The Seven Good Creations
Sky, water, earth, plant, animal, humanity, and the fire within them all
Chapter 210 passages260 words
1First the sky was fashioned, hard and bright, enclosing the world like a shell around a life not yet awakened. It did not boast of height; its holiness was the space it made for everything below. 2Within it came the waters, whole and unpolluted, holding the memory of every river before any river had learned a name. 3Upon the waters rested the earth, level and unbroken. She received no crown. Her greatness was that every future foot would be permitted to stand upon her. 4From the earth rose the single plant, containing the promise of forests, medicine, grain, fragrance, shade, and every seed that would one day travel farther than its first root. 5Beside the river stood the sole-created Bull, gentle and complete, the living pattern from which the animal world would multiply after injury entered creation. 6Across the water stood Gayōmard, bright as the sun and mortal only in possibility, the first human form and the ancestor of those who would choose whether thought became healing or harm. 7Fire was not placed in one chamber. It moved through sky, water, earth, plant, animal, and human life—the warmth by which creation could act, discern, transform, and answer. 8Each creation was entrusted to a beneficent power, not as property, but as responsibility: good rule, wholeness, devotion, immortality, good mind, wisdom, and best truth. 9For an age the sun stood still and creation remained without motion. Nothing decayed, but neither had courage yet been required. 10The world was perfect in form; it had not yet become perfect through freely chosen resistance.