"Now a gnostic tale, as it were, based on the sacred truths in ancient sources during the manifestation of the Christos. In those days, among the many groups Gnostics, there arose a teaching of a most profound nature which you will perhaps find intriguing. Teachers such as Valentius and others, it seems, received visions of the divine Sophia and told sacred stories about Her origins, fall and redemption. As a modern Gnostic i recast this story for your contemplation and symbolic illumination.
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It seems that once there was only the Fore-Creation, invisible, without form or gender, all-pervasive, filling the depths and heights of what was and which, desiring to manifest an inward potential gave birth to many holy dyads...that is, pairs, the first of which were the Abyss and Fore-thought. Then a desire arose in Fore-thought and it meditated on Silence who conceived and gave birth to twins: the first visible female form called Truth and the first visible male form called Mind, in turn they together gave birth to Life and Word...Life was the form-mother of the Pleroma and Word was the form-father of those manifest within the Pleroma. The Pleroma is the fullness of the spiritual world, uninfluenced by matter, energy or light.
Many other dyads were born, called Aeons, or sacred powers, the last of which was the divine Sophia, or Holy Wisdom. Of all the Aeons, the divine Sophia desired most intensely to know the origins of Her own creation, that is, the nature of the Fore-Creator. Though Mind told Her that such knowledge was impossible, nevertheless, Sophia began to search high and low, after Mind was restrained by Silence. None of the Aeons comprehended the Fore-Creation other than Truth whose perfect reflection was a transparent presence invisible to Sophia. She separated Herself from Her consort, ranged the vastness of the uncreated Immensity, and far out- distanced all the other Aeons.
Sensing her separation from the other Aeons, and lacking a clear knowledge of the Fore-Creator, She felt pain and sorrow, She wept and grieved deeply, She desired with all Her Heart to comprehend the vast, unending totality of the Fore-Creator, also called the Abyss. But the Abyss was vast beyond comprehending, and Her sorrow increased and Her passions flowed out of Her in waves and She risked utter dissolution into the Abyss as She radiated forth a turbulence into the stillness of Immensity. Then, suddenly, She encountered Horos, the Limit, Boundary, and understood that the Fore-Creation was unknowable, holy and profound, beyond the comprehension of Mind, Word or even Truth. This was the First Gnosis.
But now, the manifestations of Her intentions and passions remained as viable presences in the Immensity, they overflowed the Pleroma and began to take on a more substantive appearance. Sophia beheld these manifestations, the consequences of Her passions, and was again stirred with grief, fear, uncertainty and sorrow because She understood that these were the manifestations of Her own ignorance concerning the Fore-creation. A dim, barely light-like haze began to appear, first manifestation in the Primal Void, the concatenation of passion and desire unfulfilled, slowly evolving into manifest forms--the stirrings of light, energy and chaos.
All the Aeons together were concerned about the appearance of Chaos and so they, with the divine Sophia, prayed in depth and a new dyad was manifested: Christos and the Holy Spirit, his female counterpart. Together, they calmed the Aeons and soothed their fears, also instructing them in the unknowableness of the Fore-Creation while simultaneously revealing to them the inner unity, harmony and illumination of the Pleroma--this was the Second Gnosis. Yet, the haze and proto-forms of Chaos remained and among these emerging forms was an image of Sophia, called the Lower Wisdom, for She had divided Herself in the passion of her search and now, the Lower Wisdom abided in the midst of Chaos.
This Lower Wisdom desired to return and be united with Her own Higher Self, rather than remain trapped in Her passions and desires and when She felt the emmanations of the Holy Spirit and the Christos, when they manifest their healing and harmony within the Pleroma, She began to seek a way to return to the primal harmony and illumination of the Second Gnosis. And when Lower Wisdom discovered that She was bound by Limit and could not return or ascend to the Pleroma, She once again grieved and sorrowed. And from this second grief, from the waves and energy of that sorrow, the first material substances began to form, divide and align themselves in patterns of light, dimness and darkening matter. Then the Aeons together ask the Christos to assist the Lower Sophia and He manifested in the lower world of proto-matter as Yeshu'a, and soothed Her and comforted Her and revealed to Her all the many luminous beings that manifested in the Void as their spiritual companions."
Source and Full Article
http://www.gnosis.org/sophia.tale.html
