| “ | I am the Wisdom of God, the wisdom He used to build the world. I was with Him as He laid the foundations of the universe and placed the stars to light the firmament. I am the Wisdom through which your kings and rulers use to govern their kingdoms. Without me, they are lost and end up driving themselves and their own kingdoms to ruin. You seek me, and at the same time despise me. You prefer Ignorance to me. You love me and hate me at the same time. Who I am? I am Sophia, the Lady Wisdom. | „ |
| ~ Sophia |
Sophia, also known as Lady Wisdom, is the Lesser Aeon of Wisdom that had created the Demiurge Yaldabaoth. She was the first Aeon to fall for her misdeeds and the first to be redeemed for retaining the true purpose of the concept of wisdom.
Overview[]
She is also the Undersecretary of Heaven from being forgiven by God for creating the Demiurge along with being a personification of wisdom. She is a major part of Gnosticism. She assisted in the creation of the material world, when it creates mortal humans she grants them souls and grants them the secret knowledge of the true spiritual universe so they can be freed of Yaldabaoth's influence.
The positive or negative depiction of materiality thus resides a great deal on mythic depictions of Sophia's actions. She is occasionally referred to by the Hebrew equivalent of Achamoth.
Description[]
She is considered to be the central idea in Hellenistic philosophy and religion, Platonism, Gnosticism, and Christian theology. Sophia is a major theme, along with Knowledge , among many of the early Christian knowledge-theologies grouped by the heresiologist Irenaeus as gnostikos, "learned". Gnosticism is a 17th-century term expanding the definition of Irenaeus' groups to include other syncretic and mystery religions.
In Gnosticism, Sophia is a feminine figure, analogous to the human soul but also simultaneously one of the feminine aspects of God. Gnostics held that she was the syzygy of Jesus , and Holy Spirit of the Trinity. She is occasionally referred to by the Hebrew equivalent of Achamōth and as Prunikos. In the Nag Hammadi texts, Sophia is the lowest Aeon, or anthropic expression of the emanation of the light of God. She is considered to have fallen from grace in some way, in so doing creating or helping to create the material world.
Originally carrying a meaning of "cleverness, skill", the later meaning of the term, close to the meaning of Phronesis ("wisdom, intelligence"), was significantly shaped by the term philosophy ("love of wisdom") as used by Plato. In the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, the feminine personification of divine wisdom as Holy Wisdom can refer either to Jesus Christ the Word of God (as in the dedication of the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople) or to the Holy Spirit.
History[]
Background[]
Sophia, like the rest of the Aeons, sprouted from the flowers of the Tree of Life after the creation of the universe and was the emanation of wisdom. When the emanation of thought came into being so too came with it the emanation of wisdom. As the development of the universe progressed, so too did its conceptual aspects which give it meaning, and in the process, the Tree of Life spontaneously emanated further Aeons, being pairs of progressively 'lesser' beings in sequence. Together with the source from which they emanate they form the Pleroma, or fullness, of God, and thus should not be seen as distinct from the divine, but symbolic abstractions of the divine nature.
Sophia is described as God's Counsellor and Work Mistress, who dwelt beside Him before the Creation of the Earth and sported continually before Him. Sophia traversed the Pleroma, or the Gardens of Life, exploring and taking in the sights, to better understand the nature of her surroundings and why they operate as they do. At that time, Sophia felt as though that the realm of materiality should be created as a counterbalance to the realm of divine totality, which led to her the desire to create something apart from the divine totality, without the receipt of divine ascent. Her answer came in the form of Yaldabaoth's creation.
Banishment[]
Sophia came across a lone spark that dwelled within the waters of chaos, lifelessly attempting to breach its surface but to no avail. Sophia took the spark and wrapped the petals from where she blossomed around it. However, even with the Tree of Life's power, she sensed that it could not develop properly and sought a solution for this dilemma. She bathed the petal wrappings in the waters of the Collective Unconscious, mixed it with the Secret Fire, then planted it in the Pleroma gardens, resulting in the birth of none other than Yaldabaoth himself. As benevolent as her actions may seem, it caused instability to the Pleroma.
This crisis occurs as a result of Sophia trying to emanate without her syzygy or, in another tradition, because she tries to breach the barrier between herself and the unknowable Bythos. Moreover, she did it without God or Asherah's permission and performed this deed without a partner. Sophia gazed upon the monstrosity that was meant to be her child in horror, a misshapen creature that was unlike any of the other Heavenly beings. She became ashamed of her deed and wrapped the Demiurge in a cloud who never beheld his mother. In response to this, Sophia was cast out of the Pleroma for her actions. After cataclysmically falling from the Pleroma, Sophia wandered the material through its ether. And when the Earth was created, her form matched that of its would-be inheritors: mankind. As a result of banishing the Aeon of Wisdom, Adam and Eve were ignorant but in bliss, yet this blissful ignorance would result in tragedy leading to their expulsion. Sophia's fear and anguish of losing her life (just as she lost the light of the One) causes confusion and longing to return to it.
