Flame’s existence,
Inflicted in Battle by the Spirit of Cold,
There arose the Great Mother Ma,
The very first Goddess of human shape.
The All-knowing Omniscient Most-merciful Goddess Ma
Had created herself by the Great Spirit’s wish
Who, displeased with the wasteful and senseless War
Between the Flame and the Cold
Had come from far beyond
The Ten Gates of Eternity
To bring order to the Universe.
Now Ma the Great Mother began to execute
Commands of uNkulunkulu, the Great Spirit:—
From the sparks that Flame shot out
She created the stars, the sun,
And the body on which we stand.
(We shall relate anon, from whence the moon)
Although Immortal, the Great Mother was cursed
With strange desires and feelings
Which afterwards she passed to man and beast alike.
These are feelings, strange to Immortals,
Like anger, hunger, jealousy and misery
Or love and lust and craving for luscious food.
With such desires the Great Mother Ma was cursed
And they were like diseases within her being;
And because of this the Storytellers,
The Wise Men of the Tribes,
Depict her as the Imperfect Undying One.
That is why woodcarvers
Throughout this continent
Always make their carvings of her
Imperfect.
Either a leg is shown deformed
Or one breast much bigger than the other;
Hands of unequal size.
It is from the Great Mother Ma
That we mortal souls and our brothers the beasts
Inherited all our faults—
Imperfect seed bring forth imperfect plants.
When the Great Mother Ma had finished creating the stars,
The sun and the earth,
She seated herself on the Mountain of Iron, Taba-Zimbi,
To rest and await the Great Spirit’s further instructions.
It was while she thus was sitting
That a strange feeling came over her—
A feeling she could not interpret
But loneliness now we know it had been,
And she wept most bitterly.
So long and so loud did the Goddess cry
That the very stars trembled and fell from the sky
While the tears that the Goddess shed
Flowed in a great lake at her feet—
Flowed across the land in all directions
Forming murmuring streams and the mighty rivers we see today.
At last the Great Spirit commanded the Goddess
To end her queer emotional display
And to repair the damage done to earth
By falling stars and floods of tears,
And then continue with creating
A perfect Universe from Chaos.
‘No!’ cried Ma through her flood of tears
Far greater than that of Musi-Wa-Tunya
The falls that tumble in the river Zambesi—
‘No! Never! I shall not move from where I am
Until I have a companion to work with!
Is it not clear that I’m utterly lonely?
Who can I talk to in my lonely hours?
These barren plains – these silent craggy mountains?
Those stupid stars that twinkle foolishly at me?
Aieeee! Where, oh where is the sense in ord’ring me to create
These useless things anyway?
Those stars, the sun, and this miserable bowl called earth?
Who am I,
And how long will I work here, creating all this?
This utterly senseless rubbish!’
From far beyond Eternity’s borders
Where no God, or Goddess, or Demon can e’er go,
Came the Great Spirit’s cold and hollow, and unemotional voice:
It howled like a tempest through the star-spangled skies
Like thunder upon the plains—
Re-echoing through the valleys and gorges
And shaking the great barren crags
Like trees in a gale.
Bolt after bolt of crashing lightning
Tore across the shrieking skies;
Howling cyclones swept the rocky plains
While mighty earthquakes sent the mountains roaring
To level with the ground,
While plains were upwards heaved to form new mountain ranges.
The shattered world—
