THE ALLEGORY OF THE WIDOW’S SON Research Study by Bro Gabby Comia
Ancient Craft Masonry
In Ancient Craft Masonry, the title applied to Hiram, the architect of the Temple, because he is said, in the first Book of Kings (vu, 14) to have been “a widow’s son of the tribe of Naphtali.” The Adonhiramite Freemasons have a tradition which Chapron gives (Nécessaire Maçonnique, page 101) in the following words: “The Freemasons call themselves the widow’s sons, because, afte the death of our respectable Master, the Freemasons took care of his mother, whose children they called themselves, because Adonhiram had always considered them as his Brethren. But the French Freemasons subsequently changed the myth and called themselves Sons of the Widow, and for this reason.
‘As the wife of Hiram remained a widow after her husband was murdered, the Freemasons, who regard themselves as the descendants of Hiram, called themselves Sons of the Widow.”‘ But this myth is a pure invention, and is without the Scriptural foundation of the York myth, which makes Hiram himself the widow’s son. But in French Freemasonry the term Son of the Widow is synonymous with Freemason.
– Source: Mackey’s Encyclopedia of Freemasonry
Sophia, the feminine aspect of God
Sophia (Koinē Greek: σοφία sophía “wisdom”) is a central idea in Hellenistic philosophy and religion, Platonism, Gnosticism, and Christian theology. 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 Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic churches, Holy Wisdom (Αγία Σοφία Hagía Sophía) is an expression for God the Son (Jesus) in the Trinity (as in the dedication of the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople) and, rarely, for the Holy Spirit.
References to Sophia in Koine Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible translate to the Hebrew term Chokhmah.
Greek and Hellenistic tradition
Further information: Logos, Phronesis, Seven Sages of Greece, and Gnosis
The Ancient Greek word Sophia (σοφία, sophía) is the abstract noun of σοφός (sophós), which variously translates to “clever, skillful, intelligent, wise”. These words share the same Proto-Indo-European root as the Latin verb sapere (lit. ”to taste; discern”), whence sapientia.[1] The noun σοφία as “skill in handicraft and art” is Homeric and in Pindar is used to describe both Hephaestos and Athena.
Before Plato, the term for “sound judgement, intelligence, practical wisdom” and so on, such qualities as are ascribed to the Seven Sages of Greece, was phronesis (φρόνησις, phrónēsis), from phren (φρήν, phrēn, lit. ”mind”), while sophia referred to technical skill.
The term philosophia (φῐλοσοφῐ́ᾱ, philosophíā, lit. ”love of wisdom”) was primarily used after the time of Plato, following his teacher Socrates, though it has been said that Pythagoras was the first to call himself a philosopher. This understanding of philosophia permeates Plato’s dialogues, especially the Republic. In that work, the leaders of the proposed utopia are to be philosopher kings: rulers who are lovers of wisdom. According to Plato in Apology, Socrates himself was dubbed “the wisest [σοφώτατός, sophṓtatós] man of Greece” by the Pythian Oracle. Socrates defends this verdict in Apology to the effect that he, at least, knows that he knows nothing. Socratic skepticism is contrasted with the approach of the sophists, who are attacked in Gorgias for relying merely on eloquence. Cicero in De Oratore later criticized Plato for his separation of wisdom from eloquence.[2] Sophia is named as one of the four cardinal virtues (in place of phronesis) in Plato’s Protagoras.
Philo, a Hellenized Jew writing in Alexandria, attempted to harmonize Platonic philosophy and Jewish scripture. Also influenced by Stoic philosophical concepts, he used the Koine term logos (λόγος, lógos) for the role and function of Wisdom, a concept later adapted by the author of the Gospel of John in the opening verses and applied to Jesus as the Word (Logos) of God the Father.[3]
In Gnosticism, Sophia is a feminine figure, analogous to the soul, but also simultaneously one of the emanations of the Monad. Gnostics held that she was the syzygy of Jesus (i.e. the Bride of Christ) and was the Holy Spirit of the Trinity. She is occasionally referred to by the Hebrew equivalent of Achamṓth (Ἀχαμώθ; Hebrew: חוכמה, ḥokhmāh) and as Proúnikos (Προύνικος).
