'In the beginning, in the time that was no time, nothing existed but the Womb. And the Womb was a limitless dark cauldron of all things in potential: a chaotic blood-soup of matter and energy, fluid as water yet mud-solid with salts of the earth; red-hot as fire yet restlessly churning and bubbling with all the winds. And the Womb was the Mother, before She took form and gave form to Existence. She was the Deep. . . .' With this dramatic, poetic recasting of the Genesis myth, Barbara Walker begins this highly original and fascinating work, which is both an incisive critique of patriarchal religion and a bold proposal to establish a liberating alternative to the Judeo-Christian myth. She envisions a religion and a spirituality compatible with women's essential role in society and free of all the superstition and demeaning imagery characteristic of traditional, male-dominated religion. In place of theology she suggests 'thealogy,' replacing the academic study of the God concept with a