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About Sophiaby Brother LeonardIt is a common complaint among pagans and New Agers that whenever the media mentions "religion" it always refers to Christianity as though that's all there is. Even the existence of other religions has been erased from much of the public mind. Similarly when someone says "God" everybody thinks they know what is meant. But if you said "Goddess," those who weren't freaked out would say "Which goddess?" The existence of Goddess has been erased from the public mind. So when Dar' Shem is described as the "Reiki of Sophia" it is, to many people, a case of two unknowns in the same sentence. Today the Classical languages such as Greek, from which her name came are neglected. We cannot take it for granted that the meaning of Her Name is understood. Sophia is not a goddess, like Her major aspects as Isis, Hathor, Ila, Shakti, Demeter, Hecate, Kali, Cerridwen and others who have recently been re-entering the consciousness of the 60's crowd. Sophia is the Goddess, not a goddess. She is behind all the goddesses of every age and every religion. Her name means Wisdom. Originally the word "philosophy" meant "lover of wisdom." Then it meant wisdom with a capital W. Now it seems to mean "lover of clever debate," and wisdom is eclipsed by the more dangerous cleverness. The West, for centuries, has hidden the goddess, either by deliberate persecution of Her followers by the patriarchal religions, or by delegating Her to roles as minor as those played by women in the same societies. Goddess nowadays is being revealed in many aspects as the feminine aspects of the human psyche, and psychologists such as Carl Jung, and poets such as Goethe, have been in the forefront of those insisting that the survival of mankind depends on a re-evaluation of the feminine psyche and its aspects of Divinity, particularly Sophia. It is clear that if we keep going down the insane path of continuous competition for diminishing resources, then humanity is doomed. The patriarchal concept of controlling and manipulating Nature has produced pollution of our earth, air, and water, as other articles in these newsletters make clear. The insanity of making things that do not biodegrade is becoming obvious to all. Everything in Nature's cycles is used. There was nothing wasted on Spaceship Earth, until human chemists began making things that are useless to the Earth because they do not decay, and cannot be used even by micro-organisms. That is the way of the patriarchal "control, compete, and use" philosophy that entails only cleverness, no common-sense, no wisdom. Wisdom entails cooperation in the cycles of Nature, of living in a way that goes with the natural flow, using Wisdom to look ahead, as the Native Americans did. Any action would be considered on its merits over seven generations, to ensure that short term benefits did not swamp long term gains. Now our politicians see no further ahead than the next election. Our clever scientists do what can be done, without regard for whether it should be done. Wisdom is denied. The solution to our problems is found in the Wisdom side of life. The cleverness side has been tried for centuries and has failed because every benefit of cleverness is turned into a disadvantage or danger by the clever people who don't know when to stop what they're at, and go beyond all sense. The commonsense of the nurturing feminine is very much needed today, and the goddess energy is popping up all over the place even as the unregulated male energy is leading everyone down the path to destruction. In these articles we deal with Sophia as She was, as she disguised Herself, and as She now manifests. Westerners have become largely orphaned from the feminine energy, in the words of Caitlin [Matthews], and need to learn a great deal that used to be taken for granted by all. As the Women's Movement developed over the past decades, and technology and contraception began to free women from the slave drudgery of the last century, several great advances were made. In some branches of Christianity woman were considered inferior because of the neurotic ideas of Paul of Tarsus and the mythology of the Fall of Man as being due to Eve. Women were expected to take the advice of superior, celibate, male priests as actually having authority over their lives as mothers and wives. Authority figures such as St. Augustine relegated women to an inferior, or even despicable state in the most debasing terms, for example: "What is the difference whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman-I fail to see what use women can be to man, if one excludes the function of bearing children." The modern Wiccan movement began to make dents in that nonsense in Britain in the 50's, as did the finding of the scriptures at Nag Hammadi in 1947. These scriptures showed that women were of major importance in Early Christianity, and that Jesus was not a celibate monk, but a typical, Jewish, married man, with children. The feminine aspect of Divinity was of major importance to Him and all Jewish mystics, who called it the Shekinah, and located it in the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy of Holies. In Proverbs and the Wisdom literature, some of which was removed from the Bible during the Protestant revolt against Catholicism, she is called Wisdom, and bears the same relationship to God as Shakti does to Shiva. She is the creative power of the god. In future articles we shall examine Sophia as the feminine energy of the Divine and tell much more of Her story.
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