by the stars, a destiny controlled by the Goddess. Ref. B of B, p 111. Such was the belief of many an ancient people. In this world, we all have a destiny. We are free yet each one of us was brought into being for a specific purpose. This purpose is set in the dreaming that began the process aeons ago that resulted in us now materialising in this life as a human of this planet.

The psychologist Karl Jung wrote of myth in developing his psychology. He said he found myths and dreams excellent tools for gaining some knowledge of the contents of our unconsciousness. Rather like the palaeontologist Teilhard de Chardin who saw matter itself as naturally evolving from unconsciousness to consciousness. Jung saw each of us as containing an ocean of unconscious knowledge which we are in the process of turning into conscious knowledge.

He said a myth can better express the inner personal meaning of truth than can an objective scientific "fact" - for personal truth cannot be defined, limited or be purely rational. Carl Jung - rather like the Beguine Porete, held that the more our critical reason dominates our lives, the more impoverished our lives become. He wrote that our lives become richer the more we make conscious our myths and our unconsciousness. 302 He held that each of us possess "the almighty deposit of ancestral experience accumulated over millions of years". This he called the "collective unconsciousness", (P105) seeing it as combined 'the characteristics of both sexes, transcending youth and age, birth and death" p41ft. Myth. For me it is the precious resource that we have at our disposal - and yes, it does cross gender lines as Jung suggested. Ultimately we need to find a unity beyond gender.

He said when in his eighties: "My life is the story of the self-realisation of the unconscious.. Everything in the unconscious seeks outward manifestations and the personality too desires to evolve out of its unconscious state and to experience itself as a whole... what we are to our inward vision, and what man appears to be sub specie aeternitatis, can only be expressed by way of myth. Myth is more individual and expresses life more precisely than does science. Science works with concepts of averages which are far too general to do justice to the subjective variety of an individual life. Thus it is that I have now undertaken, in my 83rd year to tell my personal myth. I can only make direct statements, only "tell stories". Whether or not the stories are "true" is not the problem. The only question is whether what I tell is my fable, my truth." P3

In these thoughts of Jung, myth plays a different role to that it played in my own life. It seemed to me, the myth I lived was not made by me, but I was made for it. The myth seemed to come into my life through the active agency of another rather than from my unconscious world.

Yet although Jung defined: "Myth is the natural and indispensable intermediate stage between unconscious and conscious cognition," in his later years he also described myths did not fit this definition but which were bridges between our conscious thoughts and another imperishable world that lay outside us and beyond the laws of time and space. This was closer to my own experience. He said his dreams and visions gave him knowledge of this world and concluded:

"In the end the only events in my life worth telling are when the imperishable world erupted into this transitory one. That is why I speak chiefly of inner experiences among which I include my dreams and visions. They for the basis of my scientific work."p4. "Myths are the earliest forms of science. When I speak of things after death, I am speaking out of inner promptings and can go no farther than to tell you dreams and myths." 304

It seems that myths can enter our lives from this other world. Perhaps I came aware of them because I had wedded this imperishable world? Perhaps the wedding of our personal will to the Creating Spirit of these inner myths, as an act of love, of self-giving, helps free the eyes and heart to see with imagination, helps frees the spirit to live the myth that lives in the divine imaginings about us? Perhaps myths are in our lives because we were not formed in a vacuum but in a world of myths that have much to teach us?

Jung believed that myths arrived in his life from this other world. The night before his mother died he had a dream in which a wolf tore past him as if on a hunt. He immediately recognised this beast as being part of the Wild Hunt that seeks the souls of the dying, an ancient myth of his German people. When he later learnt of his mother's death, he saw this dream was a pre-cognition of her death. At first this the savagery of this vision dismayed him. But on reflection he saw an inner meaning that pleased him. She was being taken..."beyond Christian morality , taken into that wholeness of spirit and of nature in which conflicts are resolved" Later on he wondered why he was not beset with grief when he thought of her death, but then realised that whenever he thought of her: "I continually heard gay dance music, laughter and jollity, as though a wedding were being celebrated." It was perhaps as if his mother was celebrating her mystic marriage. p311, 313-4

Jung looked to life after death to give a purpose to our lifetime work of making conscious what we possess in our unconsciousness. He theorised that the more we make conscious, the more we can take with us into the next world. "The maximum awareness which has been attained forms, so it seems to me, the upper limit of knowledge to which the dead can attain. That is probably why earthly life is of such great significance and why it is that what a human being "brings over" at the time of death that is so important. Only here, in life on earth, where the opposites clash together , can the general level of consciousness be raised." Jung 311.

I am not so sure that this is right. Why should our unconsciousness not come with us into this other world? Why should we not be able to continue to explore its contents? What happens if we are reincarnated, as many believe? (I am dubious about reincarnation being my own next step. I believe after death I will work with of my Lover God in the work of sustaining this earth.)

...........We can make our own myths. Sometimes we do this by building on deep true instincts. But othertimes myths have been framed purely to help achieve a political end. A created myth with terrible consequences was that of Adam and Eve. It changed for Augustine and for many our inherited and instinctive delight in nature by teaching that this world is a vale of tears given to us as a punishment for our first parents' sins.

