Sophia Mythos:

A Brief Summary of the Nine Episodes

(Excerpt from MS, working title “Dreaming Sophia” by John Lash. This book is forthcoming from Chelsea Green Publishing in 2006.)

Today we call the earth Gaia in growing recognition that the planet is alive and intelligent, a sentient super-organism. But doing so we do not normally assume that the Gaian entelechy preexisted the physical planet. Calling the earth Gaia is a fa?on de parler, merely a way of speaking ? but could it be more than that?

The emergent intuition of growing numbers of people that Gaia is alive and intelligent in her own right, that she is “autopoetic,” making her own order, may now prompt a deeper intuition: the autopoetic presence embodied in the Earth preexisted it. Sophia means “wisdom,” so we may suppose that the adepts of the Mysteries perceived in the planetary body the wisdom of a divine, super-earthly presence, comparable to the wisdom that animates the human body, but infinitely more complex, vast, and powerful. This is the primary ecological insight, of course. It may also be the primary religious insight.

In Gnostic cosmology Sophia is the mythological name of Gaia before she became the earth.

Today, with the emergent recognition of Gaia to our advantage, we are privileged to observe as James Lovelock did that it only makes sense to see the earth in this way. Do we really need general systems theory, cybernetics, dissipative structures and tautological formulas of self-organization to understand Gaia, or do these conceptual schemes merely pose male-mind distractions from empathic contact with the living planet? To the ancient Greeks theoria was beholding, pure and simple, but for the modern mind we are unfortunately often beholden to theory itself, and so bound and blinded by it that we cannot see the ground for the map.

What we seek in “Gaia theory” is a live imaginal dimension, not a scaffolding of cybernetic general systems cogitation. Fortunately, that imaginal dimension is already available—we have at least the fertile rudiments of it—in the Sophia Mythos. The sacred narrative central to the Mysteries of the Great Mother has a complex structure that can be outlined in nine parts or episodes:

One (Prelude): A singularity arises within the Godhead, the realm of the Pleroma (divine fullness—astronomically, the galactic center). The singularity carries the potential for novelty to emerge in the universe. It is called the Anthropos.

Two: Two divinities (Aeons) among the company of Pleromic Gods, Christos and Sophia, configure the singularity for projection into the realm of the galactic arms, where planetary systems emerge.

Three: The encoded singularity, the Anthropos, is emanated from the Pleroma into the realm of “outer chaos” so that it can gradually unfold in emergent worlds. It nests in a molecular cloud (Orion Nebula) like a pattern of dew in a spider’s web.

Four: Fascinated by what might happen to the Anthropos as it emerges in a world of its own, the Aeon Sophia drifts away from the Pleroma, departs from the cosmic center, and plunges into the realm of external, swirling chaos.

Five: Sophia’s plunge from the Godhead produces an unforeseen impact in the realm of chaos, and produces a species of inorganic beings, the Archons. In Sophia’s fascination with the Anthropos (human species), and in her imagination of how it might evolve, the Goddess did not anticipate the arising of the Archons. They represent an anomalous or deviant factor that may impinge on the evolution of humanity.

The Archons gather around a central deity, the Demiurge, who falsely believes he is the creator of all he beholds. The demented god proceeds to construct a celestial habitat for himself from atomic matter: this is the planetary system exclusive of the earth, sun, and moon.

Six: As the scaffolding of planetary system arises, a newborn star emerges from the nebula where the Anthropos is embedded. Due to its superior mass, the star causes the emergent planetary system to cohere around it. It becomes the central sun of the Archontic realm. Shocked by the arrogance of the Demiurge and his legion, the newborn star undergoes a conversion and chooses to align with the Aeon Sophia against the realm of Archontic forces, i.e., against the inorganic planetary forces. Sophia recognizes this choice and produces from herself a daughter in her own likeness, the life-force Zoe, who unites with the sun, the mother star of the planetary system.

Seven: Sophia morphs into terrestrial form, becoming a planet herself, but an organic one, sentient and aware: the Earth. But the Earth is then captured in the inorganic system of the Demiurge, the realm of “celestial mechanics.”

Eight: Sophia’s emotions of grief, fear, and confusion transform into the physical elements of the Earth. The terrestrial globe solidifies and life arises in rampant forms, but Sophia is unable to manage her progeny. The Gods in the Pleroma sense her difficulty and collectively send the Aeon Christos to intercede and bring order to the biological diversity of Sophia’s world. Upon making this intercession, the Christos leaves a kind of radiant afterimage in the biosphere, then recedes from the Earth and returns to the Pleroma.

Nine: Totally identified with the life-processes of the planet she has become, the Aeon Sophia awakens to the world of her solitary Dreaming, the world where a particular strain of humanity emerges from the master template of the Anthropos and proceeds to live out a divine experiment: the unfolding of human novelty.

But with novelty comes the risk of deviation. Sophia herself seems to have deviated from the cosmic order by her enmeshment in the planetary realm, due to her passionate and independent act of Dreaming. In some mysterious way, her "correction" (realignment with the cosmic center) may depend on the triple challenge that faces humanity: to find its evolutionary niche, to stay true to its proper course of evolution, and to define its role in Gaia's transhuman purposes.

jll: Andalucia NOV 2005

Gaia-Sophia Navigator
Sharing the Gaia Mythos
Sources of the Gaia Mythos
Introduction to the Gaia Mythos
Gaia Mythos (16 Episodes)
Synopsis of the Sophia Mythos in Nine Episodes