The Fall of Sophia

The Great Mother

If anyone asks how the feminine pronoun can bear a likeness to God, the answer is that on the Night of the Ascension, the emanations of God the Glorified and Exalted that appeared to the Lord of the World, peace and blessing be upon him, were in feminine form.

Sayyid Muhammad Husayni Gisudaraz
The White Goddess is the Holy Spirit of Light, the Mother of the Gods and feminine aspect of the Good. She is the inspiration of Nature, the nurturance of the mercy; the seeress of wisdom, evocator of passion and sublime archetype of beauty, balance and harmony. Although often depicted as the Universal Soul, she is also witnessed in the role of the Logos as the deliverer of grace and the redeemer of souls. She may also characterize the divine essence itself as the uncreated womb of the illimitable Night, the primordial root of all being and sole ground of existence. Objectively neither while encompassing both, the Deity may be subjectively experienced as feminine or masculine within the Eye of the Heart.

The Mother of the Gods gives birth to the celestial archetypes as, holding the spiritual knowledge of the ideal forms as the Divine Mind of God, the Virgin of Light whose luminous body is the very substance of the Pleroma, the spiritual seeds of which are instantiated through the Breath of the All-Merciful, respiring as the creative and salvific flux that is the ubiquitous pervasion of the Sakina.

As the Breath of Mercy, she is the fertile, dynamic and sensuous energy of creation, a living force vacillating through the layers, planes and stations of reality to endlessly conceive the experience of phenomenal reality. She is the reflective stream of the supernal consciousness, a flowing mirror of theophanic thought carrying the message of the Word through the ephemeral image of the cosmos, the creative incantation of the spirit spelling the living enchantment of the world. The felicity of the Goddess bursts into the rivers of generation and liberation, hymning the dance of life forward into manifestation while leading souls back upon the Way of the Return.

The Sumerian Innana, later known as Ishtar, Asherah and Astarte, was the prior Holy Spirit and feminine presence of the Deity, the Queen of Heaven and the Virgin of Light, the Breath of the All-Merciful who articulates the expression of the Names into the living world of the cosmic animal, inscribing the Book of Nature [with the enciphering of the Word] whose mystical interpretation unravels the path to salvation. The Great Mother corresponds to Cybele of Anatolia, Shakti of India and Sekhmet-Hathor of Ancient Egypt. Her luminous body extends the Axis Mundi of the Seven Heavens, a Sacred Tree sprouting from the unity of the essence to blossom the distinctive yet interconnected leaves of creation.

This is no place for a serious discussion of the complex figure of the Shekhinah, but she certainly shares many features with Istar and gnostic Sophia. Like the latter, she is a "virgin of light," perceived in visions as a beautiful feminine apparition; she is the supernal holy soul with whom the mystic seeks to unite; she is the presence of God in man; she is the word of God; she is the love of God; and she is also known as the Supernal mother and the Infernal mother, the upper Shekhinah and the lower Shekhinah, paralleling the role of the soul in Istar's Descent and Sophia's fall.

Simo Parbola

The Hebrew Shekinah, or Arabic Sakina, is the spirit of wisdom, tranquility and devotion, the dynamic action of the Holy Fire and binding force of the Covenant. As the immanence of the Word she guides the wayfarer through intuition, inspiration and ecstatic vision, thereby enchanting the soul as/with the ardent yearning for divine affinity. The spiritual heart is the Ark of the Covenant which holds the indwelling of the Sakina who, as the most intimate presence of God, distills the holy intensity of the Love Sublime.

Mythicized as the Spenta Armaiti of Mazdaism, Danu of the Celtic Irish and Rhea of the Grecians, she is the incumbent Virgin Mother of Isis, Mary and Maya, the great revealer, illuminator and initiator into the Holy Mysteries who discloses the arcana of divinity through the flowing light of the cosmic epiphany. As the Hindu Parvati she is the essence of love, fertility, faithfulness, reverence and nurturance, establishing the bond of sympathy to seal the trust of adoration between mortal and divinity.

The valley spirit never dies. It is named the mysterious female. Her gateway is the root of heaven and earth. Continuous, always existing, use will not exhaust it.

Lao Tzu

The Valley Spirit is the Taoist conception of the Holy Ghost, who, as the Kundalini serpent of Prakriti, extends the silver cord of divine sympathy to conjoin the whole of existence with the ontological source in the Good, thereby maintaining the umbilical connection which channels the Water of Life for the fertilization and salvation of creation. Her heavenly sap flows from the celestial roots to bestow the gift of life within the receptive loci of the Incarnate Entities. This providential amour is lavished upon all creatures as the raison d’etre that is the perfecting agent for their predestined return into the One.

The dove thus quivers as the sublime charity of the Beloved. She is the Holy Spirit and Breath of the Merciful respiring from the Mouth of God to author the inscription of the Word upon the parchment of the Cosmic Soul. The dove has symbolized Innana, Ishtar, Astarte, Asherah, Anahita, Aphrodite, Venus and the Holy Spirit, whose roles in their respective traditions are comparable as theophanic icons representing the continuity of consciousness that is the wings of sublime love embracing mortal and divinity. As the Spiritus Sanctus the dove formed the sacred symbol for the Cathar Church of Love, the Gnostics of Occitania who revered the Holy Spirit as the indwelling harbinger of both life and salvation, whose totemic spirit is universally recognized as a symbol of peace.

