Mary- Sophia - Goddess of Wisdom & God’s Wife
from… http://www.northernway.org/sophia.html
Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom & God’s Wife Sophia Prayers & Gallery
By Katia Romanoff (with contributions by young Mark Raines)
Who is Sophia? Literally she is Wisdom, because the Greek word Sophia means “wisdom” in English. More than that, Sophia is the Wisdom of Deity. She has been revered as the Wise Bride of Solomon by Jews, as the Queen of Wisdom and War (Athena) by Greeks, and as the Holy Spirit of Wisdom by Christians. She is known as Chokmah (pronounced HOK-mah with the H being said like -ch in the name Bach) in Hebrew, and Sapientia in Latin.
But just who is Sophia?
Sophia is found throughout the wisdom books of the Bible. There are many 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 Wisdom Incarnate, the Goddess of all those who are wise.
Is it any wonder that Sophia is constantly 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 Solomon was considered to be married to Sophia. One of the many layers of symbolism attributed to the Song of Songs (also known as Song of Solomon or Canticle of Canticles) is that it speaks of Solomon’s marriage to Holy Sophia. Wisdom 9:8-11 even 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. However, after the brutal “reforms” of King Josiah described in 1st and 2nd Kings in your Bible, the veneration of Sophia went underground. Josiah slaughtered all her priests and priestesses and destroyed all her shrines and places of worship. But Sophia adherents remained active in the “underground stream” for centuries even while patriarchal Christianity held total sway in the Western World. Thanks to her continuing presence in the world and her presence in the Bible, veneration of Sophia surfaced in the Eastern Christian tradition with the construction of the Hagia Sophia cathedral in Constantinople (now a Muslim museum in Instanbul). The Russian Catholic liturgical service to Sophia combined with the assumption of Mary on May 15. The Russian Orthodox Church has also begun a school of “Sophiology” to explore the thealogy (spelled with an “a”) 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.
| 
| Sophia and her 3 Daughters, Faith, Hope & Charity (aka Love), Russian Icon on Katia’s altar |
|
|
|
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 look at other theories and myths such as Shaitan (aka Satan or Shatan), the devil, was the ruler of this world and was accidentally given the keys to the Otherworlds by Goddess. He had these keys until the passion, death, and descent into hell of Yeshua, when Yeshua retrieved them and holds them still. Sophia, Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene are three Christian Goddesses, making up a female Trinity. Both the earthly forms of Mary and Mary Magdalene shared the name Mary, and both in their Heavenly forms share the Hebrew letter Heh in the God-Name YHVH. So how does Sophia fit into the Godhead? Wisdom of Solomon, a book in the apocrypha says clearly that Sophia is the Holy Spirit. There could be a feminine Trinosophia - Mother, Daughter, and Pneuma (Holy Soul).
The Trinitarian/Trinosophia can also fit with the Quaternity. The Quaternity Godhead is made up of four divine beings, Father, Mother, Son, and Daughter. Quaternarians also acknowledge Paraclete and Pneuma as the masculine and feminine essences of Divinity (see our Creed of the Way, in which Pneuma is clearly acknowledged). Perhaps Paraclete is the combination of the two masculine forces, and Pneuma may be the combination of the two feminine forces. This could explain why Paraclete and Pneuma do not have their own letters in the Quaternity, since they may be a combination of the masculine and feminine forces. For more information on the Holy Trinity and the Holy Trinosophia, check out our Restoring the Goddess Lesson E.
Sophia: Exile & Return Excerpt: Sophia personifies wisdom, an ancient tradition concerned with integrity in the marketplace, politics, and royal court. Because the teachings were rooted in life instead of doctrine, Sophia became problematical and excluded from the religious formulations of monotheism. This manuscript is about exile–Sophia’s and our own. I compare Sophia’s exile from mainstream religion to the alienation suffered by modern individuals who experience loss, betrayal, and abandonment. What is exiled in today’s dysfunctional paradigm is the vital soul, the genius or daemon. When we pay attention to it by taking our life seriously–as a mode of knowledge–we awaken its fire. The vital expresses the integrity and intelligence of the life force, whose awakening turns exile into home–revealing Sophia to be not divine but the source of divine images–the human psyche. While Sophia has been interpreted as divine, goddess or psychological image, she is examined here from several unique perspectives. First, Sophia is developed from the context of modern life and real people, but in conversation with the historical and mythological. Second, the dark side is confronted through analysis of Sophia’s “Other” faces, Lilith and Hecate, locating it as the source of individual power and knowledge. Third, it provides modern women with an image of female power that is not based solely on reproduction and mothering but on another aspect of the feminine archetype rarely discussed–the intelligence and cosmic power of the life force. Finally, it introduces the “path of crumbs” which encourages women to direct their own life through recognition of the guidance present in circumstances.
