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Very much like your Judeo Christian religions, we think of our Supreme Being as a Divine Parent. The Goddess is Mother to us all, and the creation is Her womb. Even the most enlightened of all souls in this world, is but an unborn child. Every conflict we face, and lesson we learn, is another step towards our birth into the world of Goddesses. A "child" who has been born in such a fashion is no more a Goddess that an infant is a black smith. The Mother still has much to teach us after our birth, just as even She had much to learn when She first became a Goddess.
In the beginning...
When our Mother was a Young Goddess, Her Mother
sat her down in the blackness of the Yet Uncreated. She had seen much,
but no one had explained to Her how it should come to pass that She would
bear children and arrange The Creation into which they would be born.
Like most new Mothers, She wanted Her children
and Her creation to be perfect. She knew that She must create something
totally new, and unlike anything that any Goddess had ever created before.
She thought, and thought, but simply could not imagine what She could come
up with that had not been done before, and so quickly became frustrated
with the daunting problem.
Soon, She gave up, and began to cry salty tears
from all four of her luminous eyes. She blinked them in turn, and soon
the tears began to pool at Her feet. Now, not only was her Creation still
uncreated, but now She was sitting in a huge salty puddle, and Her bum
was all wet.
"Well," She proclaimed, "I am the Goddess
here. I make the rules. There is no reason that I should have to wear these
clothes, if they are wet!" With that, the Goddess stripped off her dress,
and dropped it into the puddle. Being naked was comfortable, and she wondered
why Her Mother had always insisted that She wear clothes.
"Hah!" said She, "This much I know: I shall
never force My children to wear clothes!"
She also saw that parts of her dress stuck
out above the water in a shape that she had never before seen. She called
several more dresses from the Yet Uncreated and threw them about in the
huge puddle in a similar fashion, amusing herself with the random way in
which they fell. She moved some of the fabrics around to spell her name
in the puddle. Soon, however, She grew bored of this game. She sat down
on one of the dresses, and looked around. Now, not only had She not created
anything, and not only had She gotten Her Uncreated all wet, but now She
had a huge mess to pick up. She looked up into the higher places of Her
Uncreated, but naturally, it was uncreated, so She didn't see anything
but blackness. She stared, and squinted, and blinked Her eyes tightly in
turn, until all She could see was a higher realm full of tiny white spots.
If only they were not so fuzzy, she thought, they might be quite lovely.
She brightened them, and arranged the specks into little patterns. This
one she made to look like a beast, and that one she made to look like Her
Mother.
She looked around again. Oh, but this was
awful! In the low places, there was nothing but salt tears and dresses,
and in the high places, nothing but white specks!
When Her Mother returned, She saw Our Goddess
sitting buck naked beneath a glorious starry night sky, on one of many
islands of land in a vast and shimmering salty ocean, holding Her head
with disgrace. Her Mother smiled.
Our Goddess looked up and saw Her Mother
there, and wailed; "Oh Mother, I'm sorry! I wanted so much to create something
new and wonderful!"
"So new and wonderful and original it is,"
Replied the Wise Old Goddess, "that it's own creator did not recognize
it as anything resembling a creation!" The Wise Old One took the Young
One into Her arms, and took the child a step back. Our Mother saw the beauty
in what she had done, and was very happy indeed.
When reading the above Genesis, one strange to our religion immediately
asks, as any child being educated in the ways of our religions asks, "How
is it that our world is outside the Goddess, and yet we are in Her womb?"
Our Mother is a woman of great chaos, of broken rules, of contradiction,
paradox, and ultimately, of mess. Originally, a Goddess' creation was supposed
to house her born children. Our Mother felt that, since being inside of
Her, we can hear Her thoughts, and She ours, that we should also be able
to see through her eyes, to feel her creation. In effect, the reality which
we experience is a dream the Goddess gives us in our sleep, and in which
we all share. Our waking time is the darkness we experience in the thick
of mortal sleep, where our own imaginations, and those of the souls around
us play out in what we call our dreams.
The concept of this 'waking dream' is somewhat similar to to the
Buddhist "maya", or perhaps Plato's concept of the people in the cave watching
passing shadows (only far less uncomfortable).
The things unique to Our Mother's creation, are the randomness and
freedom in the world. Playing in the mud, gazing up at the stars, speaking
your mind without inhibition, running around naked in a way that has nothing
to do with sexuality, swimming and entropy are all gifts we are given by
the Goddess that we should take care to indulge in.
Insofar as the Goddess is concerned, as long as we continue to
learn and grow spiritually, we are doing Her will.
Truly, the things that we learn before birth which define our development
all revolve around people: how we treat them, how we deal with them, how
faithfully we love them, and how gently we resolve our conflicts with them.
All of these things can be learned without interacting with this dream
that the Goddess provides for us. The idea behind interacting with "reality",
as we know it, is to get an idea of what it is like to be several different
types of person. Death occurs when either the mortal or the Goddess decide
that the mortal in question has gotten everything they can out of the particular
form. Then the person assumes a new role, or form. This is what some human
cultures refer to as "reincarnation". This in-between life is a whole lot
of what we experience in our dreams.
While we don't subscribe to a Heaven/Hell theory, there is the
idea that souls who do not learn are doomed to incur the irritation of
their sisters. This can make existence very unpleasant. Just as a mortal
may choose to end a particular lifetime, so too do some souls give up on
existance. Such a thing is permanent oblivion of the spirit, and an end
which the divine sisterhood, or SehRasheme, strives to prevent. This is
a SehRashem's highest duty.