In the beginning, before there were things, before there was time, Amma came to be. Amma began to pulse and shake, and she took upon herself the shape of an egg. Amma became the great cosmic egg, with four collarbones that were fused, dividing her into earth and air, fire and water, the materials and structure of all the universe. The egg continued to pulse and shake. Seven times it shook until it began to spin. As it spun, it broke open into a spiral, and the shell expanded to fill the universe, and so creation was born. This very birthing brought forth the Dogon people of Mali in the west of Africa.

Amma made the sun and the moon from discs of clay, and the stars from pebbles of clay thrown out into the vastness of the heavens. Amma planted a seed inside herself and created two sets of male and female twins. But something went wrong with the first set of twins. The male would not wait, and rushed his birth before time, and without his female twin. As he broke from the egg, a bit of his placenta few off into space and became the Earth Mother. This first male was called Yurugu, Pale Fox. He became a rogue and a trickster, jealous of Amma’s creativity and creation. Yurugu claimed the earth for himself and determined to make it even better that Amma’s heaven. He strode across the earth, but everywhere he went, everything was dark and dusty and dry. Yurugu planted seeds, and called forth animals, but nothing could flourish there. Hard as Yurugu tried, the dark dryness prevailed. Yurugu walked and thought. He sat and looked at the detritus of his efforts, and saw that he needed his soulmate, his female twin, to bring balance and completion to his efforts. So, he went back to the cosmic egg in search of his other half.

But Yurugu angered Amma with his interference with her creation. Amma banished Yurugu back to earth, where he has forever roamed in the darkness, in the dry desert places, in search of his female twin.

Amma called the second set of twins that she made Nommo. They became the creative spirits of all twinned things of the universe: male/female; left/right; order/disorder; good/evil.

The twins Nommo looked down from the sky and beheld the Earth Mother, naked, and beset with chaos and turmoil. The twins gathered together cosmic fibers that were filled with life forces. Together, the Nommo twins wove those fibers into a garment of green, swaddling the Earth Mother in the finest raiment befitting a most elegant woman. In gratitude for the gifts of the Nommo, Earth Mother spoke the first words heard in the world, words of graciousness and gratitude.

But Yurugu learned of Earth Mother’s powers, he opened his mouth imitating her way of speaking, but no meaningful sound issued from him. He tried, and he tried. He looked up to the moon, and breathed through his mouth, and . . . nothing. Yurugu wanted the power to be heard and understood for himself. Tired of his failed efforts, the next morning, Yurugu hid himself in the shadows, sneaked up on Earth Mother, and stole her skirt of cosmic fibers, which held the power of the word. From that day forward, Yurugu captured the power of language, and has been able to disclose the plans of Amma, the Creator of all.

When Amma saw her son recklessly cavorting, spoiling the bounties of the Earth, Amma decided to create more sets of twins, male and female, male and male, female and female, who would become the ancestor spirits of humanity and would live on Earth according to Amma’s plans. Amma worked to restore balance, countervailing the evil that Yurugu’s deeds evoked.

When the ancestor spirits were born, they traveled up to Heaven to receive instructions for their lives on Earth. Amma welcomed and blessed each of the twins with their own particular wisdom and skill: agriculture, healing, divining, iron-working, woodcarving, weaving and the like.. Amma gave each of the twins one of the eight grain seeds that the Dogon peoples grow to this day. To the eldest ancestor, Amma gave a storehouse for the harvests, a granary made from a clay-lined basket in the shape of the universe.

Amma looked on the workings of creation and was well pleased with its progress. She was about to claim her day of rest when she observed the eldest ancestor making his way to the celestial smithy. There, the eldest stole a piece of the sun and hid the glowing coal inside a bellow. Amma sent the Nommo to retrieve the stolen fire. The Female Nommo threw a lightning bolt at the Eldest Ancestor, but the Eldest held up the bellows, and deflected the bolt. The Male Nommo hurled a thunderbolt, but the Eldest escaped by sliding down a rainbow. At the end of the rainbow, the treasure of fire came to the Earth. As the Eldest tumbled to the Earth, the granary followed, smashing as it hit the ground, spewing out every kind of plant, animal, and human being — all of those beings spreading across the earth.

And that is how the world began.