Christian theology
Main article: Holy Wisdom
Icon of Divine Wisdom София Премудрость Божия) from St George Church in Vologda (16th century).
Christian theology received the Old Testament personification of Divine Wisdom (Septuagint Sophia, Vulgate Sapientia). The connection of Divine Wisdom to the concept of the Logos resulted in the interpretation of “Holy Wisdom” (Hagia Sophia) as an aspect of Christ the Logos.[4][5][6][7]
The expression Ἁγία Σοφία itself is not found in the New Testament, even though passages in the Pauline epistles equate Christ with the “wisdom of God” (θεοῦ σοφία).[8] The clearest form of the identification of Divine Wisdom with Christ comes in 1 Corinthians 1:17–2:13. In 1 Cor. 2:7, Paul speaks of the Wisdom of God as a mystery which was “ordained before the world unto our glory”.
Christology
Following 1 Corinthians, the Church Fathers named Christ as “Wisdom of God”.[9] Therefore, when rebutting claims about Christ’s ignorance, Gregory of Nazianzus insisted that, inasmuch as he was divine, Christ knew everything: “How can he be ignorant of anything that is, when he is Wisdom, the maker of the worlds, who brings all things to fulfillment and recreates all things, who is the end of all that has come into being?” (Orationes, 30.15). Irenaeus represents another, minor patristic tradition which identified the Spirit of God, and not Christ himself, as “Wisdom” (Adversus haereses, 4.20.1–3; cf. 3.24.2; 4.7.3; 4.20.3). He could appeal to Paul’s teaching about wisdom being one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:8). However, the majority applied to Christ the title/name of “Wisdom”.
Reconstruction of the Hagia Sophia basilica (section)
Constantine the Great set a pattern for Eastern Christians by dedicating a church to Christ as the personification of Divine Wisdom.[4] In Constantinople, under Justinian I, the Hagia Sophia (“Holy Wisdom”) was rebuilt, consecrated in 538, and became a model for many other Byzantine churches. In the Latin Church, however, “the Word” or Logos came through more clearly than “the Wisdom” of God as a central, high title of Christ.
In the theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Holy Wisdom is understood as the Divine Logos who became incarnate as Jesus;[10] this belief being sometimes also expressed in some Eastern Orthodox icons.[11] In the Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church, the exclamation Sophia! or in English Wisdom! will be proclaimed by the deacon or priest at certain moments, especially before the reading of scripture, to draw the congregation’s attention to sacred teaching.
There is a hagiographical tradition, dating to the late sixth century,[12] of a Saint Sophia and her three daughters, Saints Faith, Hope and Charity. This has been taken as the veneration of allegorical figures from an early time, and the group of saints has become popular in Russian Orthodox iconography as such (the names of the daughters rendered as Вѣра, Надежда, Любовь). The veneration of the three saints named for the three theological virtues probably arose in the 6th century.[13]
“Wisdom hath builded her house” (Премудрость созда Себе дом, Novgorod, 16th century).
The Christological identification of Christ the Logos with Divine Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) is strongly represented in the iconographic tradition of the Russian Orthodox Church. A type of icon of the Theotokos is “Wisdom hath builded Her house” (Премудрость созда Себе дом), a quote from Proverbs 9:1 (“Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars”) interpreted as prefiguring the incarnation, with the Theotokos being the “house” chosen by the “hypostatic Wisdom” (i.e. “Wisdom” as a person of the Trinity).
Christian mysticism
Further information: Sophiology
In Russian Orthodox mysticism, Sophia became increasingly indistinguishable from the person of the Theotokos (rather than Christ), to the point of the implication of the Theotokos as a “fourth person of the Trinity”.
