The Fallen Goddess Scenario
Across the world in all times and places humans have relied on stories to explain the source of life, how the earth and humanity came to be, and the purpose of being here. Such stories, called “myths,” are not all mere fantasies, products of ignorance and superstition: some can be proven to be true and verified by experience. A genuine myth is no fantasy; it is correct and accurate. It teaches how to live. It supports good morals, sanity, and responsibility. Ultimately, the true myth is like a compass guiding the way to live in freedom and share the power and beauty of that mystery called Life.
The most beautiful story on earth is the story about the earth. – John Lamb Lash
But what myth satisfies these terms, the complete transcendent story of life that can explain its origin and purpose? In the world today, three belief systems direct and dominate the lives of billions.
The great world religions, as they are called, prevail in the West, Europe, America, and all over the earth, even though those systems originate in a remote desert land, like an imported product that cannot be homegrown. And the Far East offers other systems, alternative myths that influence and even captivate western people.
Why don’t western nations have their own myth, rather than a version imported from an alien land? Where is their homegrown version of a transcendent life story, rooted in indigenous history and identity? The truth is, it exists, but that specific myth has been repressed and withheld from common knowledge. It has been attacked and slandered more than any other topic ever known in all of history.
It is a unique vision story set on the galactic scale, describing the origin of the earth and the human races and inspiring love for the bountiful web that unites all living creatures, all species. This is the myth of the Wisdom Goddess, Sophia, She who is Mother Earth, embodied in the planet itself.
The true creation story on earth points to the planet as the divine source, immediate and obvious. Unlike religion, Sophianic myth does not designate a creator god beyond the realm of the senses. Rather, it presents the living presence of the Divine Mother in a description that you can live and explore, as if you were a character acting in a movie with freedom to influence how the story turns out.
Participation in the dreaming power of the earth is the supreme practice to be learned, enjoyed, and tested…
It is often said that “life is but a dream,” but this begs the question: Who is the Dreamer? Sophianic myth reveals how the Wisdom Goddess dreams a world where you live as her biological child and also as a conscious actor who influences what She dreams.
Participation in the dreaming power of the earth is the supreme practice to be learned, enjoyed, and tested when you bring your attention to the sacred narrative of Sophia, the Fallen Goddess Scenario.
Background
Excerpts from the work of John Lamb Lash
The central figure of the Mystery Schools was the Wisdom Goddess, Sophia, known by names differing by people and region. Her name in Greek means “wisdom.” Philo-sophia was originally “love of wisdom,” and by extension, love of the goddess herself, known in her living presence. Due to their intimacy with her, the telestai (initiated teachers, “those who are aimed”) had a lot of terms of affection for Sophia, such as Prunikos, “outrageous, daring, audacious,” and the Aramaic word hayyta, “who gives birth to life,” a play on heywa, “wise serpent,” and many others. (It is striking how the Aramaic heywa closely echoes the mother tree goddess of Avatar, Eywa.) Among the Ossetians or Alani people of the Caucasus, she was called Satanaya.
Among the Navajo of the American continent, Spider Woman, Changing Woman. Among the Aztecs, Coatlicue, Snake Woman. Among the Basque people, Mari, and there are hundreds of other variations of her name. Mystics who looked into nature with paranormal skill knew that the planet, which is too large to be seen entirely when you are on it, revealed itself in local phenomena, epiphanies or revelations coming through nature itself. Sophia revealed herself through animal powers such as the epiphany of Snake Woman. Her revelations came principally as snake and tree, but also as particular animals such as the bull, lion, panther, or birds such as the eagle, swan, and owl.
Gnostics today have reverential names for the earth mother: the Aeon Sophia, or the Aeonic Mother, the Divine Mother, World Mother or simply PAM, Planetary Animal Mother. Aeon is Greek for “generating power, god-force, divinity, supernatural creative energy.” Direct contact with the living intelligence of the earth afforded the teachers of the Mystery Schools with endless sublime discoveries. They learned secrets of the cosmic setting of life, terrestrial physics and human design, the myriad patterns of animal life, the living properties of sky and mountain, the miraculous awareness of bodies of water such as springs, streams, lakes, and rivers. Among all these wonders, they focused intently on the presence and role of human animals in the cosmic order. They saw this role as being special and exceptional, yes, but not as being in some way superior to other forms of animal life or to nature itself. The scope of their detective powers, as you might call them, was vast. The more they learned, the more thoroughly and meticulously they developed the Home Story.
They learned secrets of the cosmic setting of life, terrestrial physics and human design, the myriad patterns of animal life, the living properties of sky and mountain, the miraculous awareness of bodies of water such as springs, streams, lakes, and rivers.
The legacy of the Mysteries today remains squarely based on the sacred narrative, the Home Story. The opportunity for all who learn the Sophianic vision story and choose to live in the narrative is an incomparable privilege: Participate in the dreaming activity of the Aeon Sophia so that you play an active role in the outcome of what she dreams. But that opportunity comes with responsibilities.
The Home Story
The Fallen Goddess Scenario
SophianicMyth.org
In Gnostic cosmology, Sophia is the mythological name of Gaia before she became the earth.
