Sophia (Gnosticism)

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For the Gnostic Christians, the Sophia was a central element in their cosmological understanding of the Universe. A Feminine figure, analogous to the human soul but also simultaneously one of the Feminine aspects of God and the Bride of Christ, she is considered to have fallen from grace in some way, in so doing creating or helping to create the material world. For the Gnostics, the drama of the redemption of the Sophia through Christ or the Logos is the central drama of the universe. The Sophia resides in all of us as the Divine Spark. In Gnostic Christianity Christ is sent to bring her back to the Godhead.

In Gnostic tradition, the term Sophia (Σoφíα, Greek for "wisdom") refers to the final and lowest emanation of God. In most if not all versions of the gnostic myth, Sophia brings about an instability in the Pleroma, in turn bringing about the creation of materiality. Thus a positive or negative view of materiality depends a great deal on the interpretations of Sophia's actions in the myths. She is occasionally referred to by the Hebrew equivalent of Achamoth (this is a feature of Ptolemy's version of the Valentinian gnostic myth).

Almost all gnostic systems of the Syrian or Egyptian type taught that the universe began with an original, unknowable God, referred to as the Parent or Bythos, or as the Monad by Monoimus. It can also be equated to the concept of Logos in stoicism, esoterism, or theosophical terms (The 'Unknown Root'). It is also known as the first Aeon by still other traditions. From this initial unitary beginning the One spontaneously emanated further Aeons, being pairs of progressively 'lesser' beings in sequence. The lowest of these pairs were Sophia and Christ. The Aeons together made up the Pleroma, or fullness, of God, and thus should not be seen asdistinct from the divine, but symbolic abstractions of the divine nature.

1 Sophia in the Nag Hammadi
2 The fall of Sophia
3 Sophia and non-Gnostic Christianity and Judaism
4 See also

[edit] Sophia in the Nag Hammadi

In the Nag Hammadi, Sophia is the lowest æon, or anthropic expression of the emenation of the light of God. She is the syzygy of Jesus Christ, and Gnostics believed that she was the Holy Spirit of the Trinity. Sophia is depicted as the creator of the material universe in "On the Origin of the World." Furthermore, the planet Earth and everything on it was indeed created by the Jewish God Yahweh, but he is depicted as fundamentally corrupt. Because Sophia created the material universe and its god (also known as Yaldabaoth, Samael, and Demiurge) either without her syzygy Jesus Christ or, in another tradition, because she tried to breach the barrier between herself and the unknowable Bythos.

Furthermore, she is also depicted as the destroyer of both this material universe, and Yaldabaoth/Yahweh and all his Heavens. Later in "On the Origin of the World," it states:

"She [Sophia] will cast them down into the abyss. They [the archons] will be obliterated because of their wickedness. For they will come to be like volcanoes and consume one another until they perish at the hand of the prime parent. When he has destroyed them, he will turn against himself and destroy himself until he ceases to exist.

And their heavens will fall one upon the next and their forces will be consumed by fire. Their eternal realms, too, will be overturned. And his heaven will fall and break in two. His [...] will fall down upon the [...] support them; they will fall into the abyss, and the abyss will be overturned.

The light will [...] the darkness and obliterate it: it will be like something that never was."

[edit] The fall of Sophia

Sophia's fear and anguish of losing her life (just as she lost the light of the One) caused confusion and longing to return to it. Because of these longings, matter (Greek: hyle) and soul (Greek: psyke, ψυχή) accidentally came into existence through the four elements: fire, water, earth, and air. The creation of the lion-faced Demiurge is also a mistake made during this exile, according to some Gnostic sources as a result of Sophia trying to emanate on her own, without her male counterpart. The Demiurge proceeds to create the physical world in which we live, ignorant of Sophia, who nevertheless managed to infuse some spiritual spark or pneuma into the creation of the Demiurge.

After this the savior (Christ) returns and lets her see the light again, bringing her knowledge of the spirit (Greek: pneuma, πνεῦμα). Christ was then sent to earth in the form of the man Jesus to give men the gnosis needed to rescue themselves from the physical world and return to the spiritual world. Note that, in Gnosticism, the Gospel story of Jesus is itself allegorical: it is the Outer Mystery, used as an introduction to Gnosis, rather than being literally true in a historical context.

In Valentinian cosmology, the three sensations experienced by Sophia create three correspondent types of humans:

hylics (who bond to matter, the principle of evil)
psychics (who bond to the soul and are partly saved from evil)
pneumatics who can return to the pleroma if they achieve gnosis and can behold the world of light. The gnostics regarded themselves as members of this group.

The analogy of the fall and recovery of Sophia is echoed (to a varying degree) in many different myths and stories. Among these are:

Persephone and her descent into Hades, from which she returns to life [but is bound to return to Hades for 3 months every year]
The canonical Christian Gospels: The church as the bride of Christ
The story of Eve and the birth of Christ through the Virgin Mary
The descent of Orpheus into the underworld to rescue his wife, Eurydice
The abduction and rescue of Helen of Troy
The return of Odysseus to his kingdom, Ithaca, to reclaim his wife, Penelope
The rescue of Andromeda by Perseus
The story of Pandora
The stories of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty
The slaying of the Dragon by St George to rescue the Princess
The rescuing of Princess Leia from the Death Star in Star Wars

[edit] Sophia and non-Gnostic Christianity and Judaism

Although the Divine Sophia is central to so many Gnostic movements she is by no means a figure unique to Gnosticism. Sophia as 'the Wisdom of God' appears in the Bible in the Book of Proverbs - in particular 8.22-31 in which the Sophia speaks as if an entity in her own right - as well as in the Psalms and New Testament. In Judiasm the Sophia appears alongside the Shekinah, 'the Glory of God', a figure who plays a key role in the cosmology of the Kaballists as an expression of the feminine aspect of God. Like the Gnostic Sophia, the Shekinah has a double role as placed side by side with God while also exiled to the world of matter, the Malkuth.

In the Russian Orthodox Church the Sophia is championed as a key part of the Godhead by religious thinkers such as Vladimir Solovyov, Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky, Nikolai Berdyaev and Sergei Bulgakov whose book Sophia: The Wisdom of God is in many ways the apotheosis of Sophiology. His work was heavily attacked by the Russian Orthodox Authorities and denounced as heretical. For Bulgakov. the Sophia is co-existent with the Trinity, operating as the Feminine Aspect of God in concert with the three Masculine principles of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

In Roman Catholicism Dame Hildegard of Bingen also celebrated the Sophia as a cosmic figure both in her writing and art. Within the Protestant tradition in England, 17th Century Mystic, Theosophist and founder of the Philadelphia Society Jane Leade wrote copious descriptions of her visions and dialogues with the 'Virgin-Sophia' who, she said, revealed to her the spiritual workings of the Universe.

Some commentators view the Virgin Mary as an expression of the Sophia, although in one sense much reduced. The Sophia is seen as being expressed in all Creation, the Natural World, and, for some of the Mystics mentioned above, integral to the spiritual well-being of mankind and the Church. The Virgin is seen as outside Creation but compassionately interceding on behalf of humanity to alleviate its suffering.