WHEN DID WE FIRST LEARN OF SOPHIA AS WISDOM?
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From: Sharon M.
Date: Tuesday, January 6, 2009, 8:07 AM
Subject: When did we first learn of Sophia as Wisdom?
Reply to: 266545
ID: 266554

Greetings all:

As I was awakening this morning, I had the thought that it would be nice if we all shared our first introductions to the Sophia work (I don't mean the conference--but rather the knowledge of Sophia herself). I'll share my own herstory to start it off:

I first heard of Sophia in 1989 when I quit my job as an administrative secretary to enroll in Matthew Fox's Institute of Culture and Creation Spirituality. This was a nine-month program and students lived in a dorm at the Holy Names College campus. It was great!

Fox was and is an ardent feminist (in fact, the Pope de-priested him for refusing to fire Starhawk from his faculty). Many nuns and priests from around the world attended this school, as well as protestant ministers, new agers, Sufis and so forth. I wrote home to my friends in San Diego "You'll never believe this but I just participated in a full moon ritual to the Goddess led by two Catholic nuns!" In our classes we learned of Sophia and I noticed there were increasing Christian books using her name to enlighten women they hadn't been given the full story...

Then around, or shortly after, 1992 my Sufi teacher Neil Douglas-Klotz's book, Desert Wisdom (sharing ancient wisdom from the Middle East "from the Goddess through the Sufis." I then learned about Hochmah (Sophia was the Greek translation of Hochmah). Then he and his wife came out with the Goddess cycle of Dances (based upon the Dances of Universal Peace tradition), and Hochmah was one of them. So I learned to lead this dance as part of my own DUP repertoire.

So the story goes on. But the main emphasis was learning that Wisdom was feminine (of course, males can embody this as well as women). In fact, the Qu'ran opens with the statement Bismillah er-Rahman er-Raheem, which means the first manifestation of God (Unity) is one of mercy (unconditional love) and compassion. The words Rahman and Raheem are from the same root as "womb" so these are feminine attributes also.

As Luisha Teish says in the video, The Goddess Remembered: "SHE IS EVERYWHERE!"

Have a great day everyone!

Blessings, Sharon