Such interpretations became popular in the late nineteenth to early twentienth centuries, forwarded by authors such as Vladimir Solovyov, Pavel Florensky, Nikolai Berdyaev, and Sergei Bulgakov. Bulgakov’s theology, known as “Sophianism”, presented Divine Wisdom as “consubstantiality of the Holy Trinity”, operating as the aspect of consubstantiality (ousia or physis, substantia or natura) or “hypostaticity” of the Trinity of the three hypostases, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, “which safeguards the unity of the Holy Trinity”. [14] It was the topic of a highly political controversy in the early 1930s and was condemned as heretical in 1935.[10]online [ Intratext.com]</ref>[15]
Within the Protestant tradition in England, Jane Leade, seventeenth-century Christian mystic, Universalist, and founder of the Philadelphian Society, wrote copious descriptions of her visions and dialogues with the “Virgin Sophia” who, she said, revealed to her the spiritual workings of the Universe.[16] Leade was hugely influenced by the theosophical writings of sixteenth century German Christian mystic Jakob Böhme, who also speaks of the Sophia in works such as The Way to Christ (1624).[17] Jakob Böhme was very influential to a number of Christian mystics and religious leaders, including George Rapp and the Harmony Society.[18]
Personification
Sophia is not a “goddess” in classical Greek tradition; Greek goddesses associated with wisdom are Metis and Athena (Latin Minerva). By the Roman Empire, it became common to depict the cardinal virtues and other abstract ideals as female allegories. Thus, in the Library of Celsus in Ephesus, built in the 2nd century, there are four statues of female allegories, depicting wisdom (Sophia), knowledge (Episteme), intelligence (Ennoia) and valour (Arete). In the same period, Sophia assumes aspects of a goddess or angelic power in Gnosticism.
In Christian iconography, Holy Wisdom or Hagia Sophia was depicted as a female allegory from the medieval period. In Western (Latin) tradition, she appears as a crowned virgin; in Russian Orthodox tradition, she has a more supernatural aspect of a crowned woman with wings in a glowing red colour. The virgin martyrs Faith Hope and Charity with their mother Sophia are depicted as three small girls standing in front of their mother in widow’s dress.
Allegory of Wisdom and Strength is a painting by Paolo Veronese, created circa 1565 in Venice. It is a large-scale allegorical painting depicting Divine Wisdom personified on the left and Hercules, representing Strength and earthly concerns, on the right.
Modern reception
Statue of Sophia in Sofia, Bulgaria
A goddess Sophia was introduced into Anthroposophy by its founder, Rudolf Steiner, in his book The Goddess: From Natura to Divine Sophia[19] and a later compilation of his writings titled Isis Mary Sophia. Sophia also figures prominently in Theosophy, a spiritual movement which Anthroposophy was closely related to. Helena Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, described it in her essay What is Theosophy? as an esoteric wisdom doctrine, and said that the “Wisdom” referred to was “an emanation of the Divine principle” typified by “…some goddesses—Metis, Neitha, Athena, the Gnostic Sophia…”[20]
Since the 1970s, Sophia has also been invoked as a goddess in Dianic Wicca and related currents of feminist spirituality.[21]
The 1979 installation artwork The Dinner Party features a place setting for Sophia.[22]
There is a monumental sculpture of Holy Wisdom depicted as a “goddess” in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria (the city itself is named after Saint Sofia Church).[23] The sculpture was erected in 2000 to replace a statue of Lenin.
It has become a kind of dogma among many feminists interested in spirituality that Judaism and Christianity suppressed all female imagery of the divine. It is also assumed that it was women who created female symbols of the divine and that these symbols served to empower women. So, this line of thinking goes, female symbols for the divine were suppressed as a part of a patriarchal disempowerment of women. However, my own research, published in my book, “Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History” shows that all these relations are considerably more ambiguous.
Men, more so than women, probably shaped much of the classical images of the female divine in the ancient Mediterranean world and elsewhere. Such images served male and upper class interests, at least in their official expressions The feminine divine was seen as protecting men in power, probably because they were believed to be protecting men, like a great mother whose power is seen as nurturing rather than judgemental.