GREAT SOPHIA LINKS: Read entire article Sophia: Exile and Return
Gnostic Sophia articles
Have you seen her? Wonderful page on the Sophia Holy Spirit connection and the Sophia Mother Mary connection. Nice pictures and links, too.
Prayers to the Holy Sophia Top
You of the whirling wings,
circling, encompassing energy of God:
you quicken the world in your clasp.
One wing soars in heaven,
one wing sweeps the earth,
and the third flies all around us.
Praise to Sophia!
Let all the earth praise her!
-Hildegard of Bingen
/// /// ///
Hildegard of Bingen
Article Talk
Language
Watch
Edit
Hildegard of Bingen[a] OSB (German: Hildegard von Bingen, pronounced [ˈhɪldəɡaʁt fɔn ˈbɪŋən]; Latin: Hildegardis Bingensis; c. 1098 – 17 September 1179), also known as the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner of the Catholic Church during the High Middle Ages.[1][2] She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most recorded in modern history.[3] A number of scholars have considered her to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.[4]
Saint
Hildegard of Bingen
OSB
Illumination from Hildegard’s Scivias (1151) showing her receiving a vision and dictating to teacher Volmar
Virgin
Doctor of the Church
Born
Hildegard von Bingen
c. 1098
Bermersheim vor der Höhe, County Palatine of the Rhine, Holy Roman Empire
Died
17 September 1179 (aged 81)
Bingen am Rhein, County Palatine of the Rhine, Holy Roman Empire
Venerated in
Catholic Church, Anglican Communion, some Lutherans
Beatified
26 August 1326 (Formal confirmation of Cultus) by Pope John XXII
Canonized
10 May 2012 (equivalent canonization), Vatican City by Pope Benedict XVI
Major shrine
St. Hildegard, Eibingen
Feast
17 September
Philosophical work
Era
Medieval philosophy
Region
Western philosophy
School
Neoplatonism
Main interests
mystical theology, medicine, botany, natural history, music, literature
Notable works
Scivias
Liber Divinorum Operum
Ordo Virtutum
Notable ideas
Microcosm–macrocosm analogy, Eternal predestination of Christ, viriditas, Lingua ignota, humoral theory, morality play
Hildegard’s convent at Disibodenberg elected her as magistra (mother superior) in 1136. She founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. Hildegard wrote theological, botanical, and medicinal works,[5] as well as letters, hymns, and antiphons for the liturgy.[2] She wrote poems, and supervised miniature illuminations in the Rupertsberg manuscript of her first work, Scivias.[6] There are more surviving chants by Hildegard than by any other composer from the entire Middle Ages, and she is one of the few known composers to have written both the music and the words.[7] One of her works, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama and arguably the oldest surviving morality play.[b] She is noted for the invention of a constructed language known as Lingua Ignota.
Although the history of her formal canonization is complicated, regional calendars of the Catholic Church have listed her as a saint for centuries. On 10 May 2012, Pope Benedict XVI extended the liturgical cult of Hildegard to the entire Catholic Church in a process known as “equivalent canonization”. On 7 October 2012, he named her a Doctor of the Church, in recognition of “her holiness of life and the originality of her teaching.”[10]
Biography
edit
Hildegard was born around 1098. Her parents were Mechtild of Merxheim-Nahet and Hildebert of Bermersheim, a family of the free lower nobility in the service of the Count Meginhard of Sponheim.[11][12] Sickly from birth, Hildegard is traditionally considered their youngest and tenth child,[13] although there are records of only seven older siblings.[14][15] In her Vita, Hildegard states that from a very young age she experienced visions.[16][17]
Monastic life
edit
Perhaps because of Hildegard’s visions or as a method of political positioning, or both, Hildegard’s parents offered her as an oblate to the Benedictine monastery at Disibodenberg, which had been recently reformed in the Palatinate Forest. The date of Hildegard’s enclosure at the monastery is the subject of debate. Her Vita says she was eight years old when she was professed with Jutta, who was the daughter of Count Stephan II of Sponheim and about six years older than Hildegard.[18] Jutta’s date of enclosure is known to have been in 1112, when Hildegard would have been 14.[19][20] Their vows were received by Bishop Otto of Bamberg on All Saints Day 1112. Some scholars speculate that Hildegard was placed in Jutta’s care at the age of eight and that the two were enclosed together six years later.[21]
In any case, Hildegard and Jutta were enclosed together at Disibodenberg. They formed the core of a growing community of women attached to the monastery of monks, known as a Frauenklause, a type of female hermitage. Jutta was also a visionary and thus attracted many followers who came to visit her at the monastery. Hildegard states that Jutta taught her to read and write, but that she was unlearned, and therefore incapable of teaching Hildegard sound Biblical interpretation.[22] The written record of the Life of Jutta indicates that Hildegard probably assisted her in reciting the psalms, working in the garden, other handiwork, and tending to the sick.[23][24] This might have been a time when Hildegard learned how to play the ten-stringed psaltery. Volmar, a frequent visitor, may have taught Hildegard simple psalm notation. The time she studied music could have been the beginning of the compositions she would later create.[25]
