rts to tell the story of how, at first, there was all-encompassing darkness and night, void of creatures, characteristics, or differentiation of any kind The All was impenetrable, dreamless sleep Yet there was One Pure Consciousness As Time unfolded, there was creation, for Time itself was the Mother From this beginning was formed the Cosmic Egg growing m the waters of the abyss that was all space, and all space was the Mother As the waters rocked it, the Cosmic Egg burst and all things flowed from it, and this too was the Mother So began the Many in One that is Creation Life, and Destruction, also the Mother The One is three, and they are the source, the continuation, and the end The One is She from whose eternal form and substance the universe is made, and who is thereafter called sustamer of the cosmos, beguiler and enchantress, dark ravisher of memory and life, and restorer and renewer of AH With this, the fragment breaks off 3 However, definitive research completed under the direction of Dr H H Remmiz, compiler of the final version of The Historv of Religious Iconography concluded that the Dark Lady persona was an important if not crucial manifestation of Great Mother, or Great Goddess as she was sometimes called In her role as Goddess she was said to possess wisdom, intuitive knowledge and inspiration, and the divine power of fecundity As supreme agent of fruitfuhiess, she was known as Gaea, or Earth Mother-the maternal link between heavenly and earthly worlds But as Dark Lady, she was intentionally shrouded in mystery, symbolizing the Priestess of Night, the Queen and Mistress of the Realm of No Return This domain was con sidered both the fount of womanhood and the well of death Deep in the Lad> s sanctuary was thought to lie the answer to the riddle of life and death as repository of all spiritual treasure Thus in its ambivalence, the figure of Great Mother was at one and the same time, that of the Terrible Mother who brings death and destruction, and the World Mother who contains the principle and spirit of all living things 4 This portrait of mystic duality is corrobo rated by entnes m the Summa of Ancient Belief and Practice (c 9050) 5 There seems GREAT MOTHER 280 GREAT MOTHER little doubt that in numerous incarnations, Great Mother was simultaneously a protective and a dangerous force, constructive and destructive in complementary fashion Serving as the Mother of All Things, for example, she was accepted as the creatnx of the material universe alive with potential death Clearly, most evidence supports the view that Great Mother, or Cosmic Mother, had two clearly discernible aspects since she was the embodiment of all that is opposite and ambiguous Representing the universe in its balancing of the tension of all opposites, Great Mother came to mean both victory and defeat, oasis and desert She became what is and what is not, the mystic center from which all comes, to which all returns, and from which all comes agai