Soft & Lyrical Version – “The Twelve Midwives”

Soft & Lyrical Version – “The Twelve Midwives”

In the earliest days, when the earth had only just taken shape, its surface was still damp and shrouded in a dim, misty darkness. It was then that the Sun Goddess and the Moon Goddess, following the Jade Emperor’s command, appeared in the sky—one to cast her warm, golden rays across the world, the other to bathe it in gentle silver light—drying and brightening the land little by little.

Their own tale will be told another time. For now, it is said that once the Jade Emperor had completed the grand work of shaping the universe, He turned His thoughts toward the creation of living beings. No one knows exactly how He accomplished this, only that He gathered the remnants of Heaven and Earth and molded them into all manner of creatures: mighty elephants, fierce tigers, lumbering rhinoceroses, and even the tiniest insects and worms. Then, choosing only the purest and most refined essence, He shaped a different kind of being—humankind. And so humans came to possess a wisdom greater than all other creatures.

As for the making of human bodies themselves, the Jade Emperor entrusted that delicate task to twelve gifted Goddesses, whom we now call the Twelve Midwives. Their origins are hazy, like an old memory softened by time. Some say they were divine attendants who aided the Jade Emperor from the moment He first conceived the idea of creating humans. Others say they were appointed after the Heavens and Earth had already been filled with beings of every kind.

There are those who believe that the number of gods, humans, animals, and even the elements—earth, water, air—has remained fixed since the cosmos took form, never increasing or diminishing. Thus, when one being dies, it may return as a human, or perhaps as an animal, or even take up life as a deity. And gods and animals alike may, with the Jade Emperor’s approval, be reborn as humans. The Twelve Midwives, then, are the artisans who shape the bodies of those destined to walk the human world again.

Some stories claim that each Goddess is responsible for a single part of the human form—one shapes the ears, another the eyes, another the limbs, another the organs of life, yet another teaches the newborn how to smile or speak. But others believe their work is shared, their hands moving together in harmony without division. What is certain is that every child born into the mortal realm must first pass through the gentle care of all twelve: they sculpt the face, form the hands and feet, and whisper the first seeds of laughter and language into the tiny body. They do not determine fate or lifespan; should a flaw appear in a newborn, it is regarded as the shared oversight of all twelve.

Long ago, a poet teasingly chided them with two mischievous lines:

“Twelve Midwives quarreled in spite,
And tossed away the spring of human delight…”

—a playful reproach for the time, it was said, that they crafted a human being but forgot to grant the gift of life’s renewal.