A Gentle Guide

As we travel through the landscape of our lives we must be willing “to go” where the Divine Energy takes us. Often, we must be pried out of familiar surroundings, security, comfort zones, and ego identities. The universe will move us: as old skins cannot contain new wine, and we find we are no longer able to live the old life we once found so secure. Once we arrive, temporarily to rest, with introspection we can then look back and say "Ah... now I see the workings of Wisdom in that journey." 

Sophia - Wisdom - always allows us time to get settled into the new skins, the new view, the new unknown. Her Spirit is a gentle guide, quietly leading, prodding, and moving us to a new heightened sense of awareness and a new view of our souls and the internal work that needs to be done.

Ink painting by Gao Xingjian

Once upon a Time

“Once upon a time”. How familiar these words are to us, even though it might have been long years ago in our childhood that we last read them on the printed page. The words conjure forth a sense of events about to unfold for us, of ‘what is going to happen next’, and we know then that we can settle down and listen captivated to some magical story filled with heroic daring and romance. 

Beginnings are full of promise. They hold something that is at the same time majestic and delicate, grandly unfolding and yet also fragile. We might not always know what is to come, but that ‘not knowing’ is the very thing which creates a sense of tension. But because this familiar phrase finds its place at the beginnings of stories, and because these stories have already been written, we know that we are going to find out ‘what is going to happen next’. All that we need to do to find out what that something might be is to sit and listen or read further.

And so we accompany a little girl in a red cape as she goes to visit her grandmother in her cottage in the dark woods, or we journey with a mixture of courage and dread with Beauty as she nears the castle of the Beast. The variations are as infinite as the human imagination, and it is our imagination that defines these stories. 

But whatever their individual variations, these stories always begin with “once upon a time”. But so do they always end with another familiar ringing phrase as well. There waiting patiently at the end of the story like an old friend is the reassuring phrase: “…and they lived happily ever after.” Even as we experience all the adventures and setbacks with which the characters must contend along the way, we know that things will work out in the end because ‘happily ever after’ will be the story's concluding words.

Our life, as we know all too well, tends to have a rather different format from one of these stories. What our imagination cannot define, but only wonder about, is what has yet to be written down. “Once upon a time” could also be the commencement of our own lives, or of the coming year, or even of the day that is about to unfold, but whose events have yet to happen. We can guarantee that it will begin with this phrase. How our own story might end is less certain. Those words ‘happily ever after’ are so imprinted in our consciousness that they might lead us into a sense of false expectation, into thinking that this is the way that things ought to end. But perhaps the words offer something more significant than false expectations which might lead only to disappointment.

Perhaps these formulaic story phrases also offer us promise, of a sense that events are unfolding as they should, even if these events are very different from what we had imagined for ourselves. “Once upon a time” is always the beginning. And if we allow ourselves the space, and perhaps also the compassion and forgiveness for our circumstances, it is always possible that “happily ever after” will be the conclusion.

Illustration: Snowwhite and the Seven Dwarfs by Lidia Postma

Dreaming of an Angel

Last night an angel came to my side. At first I was only aware of a brilliant clear light which seemed to fill the space around me, and with the light came calm, and a sense of trust that all would be well. Then it seemed to me as if the light, although still bright, grew softer, and in this velvet softness a form took shape. The form looked at me with eyes of love, and I understood that she wished me to come with her. Whether she truly spoke to me, or whether I felt her thoughts enter my own I cannot say, but I knew that she had been waiting for the moment when I would open my eyes, see her, and follow her. 

So I was dreaming that I had awakened, and despite the feeling of trust I found myself feeling a little uneasy in this strange waking/dreaming state. Still I followed where the angel led me. I half-walked, half-drifted through fields and along pathways where perhaps I had been before, but had since long forgotten: the half-remembered landscapes of dreams. But because of my lingering unease my own movements were not as fluid as those of my companion of light. Perhaps it was this hesitation which the angel felt, for she urged me to awaken more fully, that although I thought that I was fully awake, my hesitant manner betrayed the fact that I still had a further stage to go.

And so I trusted more, let go more, and realised that my hesitation, and the fear which caused it, was groundless. When I dared to truly look around me a new world was revealed: an intense world full of light and colour, and my feet finally felt firm ground. I no longer needed to half-drift in this world. I could leave my footprints firmly in this place, knowing that it was where I now truly belonged. Knowing that it was a part of me, and that I could freely claim my place there, and that the intensity of all which I saw there was how things truly are, always, as long as I felt total trust.

The angel now took my hand in her own and led me even farther. With all fear gone, and with my presence in that place now fully experienced and accepted, my body became feather-light. I no longer needed to leave my footprints there to know that I was a part of this place. Now I seemed to glide through this new land without effort. But there was one more stage to go through, one more awakening for me to experience. And that was my awakening into my own everyday world. When touched by morning light once more, my dream of the angel stayed with me, filling me with a deep sense of peace and solace. No longer was I dreaming for I woke up - awakened.

Guiding Angel - Tiffany Glass & Decorating Company, circa 1890

The Goddess in the Well

One of my pendants which I like to wear depicts the design which is on the cover of the Chalice Well. This well is in the gardens below Glastonbury Abbey at the foot of Glastonbury Tor in the county of Somerset, England. The well itself was originally believed to have been built by the Druids, although the well cover was designed in 1919 by Frederick Bligh Bond. His design depicts the overlapping twin circles of the Vesica piscis symbol combined with a spear with a sprig of oak leaves and tendrils of intertwining holy thorn. In local folklore the waters of the well are believed to possess powers of healing and even of immortality – a sort of fountain of youth. In 2001 the site became a World Peace Garden. 

