This is the ritual script John Seed has used since 2012, adapted with thanks to Sister Miriam Therese McGillis (Genesis Farm, New Jersey) and Ruth Rosenhek. For the illustrated, browsable version of this same story, see our Cosmic Walk timeline; this page is the spoken ritual text itself, meant to be read aloud while walking a lit spiral. For why this story is told at all — Thomas Berry’s case for one shared creation story — see John’s own introduction.
Narrator: In the beginning was the Mystery, the churning quantum foam of potentiality. Through the mystery all things came to be. Not one thing had its being but through the mystery.
The Cosmic Walker lights the candle in the centre of the spiral, then lights a taper from this source and walks slowly around the spiral as the narration proceeds, lighting each subsequent candle in turn.
1. Some 13.7 billion years ago, our Universe flashes into existence, lit by the power of the eternal matrix of being. From the quantum foam is born the universe. Time, space, and energy become the gifts of existence. The universe expands and cools rapidly. Energy organizes itself into fundamental particles, new beings with new powers, and they in turn transform into atoms of hydrogen and helium, new beings with new powers. And so on it goes.
2. A billion years later, Galaxies, Stars, and Supernovas emerge. For billions of years the universe continues to expand and cool. Hydrogen and helium coalesce into billions of enormous structures: galaxies. Within their galactic homes stars are born, live, and die. As they live, stars transform their hydrogen and helium into heavier elements: carbon, oxygen, aluminium. Many of these stars die and cool slowly to become dark tombs. But the larger stars in their death throes explode, become supernovas, blasting out to the cosmos their precious gifts of iron, phosphorus, potassium, calcium and oxygen. These treasures will be gathered together and supplemented in the life of second-generation stars. Birth, death, and resurrection is an ancient theme of the universe. Supernovas are the mothers of the universe, creating in their wombs the elements of life.
3. 8 billion years later, 4.6 billion years ago, our Grandmother Star becomes a supernova. She gives up her life in an explosion of possibilities. She becomes a supernova giving rise to our Star, what we call the Sun. The Grandmother Star was huge in comparison to her child, and when she exploded she formed a ball nearly 5 million times the diameter of the Sun. Our sun is mainly composed of hydrogen, which makes up about 90% of all the atoms in the universe.
4. 4.5 billion years ago, our Solar System forms from the remains of the supernova explosion. The sun and a great disk of matter emerge — all the planets and other members of our solar system family. Here begins the story of what will become one blue-and-white pearl of a planet.
Great Bombardment! Comets and meteorites pelt the Earth. Finally a Mars-sized body impacts the proto-Earth with such force that the whole mass becomes molten once more. The intruder plunges towards the centre of the Earth and the moon is born, popping out from the side opposite the impact. This also causes the Earth to tilt 23 degrees to the side, thenceforth giving rise to the seasons of the year.
5. 4.4–4.1 billion years ago, exuberant volcanoes expel hotly agitated deep earth to the surface. Over hundreds of millions of years, Earth has grown from dust particles to a large, hot, molten rock. As the surface of Earth quiets and cools, an atmosphere begins to form. Then a miracle of transformation: when the temperature falls below 100 degrees centigrade, the first rain begins to fall! Torrential rains fall on, and on, and on for tens of millions of years, leaving the Earth awash with shallow, island-studded seas. Most of that original water will be lost to space, but ice-laden comets will more than make up for the losses.
6. 4 billion years ago, the rich chemical brew brings forth the wonder of life, as the First Cell emerges. A tiny being which draws sustenance from the primordial soup, grows and divides, grows and divides. After some 100 million years of this first life, the supply of free chemical nutrients starts to run out, as it has become tied up in the growing microbial population.
7. 3.9 billion years ago, cells invent Photosynthesis. Small creatures learn to capture the sun and store the energy in chemical bonds, able to capture 18 times as much energy from their environment as their ancestors could. This is based on a new molecule, chlorophyll, a ring of carbon atoms with a magnesium atom at its core. In the process they give off oxygen — a toxic poison to the anaerobic life of that time. For hundreds of millions of years the oxygen cannot accumulate, as it oxidises iron, hydrogen and other elements; the seas began to rust, and some of the banded iron formations created at this time are over 2.5km thick. Eventually all available elements have been oxidised, and oxygen begins to pile up in the atmosphere, threatening all life. This will eventually turn the skies blue and provide the energy resource upon which most future evolution will depend.
