Or at least that is the most prevalent theory. No one really knows. What is known that within the empty void of nothingness was, or grew, something. A spark, a seed, a need; something other than nothingness. Perhaps it had been there all along. Perhaps it preceded even the nothingness. What is known is that it began to grow and thus began the creation. As the kernel of creation grew it came into contact, and then conflict, with the nothingness. These cosmic forces clashed in a struggle between the nothing and the something.
It was from this struggle that consciousness would arise. For through the struggle parts of the divine spark came to define itself as something distinct from the nothingness it fought. And in defining itself against this other these parts of the divine spark became conscious. Ironically, having defined themselves against the nothingness they also inevitably set themselves apart from the spark of which they where no longer a part.
What is understood about these unknowable forces is that if not from the beginning then in time they became antagonistic. The Ultimate Principle is something, and the Void is nothing, and one or the other began to expand. Thus these forces came into contact and clashed, the nothingness seeking to swallow the something and the something trying to dispel the nothingness. Neither able to destroy the other this titanic struggle unfolded over many endless eras with no clear result.
So, in the struggle between nothing and something the seed of creation begat what we most commonly refer to as souls; the incorporeal essence of self-aware conscious beings. They where, and are, legion, both eternal and indestructible and imbued with the power of the divine spark, though not in equal measure. Soon it became apparent that some souls was imbued with more power than others and so the souls began to differentiate between one another and the greatest and most powerful souls were the ones that would one day be known as the Gods.
It was some of these future gods that first discovered that they where not the only offspring of the struggle between something and nothing. They discovered the byproduct of the struggle, a shapeless heap of undeveloped matter and unformed energy congested together. This was the unformed Cosmos, and chaotic as it was the future gods saw that it contained all the building blocks for an ordered Cosmos. And so they determined to create such a reality, for they saw in that chaos, discordant as it was, something closer to their own nature than either the divine spark from which they had separated and the nothingness they had fought. And the gods who undertook to create the ordered cosmos was to be the first generation of gods, the Elder Gods, incorporeal primordial deities concerned with establishing order and balance in the cosmos. They organized energy and matter, created the stars and the planets, laid down the laws that should govern the behavior of the cosmos.
As the Elder Gods put the finishing touches on the new and ordered Cosmos the remainder of the souls migrated into this cosmos. With them where the remainder of the gods who had chosen to stay with the lesser souls rather than partake in the creation of the ordered cosmos. These gods had come to serve as leaders and protectors of the less powerful souls and were the Elder Gods marveled at the cosmos they had created, these gods found meaning and purpose in their roles as guides of lesser souls. These gods became the Younger Gods.
Having finished the ordered cosmos the Elder Gods, content with having imposed order on chaos took little notice of the Younger Gods and the lesser souls. Yet on the planets created by the Elder Gods from the unformed matter born of the struggle between something and nothing things was happening, and one planet in particular something spectacular was about to occur; the emergence of biological lifeforms. While the Elder Gods contemplated the mysteries of the cosmos and creation the Younger Gods and the lesser souls took a great interest in this phenomenon, and guided by the hand of the Younger Gods simple lifeforms became more complex and eventually the lesser souls decided to inhabit some of these lifeforms, most particularly the hominids, who so became conscious beings.
A few of the Younger Gods went and alerted the Elder Gods to this phenomenon. But the Elder Gods did not much care, preferring to observe the cosmos as a whole rather than the activities taking place on one obscure planet. Yet a few Elder Gods was intrigued by the enthusiasm of the Younger Gods for this new phase in creation and two of their number went with the Younger Gods to see the phenomenon for themselves.
There they found that the Younger Gods had not waited for the elder ones but had begun busying themselves organizing life in much the same manner as the Elder Gods once organized the cosmos. But there was much disagreement among the Younger Gods as each had its own idea about how to organize life. Infighting and bickering among the gods caused chaos and confusion on the planet, continuously disrupting creation. To spare creation the worst destruction of feuding gods the two Elder Gods each created a plane of existence, the Celestial Realm and the Underworld respectively, which the Younger Gods settled on. While many gods would routinely visit the physical realm and occasionally feud with their peers there, this organization brought some semblance of stability to the physical realm.
Or at least so it has been until now. The gods are fickle and there is much that divides them. Will they manage to bring greatness and prosperity to the cosmos, or will the brief experiment of creation come to an abrupt end? Only time will tell.