Upon Jutta’s death in 1136, Hildegard was unanimously elected as magistra of the community by her fellow nuns.[26] Abbot Kuno of Disibodenberg asked Hildegard to be prioress, which would be under his authority. Hildegard, wanting more independence for herself and her nuns, asked Abbot Kuno to allow them to move to Rupertsberg.[27] This was to be a move toward poverty, from a stone complex that was well established to a temporary dwelling place. When the abbot declined Hildegard’s proposition, Hildegard went over his head and received the approval of Archbishop Henry I of Mainz. Abbot Kuno did not relent, however, until Hildegard was stricken by an illness that rendered her paralyzed and unable to move from her bed, an event that she attributed to God’s unhappiness at her not following his orders to move her nuns to Rupertsberg. It was only when the Abbot himself could not move Hildegard that he decided to grant the nuns their own monastery.[28] Hildegard and approximately 20 nuns thus moved to the St. Rupertsberg monastery in 1150, where Volmar served as provost, as well as Hildegard’s confessor and scribe. In 1165, Hildegard founded a second monastery for her nuns at Eibingen.[29]
Before Hildegard died in 1179, a problem arose with the clergy of Mainz: a man buried in Rupertsberg had died after being excommunicated by the Catholic Church. Therefore, the clergy wanted to remove his body from the sacred ground. Hildegard rejected this idea, saying it was a sin and that the man had been reconciled to the church at the time of his death.[30]
Friendship with Richardis von Stade
edit
While completing Scivias, Hildegard found a close friend and personal assistant in Richardis von Stade, a fellow nun. In 1151, Richardis was elected abbess of a distant convent, much to Hildegard’s displeasure. In a series of letters to multiple church officials (including the Pope), Richardis’ family, and even Richardis herself, Hildegard pleaded for her companion to be allowed to stay with her.[31] Hildegard remained adamant that it was “not God’s will” for Richardis and her to be separated.[32]
Despite Hildegard’s efforts, Richardis was eventually moved. A year later, Richardis’ brother sent Hildegard a letter notifying her that Richardis had died, and had met “a good Christian end”.[33] In response to this, Hildegard grieved the death of her friend, and assured her brother that she was confident in Richardis’ salvation, and that she cherished Richardis with “divine love”.[34]
Visions
edit
Hildegard said that she first saw “The Shade of the Living Light” (umbra viventis lucis) at the age of three, and by the age of five, she began to understand that she was experiencing visions.[35] She used the term visio (Latin for ‘vision’) to describe this feature of her experience, and she recognized that it was a gift that she could not explain to others. Hildegard explained that she saw all things in the light of God through the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch.[36] Her letter to Guibert of Gembloux, which she wrote at the age of 77, describes her experience of this light:
From my early childhood, before my bones, nerves, and veins were fully strengthened, I have always seen this vision in my soul, even to the present time when I am more than seventy years old. In this vision, my soul, as God would have it, rises up high into the vault of heaven and into the changing sky and spreads itself out among different peoples, although they are far away from me in distant lands and places. And because I see them this way in my soul, I observe them in accord with the shifting of clouds and other created things. I do not hear them with my outward ears, nor do I perceive them by the thoughts of my own heart or by any combination of my five senses, but in my soul alone, while my outward eyes are open. So I have never fallen prey to ecstasy in the visions, but I see them wide awake, day and night. And I am constantly fettered by sickness, and often in the grip of pain so intense that it threatens to kill me, but God has sustained me until now. The light which I see thus is not spatial, but it is far, far brighter than a cloud which carries the sun. I can measure neither height, nor length, nor breadth in it; and I call it “the reflection of the living Light.” And as the sun, the moon, and the stars appear in water, so writings, sermons, virtues, and certain human actions take form for me and gleam.[37]
Hildegard was hesitant to share her visions, confiding only to Jutta, who in turn told Volmar, Hildegard’s tutor and, later, secretary.[38] Throughout her life, she continued to have many visions, and in 1141, at the age of 42, Hildegard received a vision she believed to be an instruction from God, to “write down that which you see and hear.”[39] Still hesitant to record her visions, Hildegard became physically ill. The illustrations recorded in the book of Scivias were visions that Hildegard experienced, causing her great suffering and tribulations.[40] In her first theological text, Scivias (“Know the Ways”), Hildegard describes her struggle within:
But I, though I saw and heard these things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words, not with stubbornness but in the exercise of humility, until, laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses, and by the witness of a certain noble maiden of good conduct [the nun Richardis von Stade] and of that man whom I had secretly sought and found, as mentioned above, I set my hand to the writing. While I was doing it, I sensed, as I mentioned before, the deep profundity of scriptural exposition; and, raising myself from illness by the strength I received, I brought this work to a close – though just barely – in ten years. […] And I spoke and wrote these things not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received them in the heavenly places. And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, ‘Cry out, therefore, and write thus!’
