'The Dark Backward And Abysm Of Time' (*)

(*) Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I, Scene 2, line 62 A demi-god, proud and foolish, made the Earth and her Moon. The work was difficult and unrewarding to him. He was bored and uninspired. He invented the shameful custom of cursing things whose darkness dismays us. He created a world out of nothingness, except his deep impulse and the readiness of the non-existent to be. He grew smaller as he made the world bigger. Later worshipers named this demi-god VOLTURAN. They were awed by the shadow of his creative power. (The good demi-gods had not yet thought themselves into being.) They never spoke words of a base nature. They were the inventors of Poetry and Music, and established their rapport for all the ages. Volturan's sense of failure puzzled them. How could Volturan revile the Earth and threaten to render it as lifeless as the Moon? They saw only good in his planet and her creatures. And they loved him. They honored him. They praised him as the Source, the essential heart beat of all things, the Voice that spoke them in the wildness of the wind and in the quietude of sleep. They smiled even as he frowned and plotted against them. They deserved better. The ancient texts describe Volturan as an angry and bitter God, who leaned against the edge of Space, pushing aside the fabric of the sky to make more room for himself. He gazed down the corridors of Time with a stare that ignited fires and burned what he could not love into cinders and ash. But his reign of power was not to last. What is that force in things that is aroused in due time? And so it was that Volturan regressed from being to place. He lumbered into a cosmic niche enveloped in nothingness, and was steadily absorbed into its solidity. He became a chunk of the Southern Mountains as they rose over colliding land masses. He was fixed forever into the mineral life of the planet, and his being dissolved into place, his pride broken. The Earth had purged itself of something unworthy of existence. Then, with infinite patience, the Earth transformed itself from mere place into living being, a Goddess, a Cosmic Mother, whose loving hand and serene countenance prevailed over Space and Time. She unfolded waves of love that rolled around and around, embracing both beings and places into a Harmony of Life.