But in truth, female symbols of the divine were never entirely suppressed in Judaism or Christianity. Although they were marginalized, they continued to reappear in renewed forms–and are still with us today.
The root of female images of the divine in Christianity lie in what’s known as the Wisdom tradition, which is found in the latter half of the Hebrew Bible, in such books as Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiasticus, and the Wisdom of Solomon. In those texts, Wisdom is described as a emanation of God: “Like a fine mist she rises from the power of God, a pure effluence from the glory of God… the brightness that streams from everlasting light, the flawless mirror of the active power of God and the image of his goodness” (Wisdom of Solomon, 7:25-26). Wisdom is seen as a companion of God through whom God creates the world, an orderer and sustainer of the universe, a mediator of divine revelation, the one who calls Israel’s sons to repent of their folly and enter the study of wisdom. She is the means of good fortune, the bride of sages and the redeemer of souls. “Age after age she enters into holy souls and makes them God’s friends and prophets” (Wisdom of Solomon, 7:27).
Wisdom as a feminine aspect of God was developed by scholar-sages in Jerusalem after the return from exile in the late sixth century B.C.E. Earlier Judaism had known of the Goddess Asherah, wife of the Canaanite God El. Since the Hebrew religion identified Yahweh–God–with El, much popular Judaism before the exile continued to assume that Yahweh had a consort, Asherah. Although the reformers of the tradition gradually suppressed this veneration of Asherah, a lingering memory of this tradition may have influenced the scholar-sages may as they shaped the idea of Wisdom as a feminine manifestation of God. Later Jewish mysticism would speak of the Shekinah (a term used to refer to the Presence of God) as the feminine consort of the male God.
Christianity shaped its understanding of who Jesus is through a synthesis of the two traditions of apocalyptic messianism–a belief in an imminently coming Messiah—-and wisdom cosmology, the belief in Wisdom as creator of the cosmos. Significant ideas in our understanding of Christ–such as the preexistence of Christ as divine Word with God, the shaping of the creation through the Word, and its role as sustainer and redeemer of the universe and revealer of God’s truth (Gospel of John 1:1-18)–all developed through the Wisdom tradition. Jesus is variously seen as a prophet of Wisdom, Wisdom’s son, or Wisdom’s incarnation. The New Testament preserves some references to the feminine personification of Wisdom manifest in Jesus, such as “Wisdom is justified by her deeds” and “Wisdom is justified by all her children.” (Matthew 11:19, Luke 7:35). But as the faith developed, the idea of Word (Logos, a male concept) started to be substituted for Wisdom (Sophia, the female concept). Word was identified with Jesus,a male prophet, tending to mask the feminine roots of the Wisdom idea in Western Christianity.
Eastern Christianity continued to place an emphasis on Wisdom, which is identified with Christ or Mary Theotokos (the Mother of God), Mother Church, or even as the sustaining ground of Being of the Trinity. This emphasis is clear in the name of the great mother church of Eastern Orthodoxy in Constantinople: Hagia Sophia, which is Greek for Holy Wisdom.
Although Wisdom as a manifestation of God was temporarily eclipsed in the West, fervent female symbols were cultivated over the years as expressions of the redeemed human individual and community in relation Christ. Particularly important are the ideas of the feminine soul as bride of Christ and of Mother Church as both bride of Christ and mother of Christians in whose baptismal womb Christians are reborn. These feminine theological symbols tended to merge in the figure of Mary, Jesus’ mother, as the New Eve through whom Eve’s fall is reversed. She is the Virgin mother through whom Jesus is born without sin, and the Theotokos, or Mother of God. In the later patristic and medieval period. theologians would elaborate on the ideas that she was assumed bodily into heaven at death and preserved from sin in her own conception.
Still, the theme of Wisdom as part of our understanding of God remained familiar to all Christians through the reading of the scriptures at Mass. And medieval mysticism–particularly through female mystics, such as Hildegard of Bingen (12th century) and Julian of Norwich (14th century)–would take these ideas even further.