But looking at it more closely, it turns out to be a very muddled myth, bearing all the hall marks of being cobbled together out of different ancient stories. Surely a Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was created to impart this knowledge? Why were women and snakes so singled out for punishment? Were they being punished because they had sacred knowledge learnt of trees, a knowledge considered dangerous by the priestly author of this version of Genesis? (Biblical scholars say that the biblical stories went through a priestly rewriting about 300-400 years before Christ.) Why were snakes particularly evil? Was it because they were the emblem of rival religions such as the Egyptian?

I have spent decades of my life helping people to deal with such evils as corporate greed, bad medicine, human rights violations, pollution - but all that I could achieve by doing this was to prevent a few evils. I often felt I was simply plugging a few holes in a fragile dyke.

I now realise that there are other ways of tackling these problems that can be more effective. The myths that underlay and justify corporate or personal irresponsibility need to be changed. The myth that humanity was given this world by God so we can "conquer" it serves as an justification for carving up of our common heritage for private profit - and serves to make those who do so feel more comfortable at night. The myth that women were created to serve men justifies male chauvinism. The myth that we are weak sinful creatures helps to justify a milliard guilt complexes and our need for a priestly caste.

So, perhaps one of the most important things to us to do is to re-dream the myth of our Creation to make it reflect our deepest, most personal and sacred instincts. If we love the World, then our myths about our creation will reflect that love and will be beautiful. But if we fear nature, if we fear women, if we want to deny to others the knowledge of good and evil, then we will again find ourselves with a creation account like to the one in Genesis.

Let me start. Afterwards we all should embellish it, alter it, improve it, and make it more personal.

The Genesis Story, the Birthing Story

In a cave under the world lives the Mother who could make children by herself for she contained both male and female magic. She is in love with creating and is always refashioning herself, making children of every kind out of her own body. In four days she had made a galaxy out of one of her legs, a nova out of a breast and a spider out of the other breast. Her nose she had used to shape a cow, her eyes the planet Venus and the Sun. She is a kaleidoscope of constantly shifting colours, lights and shapes.

And everything she creates is so full of her energy that it dreams and creates as well. She is so alive, so much enjoying the detail of creation, that she is present everywhere, watching, seeing how it is going. For her everything she has created is her family. She lives in them, sustaining them with an endless sparkling stream of love and energy. She creates and supports a never ending cycle of birth and death to allow creation to continue to evolve in a balanced elegant way. She heals the wounds, cares for the dying. Nothing in her world is static. She is in the caves with the bats. For them she is a bat Goddess. She is on the moors with the wild ponies. For them she is a Horse Goddess. She is in the heavens -and for the stars she is the Goddess Mother of Galaxies. She is down the holes with the worms and they too know her as their Mother Goddess. All sing to her, all love her in their own way.

Creation matured and became more and more conscious. On the fifth day of creation the trees, the rocks, the earth dreamt of themselves and learnt that they were beautiful. The Goddess was delighted that they were becoming more aware. Every mother likes it when her children resemble her more. The dreams of the trees, of the rocks, of the earth, became full of her divine energy, and they too created out of their bodies other species that expressed other aspects of divinity. On the 6th day they dreamt a species that could express self awareness and so out of the earth, out of the plants, out of the animals and the snakes, out of their dreams, came the first humans.

The Goddess clapped her hands with delight. Her worlds were producing creatures like her that could express themselves creatively. So she decided to give them a gift. Their instincts she would more deeply bury so they did not dominate their lives. She will also give them the power of creating their own myths and of re-shaping the earth. She thus gave them the ability to wreck creation - but she had to trust they would grow up true.

Among the species that had helped make humans were the trees and herbs. These also promised to help, teach, house, feed and heal humans when needed. But She also gave the humans the special gift of most sacred tree that would teach them of the dangers of creating false myths. This magical tree was the Tree that knew both Good and Evil. She told them eat of this tree and live wisely.

And so that humans would not get the illusion that they were a species apart from the rest of her creation, she reminded them of the great cycle of life, of death and life, by giving them also a special guardian, the snake, to remind them of this cycle everytime it shed its skin. The serpent also promised her it would teach them the magic of life, for, living close to the earth it was full of earth energy.

The first humans were to be the parents of young gods and goddesses in whom the power of the Goddess would be incarnate. They would be both divine and born of the earth although like all creatures they would live on earth as part of the wheel of life. They would have awesome power to do good or evil to their family, the family of the Goddess - yet she knew that if they succeeded in fulfilling the dreams she shared with them, then they would be her Lovers and she would not be alone. It as a risk she took - for she knew in her instincts and her knowledge of the future that this was the way it had to be.

And she made them male and female so they would mix their genes, have fun in doing this and form between themselves a union that shared the love that she had for all. She created also gays and bisexuals so there would be many ways of making love and marrying. Then she said the time had come to rest and make love for her Garden of Eden was complete. It was now the day of love, the seventh day that is unending. This is the story of the Original Blessing and of how all things came about.

End.

At the end of the book comes will come a section of rituals and poems including...

Whom Am I?

On lowliness

On being feared