What you have heard about me is all lies. The first part is true. I was a young woman and I was betrothed to Joseph and the angel Gabriel came to me and told me that I was an extremely lucky woman and that I’d won a heavenly sweepstakes and that I was going to get to bear god’s child. And then he told me that I was already pregnant so it didn’t seem like I was even being given a choice in the matter.

After he left I thought about it long and hard and I started to think that maybe I wasn’t so lucky after all. I had seen the workings of this god, whom my mother called the pale one, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to have his child. You see, although he took great pains to give the genealogy of Joseph in the bible, he seemed to have overlooked my genealogy. I guess he didn’t realize that I am a daughter of Eve, and a daughter of Bath’-she-ba, and a daughter of Tamar and I have seen how the pale one has dealt with my foresisters and how he has always treated them as servants. And as I pondered these things I began to perceive his weakness. He is unable to give birth. He needs woman to give birth and he can’t stand the fact that he can’t do it for himself.

After much thought, I decided that I would thwart his plan. I decided that I would not have the child. I decided that I would save my sisters from whatever evil he had planned for them. And I went to an old woman of the village in secret and she gave me bitter herbs to drink and I began to bleed again normally.

When I had done this I rejoiced because I had shown the pale one that he cannot always treat woman as his servant. And I lived the rest of my days happily with the blessings of Ashteroth upon me.

But after I passed from the earth the pale one found a way to achieve his plan in spite of me. He appeared in visions to various mad men throughout the country and instructed them to write the story of his son’s life, as though he had been born to me. And the mad men wrote, and people read and believed, and as I feared, no good ever came of it for woman. For the stories written about the son of god by these mad men became the foundation of a new religion, just as bad as the religion of my time and millions of women were killed in the name of this religion. And those who were not killed were taught that they should imitate me and serve god obediently.

Every word of it is a lie. Because I tell you today that I never served god nor ever will. And I tell you truly that no woman should serve god until he serve her first. But all women should serve themselves and the Goddess. And all women should beware the lies of the pale one for they surround us everywhere.

• Check out Nicola's interpretation of Eve.