— Hildegard von Bingen, Scivias, translated by Columba Hart and Jane Bishop, 1990[41]
It was between November 1147 and February 1148 at the synod in Trier that Pope Eugenius heard about Hildegard’s writings. It was from this that she received papal approval to document her visions as revelations from the Holy Spirit, giving her instant credence.[42]
On 17 September 1179, when Hildegard died, her sisters said they saw two streams of light appear in the skies and cross over the room where she was dying.[43]
Vita Sanctae Hildegardis
edit
Hildegard’s hagiography, Vita Sanctae Hildegardis, was compiled by the monk Theoderic of Echternach after Hildegard’s death.[44] He included the hagiographical work Libellus, or “Little Book”, begun by Godfrey of Disibodenberg.[45] Godfrey had died before he was able to complete his work. Guibert of Gembloux was invited to finish the work; however, he had to return to his monastery with the project unfinished.[46] Theoderic utilized sources Guibert had left behind to complete the Vita.
Works
edit
Scivias I.6: The Choirs of Angels. From the Rupertsberg manuscript,[47] folio 38r.
Hildegard’s works include three great volumes of visionary theology;[48] a variety of musical compositions for use in the liturgy, as well as the musical morality play Ordo Virtutum; one of the largest bodies of letters (nearly 400) to survive from the Middle Ages, addressed to correspondents ranging from popes to emperors to abbots and abbesses, and including records of many of the sermons she preached in the 1160s and 1170s;[49] two volumes of material on natural medicine and cures;[50][51] an invented language called the lingua ignota (‘unknown language’);[52] and various minor works, including a gospel commentary and two works of hagiography.[53]
Several manuscripts of her works were produced during her lifetime, including the illustrated Rupertsberg manuscript of her first major work, Scivias; the Dendermonde Codex, which contains one version of her musical works; and the Ghent manuscript, which was the first fair-copy made for editing of her final theological work, the Liber Divinorum Operum. At the end of her life, and probably under her initial guidance, all of her works were edited and gathered into the single Riesenkodex manuscript.[54][55] The Riesenkodex manuscript is a collection of 481 folios of vellum bound in pig leather over wooden boards that measure 45 by 30 centimetres (18 by 12 in).[56]
Visionary theology
edit
Hildegard’s most significant works were her three volumes of visionary theology: Scivias (“Know the Ways”, composed 1142–1151), Liber Vitae Meritorum (“Book of Life’s Merits” or “Book of the Rewards of Life”, composed 1158–1163); and Liber Divinorum Operum (“Book of Divine Works”, also known as De operatione Dei, “On God’s Activity”, begun around 1163 or 1164 and completed around 1172 or 1174). In these volumes, the last of which was completed when she was well into her seventies, Hildegard first describes each vision, whose details are often strange and enigmatic. Then she interprets their theological contents in the words of the “voice of the Living Light.”[57]
Scivias
edit
The Church and Mother of the Faithful in Baptism. Illustration to Scivias II.3, fol. 51r from the 20th-century facsimile of the Rupertsberg manuscript, c. 1165–1180.
With permission from Abbot Kuno of Disibodenberg, she began journaling her visions (the basis
Reincarnation of Hildegard has been debated since 1924 when Austrian mystic Rudolf Steiner
