Nature of Maya:

तम आअसीत्तमसा गूळमग्रे.अप्रकेतं सलिलं सर्वमाऽइदं।। Rig Ved 10.129.3
""At first there was only darkness wrapped in darkness""

The Nature of Maya
A substance has no power to transform itself. It can only be transformed by a conscious agent acting on it.Similarly, Maya has no power of its own, only what is borrowed from awareness.One cannot say that Maya is ‘nothingness’ because nothingness is an idea, an effect of Maya. An effect cannot be identical with its cause because the cause is subtler than the effect. Maya is neither non-existence (asat) nor existence (sat, awareness) but something altogether different.

Nothingness in this context means the absence of objects, which is not nothingness. You can’t say Maya doesn’t exist because there is no world in the self, yet we experience a world. It does not create itself because it is inert. So where does it come from? It is something ‘altogether different.’

The peculiar nature of Maya is mentioned in an Upanishad. It says that before creation there was neither existence nor non-existence but there was ‘darkness’ by which is meant Maya. This does not mean that Maya exists independently of the self but that it borrows whatever degree of reality it has from the self.Maya is said to be ‘darkness’ because it has the power to apparently obscure the self, limitless awareness. It is eternal because it depends on awareness and awareness is eternal. Maya does not exist (as objects exist). It
does not exist in the self either. Nor is it non-existent (asat), It somehow exists because we experience its effects (the objects). It appears as avidya in Jiva but avidya is non-eternal because it ends with self knowledge.Hence, like nothingness, Maya is not a stand-alone entity. In the apparent reality, too, jivas are not considered to be different from their abilities
As the power of the earth to produce pots does not apply everywhere but only to those places where the earth contains clay. Similarly Maya does not operate on the whole of the self but only on a small part of it.Upanishads says: ‘Creation is only a small fraction of the vast limitlessness of awareness. The remainder is
self-revealing; it does not depend on Maya to reveal itself.

With awareness as its substrate, Maya creates the objects of the world just as an artist draws many-colored pictures on a white canvas. It makes unmoving awareness seem to move. It is not non-existence....

::::Nature of Maya-Chapter 2 Pachadasi:By Sri Vidyaranya Muni:::