Our Lady Wisdom, Mother Alchemy.Notre Dame Paris: image on central west portal entrance pillar.
The Sophia Project: Who we are Becoming
The Sophia Project holds space for the great Mystery to be approached, not with clearly etched definition, but as might be experienced through soft eyes. A central organizing metaphor for this project is the figure of Sophia from the early gnostic cosmologies, a figure who holds such profound meaning with regards to who we are, where we came from and who we are evolving into, that she has been tossed aside by the collective consciousness, suppressed, persecuted, buried and forgotten because her significance is so paradigm shattering. Some have caught glimpses of Sophia through ages past, like Adam's offspring Seth, King Solomon, Saint Paul, Thomas Aquinas, the architects of the original French Gothic Cathedrals, and the Sufi mystic Ibn Arabi. But until recently, this woman has remained largely hidden in the crags, being black and comely, crying out from the alleyways.
But all this is changing as we are moving quickly into unprecedented and uncharted territory where Sophia and who she represents is being remembered, rescued, healed and uplifted.
The Sophia Project of Dan Craig-Morse
The Sophia Project is also a vehicle for exploration, hosted by myself, Dan Craig-Morse. I've worked for many years with a variety of esoteric materials and am offering to hold space with others to come into closer connection with this Divine Mystery, however that mystery is expressing itself through one's own unique magnificence. This is a non-dogmatic, non-denominational, open ended Project that is attempting to help bring more clarity to what might be called A Spirituality of Divine Light, the underlying matrix of life. Currently this website features a blog, Spirituality of Light, and two research articles, Chartres and the Pistis Sophia and Sophia of the Song of Songs that hope to provide more solid academic support to the significance of Sophia as a guiding metaphor for complex spiritual understanding. During the past 20 years, I have presented on several occasions The Myth of Sophia, a Bardic Presentation of an Ancient Gnostic Creation Story, and have held classes and groups for study and for spiritual practice. Some associates and I are currently developing a local study, support and spiritual practice group in the California north bay with a focus on Light Body Activation. We are not promoting or focusing in on any one particular process so as to welcome each person's unique unfoldment, using any number of tools, healing modalities and practices. We may draw from a variety of resource materials that include the gnostic scriptures (primarily the Syriac Egyptian texts), a Chinese alchemical text called The Secret of the Golden Flower, a book which I consider to be the most important contemporary expression of this work called The Mysterious Story of X7, the work of William Henry, and some materials published by The Academy of Future Sciences like their most recent Overself Awakening book. These are study materials that can help in the spiritual process but are certainly not central to that process. Please see my contact page and updated blog entries for more information.
More on The Sophia Project
The Sophia Project refers to a specific process of human evolution that relates to a current vibrational shift we humans are undergoing. The early christian gnostics attempted to explain this vast understanding of Human Evolution through metaphor and story, which featured a higher dimensional Light Creator Goddess known as Sophia. As is represented in the above image at the entrance to Notre Dame (shown above), Sophia or Mother Alchemy is showing us the way, through both the open exoteric scriptures AND the hidden closed mystery teachings, the ladder of human spiritual and biological evolution and the raising of the shaft of the Inner Pine Cone, the pineal doorway into higher consciousness.
The Sophia Project is an ancient,
though timeless endeavor to reclaim humanity's inherent nature. Deep,
deep within human and material form, lies this Essential quality, known throughout the ages,
across multiple traditions as the Golden Flower, Shekinah or Indwelling Presence, Philosopher's
Stone, Soma Christou, Numen, Divine Spark, Holy Grail, Solar Substance, Body of Light.
The mystery teaching of our divine nature has been shrouded and hidden in order to escape persecution. The strength of the archetypal Light, however, has shown through in so many ways, in so many religious symbols and teachings.
The Gnostic Sophia
Sophia is the lost goddess of the early Christian tradition. In the first few centuries A.D., many scriptures or testaments of higher teachings were written that were not included in the composite of books that we now know as the Bible. Some of these early books, known as the biblical apocrypha, have survived outside of this established Catholic orthodoxy, though it was not until the discovery of a very rare collection of early books found at Nag Hammadi Egypt, were we able to see some of the original writings of a unique philosophical school of religious thought and practice called the Gnostics. Within many of these books including, The Apochraphon of John, the Sophia of Jesus Christ and Perfect Thunder, Perfect Mind, we hear a grand overview of creation, from the emanation of the Spirit from God to the many angels or Aeons within the higher realm (pleroma) and finally, of Sophia, the Light Filled last of the Aeons who fell from the Pleroma, lost her light and became trapped by the lower gods or Archons who were jealous of her divine Light.
