(Conceived of as) having a name, it is the Mother of all things.”[25]
The creation myths embedded in the writings of Lao Tze are exceedingly vague.
“The Tao produced One; One produced Two; Two produced Three; Three produced All things. All things leave behind them the Obscurity (out of which they have come), and go forward to embrace the Brightness (into which they have emerged), while they are harmonized by the Breath of Vacancy.”[26]
Another passage seems to indicate that the One, first produced, was the Mother, and that the two produced by her were Heaven and Earth—the god of the sky and the goddess of the earth:
“Heaven and Earth (under the guidance of Tao) unite together and send down the sweet dew, which, without the direction of men, reaches equally everywhere as of its own accord.”[27]
The fertilizing dew, like the creative tears of Egyptian and Indian deities, gave origin to earth and its plants, and to all living things. But no such details are given by Lao Tze. He is content to suggest that the Tao as “the [[312]]Honoured Ancestor” appears to have been before God.
In his chapter, “The Completion of Material Forms”, he refers to the female valley spirit. “The valley,” says Legge, “is used metaphorically as a symbol of ‘emptiness’ or ‘vacancy’, and the ‘spirit of the valley’ is ‘the female mystery’—the Tao which is ‘the mother of all things’.”
Chalmers renders Chapter VI as follows:
“The Spirit (like perennial spring) of the Valley never dies. This (Spirit) I call the abyss-mother. The passage of the abyss-mother I call the root of heaven and earth. Ceaselessly it seems to endure, and it is employed without effort.”
Dr. Legge’s rendering is in verse: