In Gnostic belief, who is Sophia?

Answer 1

What's the Gnostic Faith?

Answer 2

"For the Gnostic Christians, the Sophia was a central element in their cosmological understanding of the Universe. A Feminine figure, analogous to the human soul but also simultaneously one of the Feminine aspects of God and the Bride of Christ, she is considered to have fallen from grace in some way, in so doing creating or helping to create the material world. For the Gnostics, the drama of the redemption of the Sophia through Christ or the Logos is the central drama of the universe."

Answer 3

Personally, I think some of the Gnostic stuff is still story-telling. Because
people couldn't understand simple things like physics in those days.
Sophia is supposedly a higher form of life, that went off on her own and
tried to create something without the other higher beings. And this caused a
demented spirit being to be born, that brought evil into reality.
Myself, I think Sophia just represents the feminine aspect of the Lifeforce.
Which starts at God, and flows to us. The masculine starting from us, and
flowing back.
It's hard to understand these things because of ego trips about males and females. But the two aspects of the Lifeforce just exist. And one could not exist without the other.
I think evil came into being by a process of degeneration. The Lifeforce generally weakening the further it got from the Source of Life we call God.
And as the lower levels came into reality, the life there slowly lost their
ability for total love, and became prideful and controlling!

Answer 4

In one of the gnostic traditions, there were seven emanences from the Supreme God, each emanence had a male person and a female person. The union of the male and female in each emanence creates the next emanence. Sophia, the female person of the seventh emanence, attempted to create without the consort of the male counterpart, and thus was born Yahweh, or the demiurge, who arrogantly believes himself to be the supreme deity and who, as artificer, creates the physical world

Answer 5

The physical mother of Jesus was an external image of manifestation of the Virgin Sophia -- the word "Sophia" stemming from "Sophos," wisdom.



The Gnostics, whose language was Greek, identified the Holy Spirit with Sophia, Wisdom; and Wisdom was considered female. The Virgin was closely associated by the early church with Wisdom, of the cathedral church at Constantinople -- and the ascension of the Virgin Mary refers to the passing of Wisdom into Immortality. The litany of the Blessed Virgin contains the prayer, "Seat of Wisdom, pray for us." St. Peter Chrysologos presented the Virgin as the seven-pillared temple which Wisdom had built for herself.