Sophia (Koine Greek: Σοφíα "Wisdom", Coptic: ⲧⲥⲟⲫⲓⲁ "the Sophia") is a figure, along with Knowledge (γνῶσις gnosis, Coptic: ⲧⲥⲱⲟⲩⲛ tsōwn), among many of the early Christian knowledge theologies grouped by the heresiologist Irenaeus as gnostikoi (γνωστικοί), "knowing". Gnosticism is a 17th-century term expanding the definition of Irenaeus' groups to include other syncretic faiths and the Greco-Roman mysteries. In Gnosticism, Sophia is a feminine figure, analogous to the human soul but also simultaneously one of the feminine aspects of God. Gnostics held that she was the syzygy, or female twin, of Jesus, i.e. the Bride of Christ, and the Holy Spirit of the Trinity. She is occasionally referred to by the term Achamōth (Ἀχαμώθ, Hebrew: חכמה chokmah) and as Prunikos (Προύνικος). In the Nag Hammadi texts, Sophia is the highest aeon or anthropic emanation of the godhead.
Gnostic mythos Many Gnostic systems, particularly those of the Syrian or Egyptian, teach that the universe began with an original, unknowable God referred to as the Parent, Bythos ('Depth') or the Monad. From this primordial source, a series of emanations, or Aeons, emerged. These Aeons, which often appear in male-female pairs called syzygies, collectively form the Pleroma, or 'Fullness' of the divine. This concept emphasizes that the Aeons are not separate from the divine but are symbolic representations of its attributes. The transition from the immaterial to the material, from the noumenal to the sensible, is brought about by a flaw, or a passion, or a sin, in one of the Aeons. In most versions of the Gnostic mythos, it is Sophia who brings about this instability in the Pleroma, in turn bringing about the creation of materiality. According to some Gnostic texts, the crisis occurs as a result of Sophia trying to emanate without her syzygy or, in another tradition, because she tries to breach the barrier between herself and the unknowable Bythos. After cataclysmically falling from the Pleroma, Sophia's fear and anguish of losing her life (just as she lost the light of the One) causes confusion and longing to return to it. Because of these longings, matter (Greek: hylē, ὕλη) and soul (Greek: psychē, ψυχή) accidentally come into existence. The creation of the Demiurge, also known as Yaldabaoth, is also a mistake made during this exile. The Demiurge proceeds to create the physical world in which we live, ignorant of Sophia, who nevertheless manages to infuse some spiritual spark or pneuma into his creation. In the Pistis Sophia, Christ is sent to bring Sophia back into the Pleroma. Christ enables her to again see the light, bringing her knowledge of the spirit (Greek: pneuma, πνευμα). Christ is then sent to earth in the form of the man Jesus to give men the gnosis needed to rescue themselves from the physical world and return to the spiritual world. For the Gnostics, the drama of the redemption of the Sophia through Christ or the Logos is the central drama of the universe. The Sophia resides in all humans as the divine spark.
Book of Proverbs Jewish Alexandrine religious philosophy was much occupied with the concept of the Divine Sophia, as the revelation of God's inward thought, and assigned to her not only the formation and ordering of the natural universe (comp. Clem. Hom. xvi. 12) but also the communication of knowledge to mankind. In Proverbs 8 Wisdom is described as God's Counsellor and Workmistress (Master-workman, R.V.), who dwelt beside Him before the Creation of the world and sported continually before Him. Following the description given in the Book of Proverbs, a dwelling place was assigned by the Gnostics to the Sophia and her relation to the upper world was defined as well as to the seven planetary powers placed under her. The seven spheres or heavens were for the ancients the highest regions of the created universe. They were thought of as seven circles rising one above another and dominated by the seven Archons, the Hebdomad. Above the highest of the regions and vaulting over it, was the Ogdoad, the sphere of immutability, which was nigh to the spiritual world (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, iv. 25, 161; comp. vi. 16, 138 sqq.). In Proverbs 9:1, "Wisdom has built her house; she has hewn out its seven pillars." These were interpreted as the planetary heavens; the habitation of the Sophia herself was placed above the Hebdomad in the Ogdoad (Excerpt. ex Theodot. 8, 47). It is said further of the same divine wisdom (Proverbs 8:2), "She takes her stand at the topmost heights, by the wayside, at the crossroads." According to the Gnostic interpretation, the Sophia thus has her dwelling place above the created universe between the upper and lower world, between the Pleroma and the ektismena. She sits at "the gates of the mighty", i.e. at the approaches to the realms of the seven Archons, and at the "entrances" to the upper realm of light, her praise is sung. The Sophia is therefore the highest ruler over the visible universe and at the same time the mediator between the upper and the lower realms. She shapes this mundane universe after the heavenly prototypes, and forms the seven star-circles with their Archons under whose dominion are placed, according to the astrological conceptions of antiquity, the fates of all earthly things, and more especially of man. She is "the mother" or "the mother of the living". (Epiph. Haer. 26, 10). As coming from above, she is herself of pneumatic essence, the mētēr phōteinē (Epiph. 40, 2) or the anō dynamis (Epiph. 39, 2) from which all pneumatic souls draw their origin.
Descent In reconciling the doctrine of the pneumatic nature of the Sophia with the dwelling-place assigned her, according to the Proverbs, in the kingdom of the midst, and so outside the upper realm of light, there was envisioned a descent of Sophia from her heavenly home, the Pleroma, into the void (kenōma) beneath it. The concept was that of a seizure or robbery of light, or of an outburst and diffusion of light-dew into the kenōma, occasioned by a vivifying movement in the upper world. But inasmuch as the light brought down into the darkness of this lower world was thought of and described as involved in suffering, this suffering must be regarded as a punishment. This inference was further aided by the Platonic notion of a spiritual fall.
Syrian Gnosis
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