Two springs are found at the Well: the White spring, which is associated with masculine energy, and the Red spring, which is seen as containing feminine energy. It is the interweaving of these two energies that is believed to provide the Well waters with their healing properties. These energies are reinforced by the rising masculine tower of the Tor above the gardens, and by the receptive feminine form of the well itself. For these reasons, the Well has been a popular destination for pilgrims and contempory pagans who seek a contact with the divine feminine.

In the design of the Well cover we can perceive symbols of Christianity: the spear which pierced the side of Jesus on the cross, and the holy crown of interwoven thorns. Where the design is so powerfully effective is in its layering of deeper, more ancient worlds lying beneath this Christian symbology: worlds which invite us into the realm of the goddess. The sprig of oak leaves reminds us that the oak was a sacred tree. And its presence reminds us that, wherever we are, wherever we happen to be, we may connect with the goddess in the sacred grove which lies always within each one of us.

Vesica Piscis

The two circles are seen as the meeting of the worlds of spirit and matter. And the overlapping area of the two circles appropriately forms a shape known in Sanskrit as the yoni: the vulva of the goddess (the male organ is known as the lingam). In the imagery of our contempory world we have become used to thinking of the yoni as a passage of penetration by the male. But it is the very form of the Well that invites us to go deeper into these meanings, to see beyond this masculine perception of the female vulva, and to reverse the image from one of penetration to being one of a passage for new life, not just in the physical sense of the vagina being the birth canal, but in the deeper sense that it is also the passage of the soul from the realms of the spirit into the earthly world of its material incarnation. 

It is this deeper awareness of these forms which brings us into the presence of powerful creative forces, for from the yoni flows all life. It is the source of life itself, and a reminder of the journey that every one of us has made to come into the world: that journey from the realms of spirit into our own earthly existence. And it is also this deeper awareness which brings redemption: a releasing of the yoni from its crippling associations with the guilt and shame of Biblical sin, and from the aggression perpetrated against women as victims of rape, both in society and in war zones, for these violations are not about sex, but about masculine denigration, humiliation and conquest.

“I am a child of earth and starry heaven”, the beautiful hymn of the Orphic mystery schools reminds us. When on a clear night we gaze into the depths of the Well, it is not the darkness which is reflected back to us in its waters, but the compassionate goddess who reaches down to us from the stars overhead.

Sophia - the Breath of Life

To approach Sophia is to approach that vital spark of the divine within ourselves, for Sophia is the essential spirit which infuses all things. She is the spark - the very life-force - without whom matter would remain inanimate. Her presence has been shrouded from view for some two millennia, hidden beneath an obscuring layer of doctrine, and treated as heresy. Her light endures, however, in texts, in symbols and secret teachings, and in our own most inner being. But who is Sophia?

The first condition of God permeates the cosmos. This first condition is unknowable, unfathomable, and unable to be experienced directly within human experience. This ultimate form of God is, as it were, removed from our vision for our own safety, for any direct perception or experience of God in this primal form would mean obliteration. The first manifestation of this ultimately unknowable God is the female manifestation, Sophia ('Wisdom'). Sophia is the spirit of grace which we feel when we allow ourselves to become open to it. All grace, all compassion which is beyond simple human compassion, emanates from Sophia. The third emanation, which is therefore twice removed from the original godhead, is the male creator God - 'God the father' - also known as the Demiurge. This is the God whom Christians think of as being the ultimate God, the male God who created the heavens and the earth. But the demiurge in his masculine ignorance forgets that he himself is an emanation from Sophia, and therefore imagines that his creative powers are his own, whereas these creative powers are derived from Sophia.

Before the manifested worlds came into existence, there was this source of oneness from which worlds of light, spirit and soul streamed. Humanity carries a primal image of these worlds of spirit and soul within itself. But Sophia is the primal force that, in union with the source, permeates - as female and life-giving principle - these unseen worlds. At the same time, she is the mother of the manifested world, the manifested cosmos.

Studying ancient books will not bring Sophia back into our consciousness and into our life. We have to search for her in our own inner self. Sophia reveals the knowledge of the heart, the primal knowledge which tells us that we own all the knowledge there is to know within the province of our own heart. Our heart of hearts knows that sacredness is not only outside of us, but also lives within us. But first we have to learn "inner silence".

The return of Sophia as the feminine aspect of creation is vital. Awareness needs to be raised of the importance of a male/female balance in every aspect of life, for if there really is a path towards peace both within ourselves and in our world, then the first step along that path is the realization of this Divine Oneness.

"The divine Sophia have I loved and sought from my youth,
I have desired her to be my spouse.
Ever have I loved her beauteous and radiant form.
Ever have I prayed that she might be sent to abide with me,
that she might work with me to the end
that I might know what I lacked
and what in me God would find acceptable.
And since she had ever known and understood,
had guided me in all my life's activity,
I am persuaded that even after death she
will ever keep me safe,
wrapped securely in her watchful, constant love."

- Giordano Bruno


image © David Bergen Studio