The story of Sophia, is one which holds significant meaning to our lives, revealing purpose that has tended to be shrouded behind religious doctrine in which the historical Jesus became more of the focus than the teachings of the higher Christ who came to this world to help rescue the spark of the divine light of Sophia. The scattering of the sparks and Sophia's process of tricking the lower Gods by planting the seed of this Light within the very fabric of the mortal human, is an esoteric gem that has been so radical, so significant and so threatening to the hierarchy of power and control that it has essentially waited until our times to emerge from exile.
This process of humanity's reclamation of the divine essence is one that crosses many spiritual traditions, from Jewish Mysticism, Sufism, Ismailian Gnosticism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Sant Mat, and countless other strains of wisdom traditions. This project of the return of the Light has been represented in so many coded references throughout the ages that I feel like I am being encouraged to keep following the clues, as I viewed sculptures from French Gothic Cathedrals to the buildings in our nation's capital and studied art and scriptures from many corners of the world. And yet our task here, today, is to translate the message to what is real, here, in this moment, regarding how each of us can take the next step in helping Sophia recollect her scattered sparks.
Sophia of the Song of Songs
“Look!
You are beautiful, O girl companion of mine. Look! You are beautiful. Your eyes
are those of doves.”
My
dear one has answered and said to me, ‘Rise up, you girl companion of mine, my
beautiful one, and come away. For, look! the rainy
season itself has passed, the downpour itself is over, it has gone its way. Blossoms themselves have appeared in the land, the very time
of vine trimming has arrived, and the voice of the turtledove itself has been
heard in our land.
- Song of Songs.
The ancient Hebrew Song of Solomon is an exquisite love poem with a depth of meaning that brings us to the heart of the Sophianic Mysteries. Written 2500 to 3000 years ago, it is a Song of Songs, an ultimate expression of soul longing for her loved one. The story of Sophia is ageless, perhaps even pre-material in the process of creation and yet her story has been hard to find and hard to decode for she has hidden in the crags awaiting her rescue.
Within this text, the Woman of Zion is instructing the Daughters of Zion, or the People of the Light, on how to fulfill the mysteries of the Sacred Marriage. The Song of Songs, this jewel within the Lotus Bible, carries glistening facets of Wisdom from ancient times with a pre-gnostic perspective that has a profound resonance to what was written a thousand years later in an obscure gnostic text called The Pistis Sophia.
Return of the Sophia's Light: Notre Dame
'O Light, you it is who have helped me; may your light come down upon me. For you are my shield, and I call to you, O Light, with faith, O Light, in you.'
And then at the command I gave - I, the First Mystery that looks without - the Light-stream that enveloped Pistis Sophia gave forth tremendous light, and Pistis Sophia dwelt in the center of the light, a great brightness on her left and on her right, and all around her, forming a wreath around her head. - Pistis Sophia, Book 2:66.
As Sophia is code for Divine Inner Spark, The Coronation of the Queen of Heaven is metaphor for how our inner light requires an activation from a Higher Light in order for ascension to occur. This is the Sophia Project, a work in progress, a human soul effort whose time has come.
The Light Body and The Mysterious Story of X7
This website is one effort among many that is working to help bring to clearer focus our spiritual mandate. As the phenomenal story of Sophia in the Coptic Gnostic texts indicate, this Light of The World, the Terra Lucinda, "contains the seed of its own transformation when brought into conjunction with the purified human who is able to work wholly for the evolution of the Whole." (Robert Sardello).
"Once the inherent qualities of the Godhead lay within man, then by his own will he dissipated them until they have become but a vague memory, yet one that still binds him and causes him to seek his God in one form or another through all his restless pilgrimages... Our first awareness that we were actually responsible for the conditions in which we found ourselves was when after deep prayer and a united willingness to improve our situation, we found that we were overlighted by a Presence - a great Presence, full of color, who began speaking to us... He said that within each of us was the power to overcome death; that we might dwell in bodies of light and bring that Light to mankind, were we willing to make the sacrifice."
"'I am a Being of Light' is a statement of fact; all is energy and energy is Light. True, the physical being is cast aside and finally reduced to dust and ashes, returns to earth and becomes apart of it; but Jesus taught that to cast aside the body of manifestation is not essential, that it too may be redeemed by the very light particles of which it is composed." fromThe Mysterious Story of X7.
Sophia,
that shard of
the great Holy Spirit,
is within, awaiting our attention.
Prayer to Sophia
Oh, Great Light,
Hidden within this darkness,
Unlimited Fire,
Brilliant Emanation,
Sapientia Dei,
Shekinah,
Woman of Zion,
Daughter of Jerusalem,
Beauty and wonder
that fills me like water to a
sponge.
Sophia,
Holy Spirit,
Rising Dawn,
Lily of the Valleys,
Tree of Life.
Behold,
You Are Beautiful!
Chartres Rose Window