The feline was another common symbol of the Goddess, as the heavenly chariots of Rhea, Cybele and the Frejya were all drawn by wild cats. The Egyptian Goddesses Sekhmet, Bastet and Tefnut, all aspects of the Divine Mother Hathor, were represented in feminine form with the head of a lion or cat. Ishtar was depicted with two lions flanking her gateway into the celestial realm, not unlike the seals of Crete which often show two leonine daemons majestically straddling the Goddess, Holy Mountain or Tree of Life, comparable to the Egyptian Lions of Yesterday and Tomorrow who guard the portal to the underworld illustrated by the hieroglyph of the Akhet. Similarly, the Chinese Heaven or Jade Mountain [of Tian] featured extensively in ancient folklore is the home of the tiger Goddess Xi Wangmu, the Spirit Mother who mediates the border between worlds.

Finally, one symbol for the Arabic Sakina was that of a winged cat abiding within the Ark of the Covenant, who, as the fiery and transformative energy of the Fohat, is portrayed in Hinduism as the Mother Goddess Durga riding upon a lion.  The Persian River Goddess Anahita was likewise flanked with lions, while the Egyptian Goddesses Bastet and Sekhmet denoted the light and dark aspects of the Kundalina Shakti who is also al-Sakina.

The Lady of the Nile, Scarabaean Leopard Queen; Lithe Bright Shivering, Gold and Green.

We see the God Thoth as Baboon paying adoration to Tefnut, his wisdom gleaned from the Fructifying Milk of the Goddess.

Rhea means “To Flow” while Tefnut translates as “To Pour from Heaven”, referring to the ray of sheer being that is the singularity of the divine presence shining through the hypostases of spirit, soul and nature as the dynamic energy of universal becoming. This perpetual irradiation particularizes the prefiguration of the celestial archetypes to crystallize into the shimmering reflection of phenomenal existence. This divine rhythm is the ecstatic motion of the Sakina, the descent of the Holy Spirit who both engenders the world and imparts the Light of Grace for the salvation of her children.

A Celtic variant is Mother Danu, the Goddess of wisdom, abundance and serenity who pours the generative and salvific currents of her sublime magic from the wellspring of eternity. Like the Sakina, Hathor and Rhea she is the flow of the Edenic Light itself, the dynamic energy and living theophany that is the cosmic disclosure of God. She is our initiatory link into the faerie realm as the illuminator of the sacred and deliverer of life itself. The early Irish tribes of the Tuatha Dé Danann were the Children of Danu who withdrew from our world at the dawn of the Iron Age to join the fair folk of the Sidhe within the ancestral barrows of the Otherworld.

The Kwan-Yin of Buddhism is the Goddess of Mercy; the Compassionate and Enduring One, “She Who Harkens to the Cries of the World”. As the quintessential Bodhisattva, she is the savior and guiding star of the Living Light, the blessed Sophia who, as the Pearl of Wisdom, reveals the Way of Love through bestowing her Medicinal Sapience upon the Living Waters of adoration, thereby providing the very path back through the Holy Spirit and into the blissful sublimity of the Good.

The torch of the Grecian Hecate and the Mesopotamian Ereshkigal burn with the sublime ardor of divine passion, holding the key to the underworld which unlocks the inner gate to the Empyreal Palace leading into the sealed heart of the wayfarer.

The beautiful Venus rises as the Star of the Sea upon a frothy wave of horses bearing the inrush of the gnosis, a motif later iconized by the alchemists as a nymph or mermaid with blood and milk pouring from her breasts to symbolize the balance of the red and white elixirs, the masculine and feminine powers of rajas and sattva which are the philosophic distillations of Sulphur and Mercury, equalizing the perfection of the Solar and Lunar currents represented by the Yin and Yang Kundalini Nadis of Ida and Pingala spreading the wings of the Caduceus. The mystical marriage of the White Queen and the Red King expresses the harmonization of the soul and the spirit within the crucible of the prepared wayfarer, whose attainment of wholeness gives birth to the Solar Child of the Personal Angel that is the enlightenment of mortal consciousness. 

The Goddess takes this more covert form through the Middle Ages as the water spirit Melusine, honored for her inspiring power by the temple builders who converted the hallowed sanctuaries of Pagan Europe into the awe-inspiring cathedrals of Christendom. With the breath of revelation cast in stone, the alchemical symbolism of the ancients was crystallized into the sacred images of grail, rose and cross upon iridescent panes of stained glass, as the majestic basilicas functioned as contemplative mandalas for the elevation of consciousness unto the wedding of divine sympathy.

The faery serpent thus continued the tutelary tradition through the Christian era as the Mother of Illumination and initiator into the sacred mysteries. Symbolizing the Anima Mundi Melusine is the spirit of Mercury, the Living Light and patroness of bathing, nursing and rebirth, traditionally considered supernatural themes of purification and soteriology connected to her mystical fountain buried deep within the shadows of the enchanted forest. Royal families asserted the divine right to rule by claiming lineage to the serpent queen and other faeries.

The mythical shape of the mermaid blends the sublime perfection of humanity with the primal waters of eternity, her majestic form embodying the alchemical union of Heaven and Earth to demonstrate the serpent of chaos transforming into the beautiful figure of the Angel.

The Lady thus extends her Silver Bough, lowering the Vine of Life that lifts the wayfarer unto the Castle in the Sky, her secret whisper sanctioning safe passage through the [feral] wilds of the Twilight Kingdom to reach the Palace of the King. Moved upon her healing waters we embark upon a magical voyage into the deepest rhythms of the soul.
The dew settles on the taste of song, the moistness of her breath stirring our fever like a lover’s caress, haunting our journey like the dance of doves fluttering through the mist of the Living Idol.