Sophia's exposure to the material eventually forced her to take on a material form, but the longer she was deprived of one, the longer she grew mad in despair. After the Fall of Man, she saw Adam and Eve wandering the Earth and observed their lifestyle up until Cain murders Abel which has them separate from one another for 130 years. Sophia, driven by her need to become material, approached Eve as she slept with tears staining her face from the loss of her children. She took a droplet of Eve's blood and her tears, and using her syzygy took a physical form reminiscent to that of Eve herself, but one whose body is not bound by the march of time. She then made her way towards Adam, only to see Naamah fleeing from the cave of where he slept, sensing the impending plagues of mankind from their unwilling union. In response to this, she also opted to mate with Adam to bring forth a child that may push back against the Nashiym, whom are the Plagues of Mankind. At the time, Adam awoke and saw what he perceived as Eve approaching him. Sophia comforted Adam, spending three days and nights with him, teaching both him and he her. In the end, Sophia was pregnant with Adam's child as well who would be born after the birth of Seth. The child would be named Norea.
Midwife of Mary[]
Sophia appeared after many untold millennia, particularly around the time of Jesus' birth and still in the shape of a woman similar to that of Eve, all while calmly observing the development of mankind after the Flood. She aided Mary's birth of Jesus, becoming the midwife of the Holy Mother. Sophia sensed that Jesus would not only come to bring forth mankind from salvation but also to aid Sophia in redeeming herself for her actions. Sophia sought to guide the young messiah through his journey as the Son of God. It is believed that Sophia was the one who alerted Lailah, the angel of night, about Lilith's impending attack on the infant Jesus in the dead of night.
Lady Wisdom[]
While seen as a woman, Sophia held great wisdom, at times even perceived as the embodiment of wisdom in the flesh of a woman which is actually the case. In the Book of Proverbs and in her travels and teachings with Jesus, she was called Lady Wisdom and would bestow lessons through her wisdom to let mankind have a better and humble understanding of the benevolence behind the universe's operations, thus would also come to better understand themselves and their place in God's grand palace of the infinitum. She is the revelation of God's inward thought, and assigned to her not only the formation and ordering of the natural universe but also the communication of knowledge to mankind.
In Proverbs, Sophia is said to "cry out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice, at the busiest corner she cries out...'the complacency of fools destroys them; but those who listen to me will be secure and live at ease, without dread of disaster". This means that Sophia is around the Earth, calling out, and making herself available to anyone who is willing to listen to her and to learn. Another meaning to this is that anyone can access and interact with wisdom to make a beautiful life for oneself and others.
Redemption[]
Jesus also helps Sophia in this matter in order to bring her back into the fullness (Pleroma). Christ enables her to again see the light, bringing her knowledge of the spirit. She herself understood that despite being an emanation of wisdom, she was without maturity or sense in her beginnings. If one is to be wise in the way they live, they must listen to wisdom and not to that which is without sense or reason.
She was persistent in her continuous striving to recover again and again the light-spark hidden in human nature, till, at length, Christ comes to her assistance and in answer to her prayers, proceeds to draw all the sparks of light to Himself, unites Himself with the Sophia as the bridegroom with the bride, descends on Jesus who has been prepared, as a pure vessel for His reception, by Sophia, and leaves him again before the crucifixion, ascending with Sophia into the world or Aeon which will never pass away. Sophia became a consort to the divine aspect of Jesus while the latter's mortal aspect ended up with Mary Magdalene.
Myths and Legends[]
Book of Proverbs[]
In accordance with the description given in the Book of Proverbs, a dwelling-place was assigned by the Gnostics to the Sophia, and her relation to the upper world defined as well as to the seven planetary powers which were placed under her. The seven planetary spheres or heavens were for the ancients the highest regions of the created universe. They were thought of as seven circles rising one above another, and dominated by the seven Archons. These constituted the (Gnostic) Hebdomad. Above the highest of them, and over-vaulting it, was the Ogdoad, the sphere of immutability, which was nigh to the spiritual world.
These seven pillars being interpreted as the planetary heavens, the habitation of the Sophia herself was placed above the Hebdomad in the Ogdoad.
