The Great Goddess

The Goddess Comes Out

A lady was seated deep within a cave, meditating. She was wearing a blue silk saree with a three inch gold border. She was motionless and surrounded by darkness and silence. She was and is called "The First One". The only motion and sound that could be found there was that of her breathing. From her rhythmic and cyclic breathing appeared a serpent. As soon as it appeared it coiled onto itself, chasing its own tail. It symbolises the cyclic processes of nature that she controls. She heard its noise and opened her eyes. She made herself glow and looked down at the creature by just turning her eyes but without moving her face. She kept looking at it for some time. She found no problem with it so she turned the creature into a gold nose ring and wore it on her left nostril.

Her hair was tied in a tight bun which represents concentration, structure and order but with time due to its own weight it loosened and gave way and her hair fell down. It was unintentional motion. From this motion appeared three great beast, a bison representing expansion, a horse representing uncontrolled liberty and freedom, and a boar representing disorder. All three ran out of the cave, creating havoc. She saw the troubles created by these creatures with her inner eye. She thought about it. She understood that uncontrolled expansion or uncontrolled liberty is unstable, they both leads to disorder. Now she knew that uncontrolled expansion leads to collapse under its own weight, its the same reason why large stars and large empires collapse soon. She also learned that uncontrolled liberty and freedom leads to anarchy. She knew some thing was missing. But, before that she needs to call back the beasts into the cave. Untill now all her thoughts were composed of images but now she needs sound, sounds with meaning that she could use to command the beasts, that is "words".

She decided to compose a language. She opened her mouth, her throat vibrated, "A"*(look footnote). She made sound and she heard her voice for the first time. She continued. "AA", the long vowel, " I" and all other vowels, diphthongs, consonants, double consonants and consonant clusters. Then she composed the morphological and grammatical rules. Then at last she composed words and then gave meaning to each one. After completing, she used this new language to command the beasts.

Her voice went out of the cave, in search of the beasts. But before it reached the beasts, from her intellectual and creative processes, mainly her understanding of the beasts and composition of the language, appeared a lady. "The Second One". She is a symbol of wisdom and creativity but she remained motionless. The first one looked at her and decided to give motion, for that she decided to give the second one a partner. The first one moved her waist a bit to the right, as her spine moved from it appeared a dancer. "The Third One". She represents structured and ordered motion.

When the beasts returned, she again tied her hair as before, then caught the tails of all three beasts at once and turned them into a jewel and tucked it on her hair. The jewel has three sapphires which represents the three beasts.

Then she decided to return to her meditation. Before she closed her eyes she sneezed, and from it appeared a crocodile. It slowly crawled out of the cave. She ignored it and returned to her meditation. The crocodile was a symbol of destruction. It caused disasters, wars, starvation, and all such things. The screams of the people who were affected by this crocodile disturbed her. She opened her eyes again and called the crocodile back to the cave. As it returned she stood up and trampled its neck with her left leg. The crocodile turned into a silver ring that coiled around her middle toe.

Then she decided to move out of the cave but as she made her first step the second one and the third one approached her and asked her to adorn them too. She smiled and turned the second one into a throatlet around her neck because the second one appeared primarily from her voice, similarly she turned the third one into a waist chain around her waist because the third one appeared from her waist.

Then she moved out of the cave and looked at herself in the light. She was perfect and beautiful and she was satisfied. She named herself "Sandhya". She is both silence and sound, order and disorder, creativity and destruction. She had been in the cave for millenniums or even many million years, the time period between her appearance in the cave and the appearance of the serpant is unknown to anybody, probably millions of years. It is known as the first age. How she came there is also not known to anybody. It is known as the great mystery. The period between the serpant and the three beasts is the second age. It consists a period of two hundred thousand years. The period between the three beasts and the crocodile is the third age and consists a period of twelve thousand years. What follows that is the current and fourth age.

The landscape outside the cave was a cold desert completely flat and covered by ice. It is a plateau and the only odd feature in that landscape is the cave and the peak of an active volcano behind it.

She felt thirst, but there is no water anywhere. She knew there is water beneath the ground, warm water heated by the volcano. She hit the ice with her right ankle, the ice cracked, the crack went down, deep down, till it reached ground. Then it stopped. She hit again at the same spot. This time the ground cracked and the crack went down all the way till it reached water. Water oozed out with tremendous pressure forming a spring, a hot spring, a geezer to be precise.

She drank from the spring and before she finished drinking the spring had grown into a stream and then into a great river downstream. She walked downhill along the river until some noise from the river disturbed her. She turned her head and looked at the middle of the river. A lady walked out of the river. She is the lady of the river. She walked near Sandhya and bowed down and thanked Sandhya for liberating her from the clutches of the lord of the volcano. She complained to Sandhya about the atrocities of the lord of the volcano.

"Oh, great mother! The lord of the volcano treats both me and the lady of ice as his slaves. Even though we are his sisters, he doesn't treat us as such. If we don't obey his commands he threatens to vaporize both of us by dipping us into one of his lava lakes. Every now and then he takes me to the bottom of the volcano and partially boils me, he also takes my sister there and partially melts her."

The lady of ice appeared there in the middle of the conversation. Just a few moments after the lady of the river finished her complaint, the earth shaked and the volcano erupted once and with it the lord of the volcano appeared on top of the peak. He had a sword in his right hand. The blade of the sword was a combination of both steel and fire. In a single leap he jumped and landed right in front of the three ladies. He raised the sword to attack Sandhya. Sandhya blowed and the flame of the sword extinguished, he was shocked,until now no one has done this to his sword. Before he recovered from the shock Sandhya got hold of his neck and carried him up, then raised her right leg and placed him chest up on her thigh and broke his backbone. He screamed in pain. The ground shattered and the volcano erupted once again and became dormant. She placed him slowly on the ice and sat beside him and spoke to him.

"My dear! You are one of my sons, you had been blinded by your ego. You shall become active at the end of this age." All the lords and ladies of nature are Sandhya's sons and daughters since they appeared from various parts of her body during the first phase of her meditation before the appearance of the serpent. She took the sword and stood up and went towards the lady of ice and said "from now on you shall be the protector of this land." And gave the sword to her, as the fingers of the lady of ice made contact with the sword, a layer of ice appeared on the blade. Then Sandhya spoke to both of them. "Take care of your brother." And she continued her journey downstream untill she reached a cliff. At the edge of the cliff the climate was much warmer and there was no ice. She walked to the very edge of the cliff and sat on the rock and looked down at the Kingdom of Nihariya.

(*It is not the English "A". It the "A" of French or the first vowel of most Indian languages.)