Framed in mythological language, this fallen goddess scenario (FGS) describes the core of our home galaxy as a vortex of infinite potential (Pleroma: fullness, plenum) consisting of massive serpentlike entities or torrents. The gods and goddesses of the Pleroma are called Aeons. They are gendered male and female to describe different types of dynamic activity, like positive and negative charges of electric current, or the attractive and repulsive poles of a magnet. The Aeons are divine: that is, luminous, radiant, emanating light. They are also alive and intelligent and capable of feeling, perception, and desire, but on the level of cosmic consciousness. To produce experiments, Aeons project their power of intention (ennoia) outward into the Kenoma, the chaos of material worlds, while remaining where they are.
And so it goes in the usual course of cosmic events. The designing powers at the galactic center—Aeonic headquarters, if you will—allow for free play of boundless potential, trial and error, novelty and innovation, in the experiments they initiate. The divine powers do not interfere with an experiment in progress, otherwise they would not be able to see how it plays out on its own terms. But there can be exceptions in the cosmic order, and Sophia’s plunge is one of them.
Looking out from the Pleroma, the Goddess feels attracted by what this singular species, humanity (the Anthropos), might achieve once it has a world to inhabit. She dreams the formative outlines of such a world. Her wondering about human potential aroused a burning passion. The sacred story says that Sophia longed to merge into what She imagined.
Compelled by burning desire, the Goddess plunges from the cosmic center into the Kenoma, the chaos of material worlds outside the galactic core of the Pleroma. Her mass of living luminosity of Organic Light turns into the planet we inhabit by a process of condensation and densification. Sophia does not create the earth at all; she becomes the earth.
Along with passion and pleasure on a cosmic scale, Sophia underwent immense convulsions of grief and confusion. Eventually, Sophia reached the state where her planetary body began to burst with life. Empathy for the plight of the goddess may be essential in seeing how to face our own plight on Earth. Like the Goddess, we are also sensuously and physically enmeshed with the terrestrial world.
The Gnostic myth of the sacred earth is open-ended. Its conclusion has not been predetermined by the will of a higher being, but it can be affected by human willingness to embrace the plight of the Divine Sophia, and complete her cosmic adventure with Her.
Sophia’s metamorphosis into the earth has been ongoing since the moment of her plunge. In short, this habitable world of ours has not been created as an artifact, like a pot made by a potter, but is continually being emanated by the Aeon who dreams it. Learning the sacred narrative enables you to see a role for yourself in the plot of the spectacular film in progress. You win the role by owning your power to merge with her power—and by recognizing that you do live in a dream, though you are not the dreamer. But once you win the role, you have to act the part. You have to live your life with a clear sense of transpersonal direction, guided by the sacred narrative, aligned to the designs and purposes of the Wisdom Goddess. Living in that way gives you the optimal chance to express your innate talents and gifts as an individual person, and enjoy your role as a unique member somewhere in the spectrum of the human races. The transpersonal fulfills the personal. The personal cannot fulfill itself.
The Sophianic myth has many dimensions of meaning and applications to life. The summation of Sophia’s myth converges and dwells on a point of esthetics: as nature is beautiful, so is the supernatural source of the natural world. But infinitely, inconceivably more so. The natural world is lovely and bountiful in countless ways…likewise, the World Mother, the dreaming goddess at its source, but infinitely more so. Coming into Sophia’s immediate presence learning the spectacular star myth about her, you will realize that this particular cosmic divinity is all about esthetics. The most beautiful story on earth is the story about the earth. Finally, or perhaps from the outset, there is one paramount factor that brings you home to the Home Story, and compels you to get involved and do your part to determine its outcome: that factor is beauty.
Definitions Glossary
SOPHIA: (so-FI-uh) (Greek, “wisdom”) The living intelligence of the earth. The goddess Sophia from the Pleroma, who by the force of her dreaming came to be metamorphosed into a planetary body, the earth. Her primary substance body is the Organic Light.
ORGANIC LIGHT: Also called Divine Light, Supernal Light, White Light, Mystery Light. The primary substance body of Sophia, contrasted to her planetary body, the earth. A substantial luminosity manifesting in soft, snowwhite billows, infinitely dense but mass-free. It erupts from material mass and casts no shadow. It is orally alive and interactive with the witness. “Initiation into the Mysteries was not a rite of theocratic empowerment but a sublime act of egoless surrender, culminating in an ecstatic encounter with a mysterious luminosity, the Organic Light. Initiates of that tradition, who called themselves telestai, actually conversed with the Light and took instruction from it. Instruction by the light was the supreme initiatory event.”
PLEROMA: (Greek, “fullness,” “plenitude”) In Mystery idiom, the central company or matrix of gods, or Aeons. In astronomical terms, the galactic center.
GNOSTIC: (Greek gnostikos, plural, gnostikoi, “one who understands divine matters,” “knowing as the gods know”). Specifically, initiated teachers (telestai, “those who are aimed”) in the Mystery Schools.
GAIA-SOPHIA PRINCIPLE: Proposed term for the assertion that humanity receives both its instinctual survival skills and its moral sense in the same endowment. Implies the deep ecological notion that kindness and cooperation, rather than brutality and competition, are compatible with our deepest survival drives. Also assumes that genuine morality is impossible if humanity is not empathically rooted in nature and intimately allied to other species.
ANTHROPOS: (Greek, “humanity,” “human species”) In mystery idiom, the human genome or species template… emanated by the Aeons of the galactic center. AEON: (AY-on) (Greek, “god,” “divinity,” “process,” “emanation,” “time cycle”) Gnostic term for a cosmically pervasive process, aware, animated, and animating. Aeons manifest sensory worlds by dreaming, rather than by the artisan-like act of creation attributed to the biblical father god.