Read more at https://www.beliefnet.com/entertainment/movies/the-da-vinci-code/gods-wisdom.aspx#W2PEBhKk9878Cq6Y.99
The Myth Of The Divine Sophia
In the Gnostic myth of how the world works, Sophia, the feminine personification of wisdom, lives happily with spirits of light (especially her twin brother), in the unified limitless potential of her Father’s radiance, created by the twin powers of Depth and Silence.
She’s so dizzy with love for the Creative Source that when she sees a brilliant shimmering light below, she flings herself down into the darkness, mistakenly following what she believes to be her Father’s radiance, fooled by a mere reflection. There, in the abysmal unrealized potential of the world, she is trapped – separated from the light, the spiritual realization of Gnosis – the knowledge of transcendent unity.
Water finds its greatest power by seeking its lowest point. Zen saying
There, the powers of the underworld have their way with her, using, abusing, and exploiting her, until all she knows is sadness in the struggle to return herself up to the light she has lost, but not forgotten. She gives birth to a bunch of bad boys, demigods called archons, including the worst of them all, the demiurge who becomes the creator of this world, infecting it with pride, ignorance, fear, and his lust for power and pleasure.
But Sophia remains present, and in her resurgent power she brings great beauty and spiritual potential to the earthly realm and its inhabitants. Witnessing the irresponsible creation of the world by her errant offspring, Sophia conceals Consciousness in the body of the demiurge’s first man, “Adam,” and then brings it into the world as “Eve.”
Finally, Sophia breaks free and ascends back up to the true light of life, raising humanity with her ever so slightly. But she refuses to abandon the sad world of humans, and so she divides herself, keeping a part below, ever present and available for the enlightenment of all.
Here, we may call that Gaia – the consciousness of the world.
Back up in the celestial realm of spiritual light, Sophia rediscovers Gnosis by joining her twin brother in a “marriage” of reunification, balancing the masculine ego of unrealized potential, and uniting it with the sacred feminine – made ever more powerful by adversity – into an androgynous whole. A complete person, full with the knowledge of the transcendent, unified light.
The Feminine Heart Of The Earth
This is the sublimely sophis-ticated philo-sophy of the myth of Sophia, a path that leads not only to self-realization, but also to an understanding of the feminine heart and soul of the earth.
For it’s only in the feminine–the channel of creation into the world–that humanity finds the power and compassion necessary to overcome the darkness of ignorance.
But it just ain’t easy getting there, as any woman struggling in “a man’s world” can tell you, although much less of a problem in the ancient Gnostic world, where, prior to the (ongoing) suppression of the Feminine Divine, women were equal to men in every intellectual and spiritual respect.
One Woman, Many Names
Sophia ends up being the giver of wisdom in so many forms: She is Shakti in Sanskrit, the powerful Hindu personification of feminine wisdom, and the personal and collective linking soul as atman, realized in the transcendent state of samadhi (Gnosis). She is the compassionate boddhisatva (Avalokiteshvara) in Buddhism, returning to light the path to nirvana (Gnosis); personified by the deity Guanyin. She is both Mother Mary, in her ascendant form, and Mary Magdalene, as the earthly companion of the Christ potential in Christian Gnosticism. In Jungian psychology, she is the unifying power (“individuation”) of both the feminine and masculine archetypes, anima and animus, and of the lower self of the psyche with the higher spiritual self (Gnosis).
So you see, Sophia really gets around; or as my late uncle (by marriage), the great Jungian psychologist and philosopher, James Hillman put it:
She is the Sophia of wisdom, the Maria of compassion, the Persephone of destruction, compelling Necessity and Fate, and the Muse.
Modern Psychological Understanding
What may be most remarkable about the myth of Sophia, is the way it foreshadows‒and even predetermines‒what we think of as modern psychological understanding. Carl Jung recognized it as a myth of reflection that reflected collective and individual psychology – not just as the metaphor of following “God’s reflection” down into the abyss as an act of necessary self-centeredness and hubris, eventually leading to a humble redemption; Jung also recognized the myth of Sophia as the precursor of a many-layered structural pathology of both our individual search for health and wholeness, and of the cultural and spiritual potential of humankind. He saw the myth as an illuminating structure, which, when shined on the collective unconscious, could guide the realization of human spiritual evolution; and the metaphor as what Joseph Campbell called, “a psychologically affective image transparent to transcendence.”