This meant, according to the Gnostic interpretation, that the Sophia has her dwelling-place "on the heights" above the created universe, in the place of the midst, between the upper and lower world, between the Pleroma and the ektismena. She sits at "the gates of the mighty," i.e. at the approaches to the realms of the seven Archons, and at the "entrances" to the upper realm of light her praise is sung. The Sophia is therefore the highest ruler over the visible universe, and at the same time the mediatrix between the upper and the lower realms. She shapes this mundane universe after the heavenly prototypes, and forms the seven star-circles with their Archons under whose dominion are placed, according to the astrological conceptions of antiquity, the fates of all earthly things, and more especially of man. She is "the mother" or "the mother of the living."
Descent[]
In reconciling the doctrine of the pneumatic nature of the Sophia with the dwelling-place assigned her, according to the Proverbs, in the kingdom of the midst, and so outside the upper realm of light, there was envisioned a descent of Sophia from her heavenly home, the Pleroma, into the void beneath it. The concept was that of a seizure or robbery of light, or of an outburst and diffusion of light-dew into the kenōma, occasioned by a vivifying movement in the upper world. But inasmuch as the light brought down into the darkness of this lower world was thought of and described as involved in suffering, this suffering must be regarded as a punishment. This inference was further aided by the Platonic notion of a spiritual fall.
Mythos of the Soul[]
Alienated through their own fault from their heavenly home, souls have sunk down into this lower world without utterly losing the remembrance of their former state, and filled with longing for their lost inheritance, these fallen souls are still striving upwards. In this way the mythos of the fall of Sophia can be regarded as having a typical significance. The fate of the "mother" was regarded as the prototype of what is repeated in the history of all individual souls, which, being of a heavenly pneumatic origin, have fallen from the upper world of light their home, and come under the sway of evil powers, from whom they must endure a long series of sufferings until a return into the upper world be once more vouchsafed them.
But whereas, according to the Platonic philosophy, fallen souls still retain a remembrance of their lost home, this notion was preserved in another form in Gnostic circles. It was taught that the souls of the Pneumatici, having lost the remembrance of their heavenly derivation, required to become once more partakers of Gnosis, or knowledge of their own pneumatic essence, in order to make a return to the realm of light. In the impartation of this Gnosis consists the redemption brought and vouchsafed by Christ to pneumatic souls. But the various fortunes of such souls were wont to be contemplated in those of Sophia, and so it was taught that the Sophia also needed the redemption wrought by Christ, by whom she is delivered from her agnoia and her pathe, and will, at the end of the world's development, be again brought back to her long lost home, the Upper Pleroma, into which this mother will find an entrance along with all pneumatic souls her children, and there, in the heavenly bridal chamber, celebrate the marriage feast of eternity.
Formation of the Lower World[]
A mystical depiction of Sophia.
As described by Irenaeus, the great Mother-principle of the universe appears as the first woman, the Holy Spirit moving over the waters, and is also called the mother of all living. Under her are the four material elements—water, darkness, abyss, and chaos. With her, combine themselves into two supreme masculine lights, the first and the second man, the Father and the Son, the latter being also designated as the Father's ennoia. From their union proceeds the third imperishable light, the third man, Christ. But unable to support the abounding fullness of this light, the mother in giving birth to Christ, suffers a portion of this light to overflow on the left side. While, then, Christ as dexios (He of the right hand) mounts upward with his mother into the imperishable Aeon, that other light which has overflowed on the left hand, sinks down into the lower world, and there produces matter. And this is the Sophia, called also Aristera (she of the left hand), Prouneikos and the male-female.
There is here, as yet, no thought of a fall, properly so called, as in the Valentinian system. The power which has thus overflowed leftwards, makes a voluntary descent into the lower waters, confiding in its possession of the spark of true light. It is, moreover, evident that though mythologically distinguished from the humectatio luminis, the Sophia is yet, really nothing else but the light-spark coming from above, entering this lower material world, and becoming here the source of all formation, and of both the higher and the lower life. She swims over the waters, and sets their hitherto immovable mass in motion, driving them into the abyss, and taking to herself a bodily form from the hylē. She compasses about, and is laden with material every kind of weight and substance, so that, but for the essential spark of light, she would be sunk and lost in the material. Bound to the body which she has assumed and weighed down thereby, she seeks in vain to make her escape from the lower waters, and hasten upwards to rejoin her heavenly mother. Not succeeding in this endeavour, she seeks to preserve, at least, her light-spark from being injured by the lower elements, raises herself by its power to the realm of the upper region, and there spreading herself out she forms out of her own bodily part, the dividing wall of the visible firmament, but still retains the aquatilis corporis typus. Finally seized with a longing for the higher light, she finds, at length, in herself, the power to raise herself even above the heaven of her own forming, and to fully lay aside her corporeity. The body thus abandoned is called "Woman from Woman."