8. 2.7 billion years ago, oxygen-loving cells emerge. The first global environmental crisis is averted by the creativity of tiny cellular creatures who invent a use for oxygen as they breathe it in. Oxygen levels continue to rise until they reach near present-day levels.
9. 2 billion years ago, despite the enormous drag of its tidal seas, the planet is still spinning fast — each day lasts only about 18 hours. It is at this time that the first nucleated cell emerges. Tiny individual cells learn to cooperate and specialize within giant cell cooperatives, coalescing into symbiotic relationships. The individual parts become less independent but more secure as inseparable parts of the new wholes. Cooperatives!
10. 1.5 billion years ago, crisis conditions arise — food shortages, lack of moisture, extreme temperatures. Hungry ancestral organisms learn to eat each other, and sometimes cannot digest what they have devoured; a type of sexual union arises. With the evolution of sex, the genetic possibilities for life increase enormously. Each generation now differs from either parent, and death is invented. Sex! Death!
11. 1 billion years ago, predator organisms learn to use the complex biomolecules of their prey, quickening the predator-prey dance that promotes the vast diversity of life — leading eventually to the shell of the oyster and the beak of the seagull, the power of the lion and the speed of the gazelle.
12. 700 million years ago, the first Multicellular Organisms emerge. Individuals composed of communities of many cells begin to emerge, finding ways to communicate using chemical messages. Community!
13. 600 million years ago, light-sensitive eyespots evolve into eyesight. The Earth sees herself for the first time. Over the next 70 million years, previously naked prey animals protect themselves with shells of calcium; jaws, beaks, and skeletons follow suit.
14. 460 million years ago, animals such as worms, molluscs and crustaceans leave the water to seek the adventure of weather and gravity. Algae and fungi venture ashore as well. The first plants evolve as mosses. Insects evolve with nearly weightless bodies, permitting them to take to the air as the first flying animals. Algae, fungi, insects!
15. 395 million years ago, the first amphibians hop and lumber onto land, trading gill slits for air-breathing lungs, transforming fins into stubby legs, and continuing to return to the water to lay their eggs. Frogs and toads!
16. 335 million years ago, the first subtropical forests evolve, loading themselves with carbon that will later become fossilized as coal and oil. Amphibians transform into pre-reptilian creatures with self-contained eggs that allow them to move inland. The Great Age of Reptiles begins.
17. 235 million years ago, the end of the Permian period brings the 4th and greatest mass extinction of life on Earth — some 95% of species become extinct. The descendants of the surviving 5% radiate forth in dazzling creativity, and the ancestors of dinosaurs emerge, flourishing for 170 million years. Dinosaurs develop parental care, burying their eggs and staying with their young after they hatch.
18. 225 million years ago, the first mammals — small and nocturnal — jump, climb, swing, and swim through a world of giants. Some rodent-sized insect-eaters evolve lactation, enabling mothers to keep their young both fed and warm.
19. 150 million years ago, birds emerge, a direct descendant of the dinosaur, as leg bones evolve into wing bones, jawbones into beaks, and scales into feathers. Birds!
20. 114 million years ago, flowers evolve gorgeous and overt sexual organs, making themselves irresistible to insects by way of colours, perfumes, and delightful nectars. The Earth adorns herself magnificently and invites the sky creatures into a new dance. Flowers!
21. 65 million years ago, shortly after primates appear, the Cretaceous period ends with the 6th mass extinction, after an asteroid six miles in diameter hits the Yucatán peninsula. This marks the end of the age of dinosaurs and the beginning of the Age of Mammals. Over the following 60 million years, Earth greets rodents, whales, monkeys, horses, cats and dogs, antelopes, gibbons, orangutans, gorillas, elephants, chimpanzees, camels, bears, pigs, baboons — and the first humans.
22. 4 million years ago, hominids leave the forest, stand up, and walk on two legs.
100 thousand years ago, modern humans emerge; language, shamanic and goddess religions, and art become integral with human life. 11,000 years ago, agriculture is invented, and humans begin to shape the environment.
23. 3,000 years ago, the classical religions emerge — Hinduism, Confucianism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam. 250 years ago, scientists begin to calculate the age of the Earth. 85 years ago, empirical evidence of an expanding universe is discovered. 60 years ago, humans discover DNA. 52 years ago, Earth is seen whole from space, and becomes complex enough to witness her own integral beauty.
Today, the story of the universe is being told as our sacred story. The Flaring Forth continues at this moment, as us, as one.
Cosmic Walker: “And this is MY story.”
Everyone present is encouraged to walk around the spiral themselves to complete the ritual.