Finding The Way Back Up
So don’t be afraid to share a dance with Sophia – she’s quite a girl, I promise. Allow her to take you to that place down across the tracks that we all must visit, where we become painfully separated from our true potential, and exiled from what we are really capable of becoming. From there, she can show you the way back up, the way to get in touch with your divinely feminine soul (the soul of the world), and unify it with the willful (but powerful and promising) masculine aspect of ego. Then, the separation becomes a matrimonial solution, where you may discover that the myth is the means to learning the whole secret – of you, of me, of us, and of a whole world.
Those favored by the grace of Sophia may devote their lives to offering active service in the public arena, or, again, they may simply bring the compassionate light of Sophia to bear upon the private human tasks of their daily lives. Dr. Stephan Hoeller
Sophia as Mother of the divine Logos and as Isis, mother of Horus. But Philo followed Biblical tradition in according primacy to the father-god as creator, treating the divine mother—Sophia — as his attribute or emanation. Nevertheless, he described this god as the husband of Wisdom. [Long, 46, 162; Patai, 98]
The pagan priest Plutarch agreed that Isis was the same as Sophia, creator of all. [Allegro, 157] Pagan mystery religions equated Isis with Demeter, Kybele, Juno Caelestis, Bona Dea, Tyche and other Mediterranean goddesses, mixing their attributes and titles. Isis was sculptured wearing the mural crown of the Asian goddess Tyche and holding the cornucopia of the Italian Fortuna and Terra Mater. (These statuettes have been found in distant Kazakhstan and Pakistan.) Multitudes of molded figurines of Isis seated on the basket of the Eleusinian Mysteries were mass-produced for home altars within Egypt itself.
Most of these Hellenized terracotta statuettes shrink the horned solar crown of the ancient Kemetic goddess and flank it with ears of wheat, assimilating her to Demeter in a historical double rebound. The Knot of Isis that was for millennia tied around her belly moves up to her breast in a tied Grecian shawl. Other terracottas show Isis Baubo with skirts pulled up around her hips and legs opened wide. Still others look to the headwaters of the Nile, as the goddess Besit, linked to the BaTwa peoples, socalled “pygmies,” or perhaps to other little people (“dwarves”).
In the midst of this syncretism, many Isis terracottas retain the Egyptian convention showing her suckling her son (now represented as a sketchy afterthought). She also appears as Isis Bubastis — Ermouthis to the Greeks — with the lower part of her body in the form of a snake. This form of Isis has turned up as far east as Iraq.
Some Egyptian Jews engaged in ecstatic forms of worship. Philo wrote that the Therapeutae (“healers”) became “transported by divine enthusiasm.” They danced and sang hymns in harmonies and antiphonies, women with women and men with men. Then, says Philo, they feasted and drank wine, and at last all joined together in one assembly:
Perfectly beautiful are their motions, perfectly beautiful their discourse; grave and solemn are these carollers; and the final aim of their motions, their discourse, and their choral dances is piety. [Drinker, 159-160]
The Therapeutae were among the Jewish sects in which women “conducted the Sabbath services and provided influential commentaries on the scriptures.” [Long, 38] Philo described their practice as a form of spiritual healing, which in fact gave this community its name:
Inasmuch as they profess to the art of healing better than that current in towns, which cures only the bodies, they treat also souls oppressed by grievous and well-nigh intolerable diseases. [Contemplative Life, in Allegro, 109]
Sophia is the central pivot of creation and represents the feminine aspect in all things.
She is Wisdom Incarnate, the Goddess of all those who are wise.
