The gnostic concept of Sophia, or God’s wisdom, as a separate, distinct—female—entity was not something I was familiar with before embarking on this journey. Reading up on the different manifestations of the divine goddess, whether it be the pre-Christian Isis, Ishtar, and Inanna; the Black Madonna; or even Kali, the Hindu goddess of time and destruction, the symbology that, for me, best exemplifies an amorphous, but all-pervading force just might come from the Kabbalists who imbued the Shekinah, or the cloud that always seemed to accompany the presence of Yahweh in the Holiest of Holies, with the perspicuity of the creator.
Rather than merely prescribe the force with gender-specific attributes to balance out the patriarchal heavy-hitters of Father and Son, we can look to the balance of other archetypical pairings to get to a better understanding of Sophia. Whereas Yahweh is a man of action, Sophia is the knowledge to help bring about creativity. As Kali, she balances out the perennial life-giving force of Yahweh with the concepts of time, entropy, and death, and as she does so, maybe gets a bad rap.
If in the beginning there was the Word, the Logos, wouldn’t there also have to be the understanding of that word? Language without knowledge, without wisdom, is just noise. Tinder waiting to catch fire.
One thing that I have noticed about beginning this work is that you open yourself up to signs and portends that may have gone unnoticed otherwise. After beginning to distill this particular meditation, I took a break to go see some music with a friend of mine. As we usually have dinner before the show, we were shown to our table and were catching up when our waitress came and introduced herself. As my companion and I had been engaged in conversation, I hadn’t heard her clearly and repeated her name back to make sure that I had it right.
“Sophie?” I asked.
“No,” she uncharacteristically (for a server) caught me with a meaningful stare. “It’s Sophia.”
So, one of the many manifestations of the sacred feminine is a waitress at Yoshi’s jazz club in Oakland. Duly noted.
I really should have guessed.
Román Leão 
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