Sophia (pronounced sew-fee’ah) in Greek, Hohkma in Hebrew, Sapientia in Latin, Celtic goddess-figure Sheela-na-gigs – all mean wisdom,. The Judeo-Christian God’s female soul, source of his true power is Sophia. As Goddess of wisdom and fate , her faces are many: Black Goddess, Divine Feminine, Mother of God The Gnostic Christians, Sophia was the Mother of Creation; her consort and assistant was Jehovah. Her sacred shrine, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, is one of the seven wonders of the world. Her symbol, the dove, represents spirit; she is crowned by stars, a Middle Eastern icon, to indicate her absolute divinity.
Sophia is found throughout the wisdom books of the Bible. There are references to Her in the book of Proverbs, and in the apocryphal books of Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon (accepted by Catholics and Orthodox, found in the Greek Septuagint of the early Church).
She is usually associated with wise King Solomon. 1 Kings 4:29-31 tells us that God gave wisdom to Solomon, and that he became wiser than all the kings of the East and all the wise people of Egypt. Wisdom 8:2, 16, 18 tells us that Solomon was seen as married to Sophia.
The Song of Songs – known as Song of Solomon or Canticle of Canticles – speaks of Solomon’s marriage to Holy Sophia.
Wisdom 9:8-11 tells us that Sophia instructed Solomon in building the Temple!
The Jews revered Sophia. King Solomon even put Her right in the Temple, in the form of the Goddess Asherah.
After the reforms of King Josiah, there was a threat that the veneration of Sophia would come to a halt – there was even more of a threat when patriarchal Christianity took over the world.
Thanks to her continuing presence in the world and her presence in the Bible, veneration of Sophia continued in the Eastern tradition with the construction of the Hagia Sophia and the Russian Catholic liturgical service to Sophia combined with the assumption of Mary on May 15.
The Russian Orthodox Church has also a school of “Sophiology” to explore the theology of Sophia without contradicting the Russian Orthodox theology.
Yet the Eastern Christians are not the only Christians to venerate Sophia.
Sophia was very likely venerated by early Followers of the Way, and her veneration has survived in the West today in the form of Gnosticism.
Gnostics see her as one of the aeons, one of the quasi-deities who live in the ethereal realm known as the pleroma.
Gnostics believe that she gave birth to or brought about the creation of a negative aeon, who later came to be called an archon, called the Demiurge, creator and ruler of this world.
Gnostics see the Demiurge as the God of the Old Testament, with his strict rules and chains that bind the people of the Earth. Gnostics believe that Sophia and the Father God (not the Demiurge) sent Yeshua to right this wrong. In Gnostic tradition, Sophia plays a very active role in our world.
Esoteric Christianity doesn’t typically support the theory of the Demiurge. It believes that creation is inherently good, and as such so is the Creator.
However, the Mystery School does teach that Shaitan, the devil, was the ruler of this world and had accidentally been given the keys to the Otherworlds by the Goddess.
He had these keys until the passion, death, and Resurrection of Yeshua, when Yeshua obtained the keys once more and holds them still.
The Mystery School sees many similarities between Sophia and the two Christian Goddesses, Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene. Perhaps one or both of them were incarnations of Sophia.
Generally we see Mother Mary as the incarnation of Shekinah, and Mary Magdalene as the incarnation of Sophia.
In truth all feminine goddess archetypes are the same soul – just as the same masculine god archetypes – in all creational mythos – are the same soul. The patterns of who they are – and their duality in creating our reality – is self-evident as you study and compare each creational story.
The Grid – Tree and Flower of Life – Creation
Sophia as Isis – Wings of Ascension
Pink – Sophia as Venus – Venus Transit June 8, 2004
Aya Sophia [Turkish] – Hagia Sophia [Greek]
Aya Sophia was originally a Christian church at Constantinople (now Istanbul), later a mosque, and now converted into a museum.
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Who is the Son of the Widow?
If Sophia is the widow, the one reading this article is a seeker of the divine wisdom and be considered a widow’s son.
About the Researcher
Gabriel Comia, Jr. is a master mason and a widow’s son.