The Dawn of Sophia

Robert Sardello

I take my orientation for speaking in a preliminary way about the magic of Sophia from the alchemical tradition. The alchemical tradition has always been future-oriented. Some alchemical practices belong to the past, but its imagination belongs to a hoped-for world; it is an imagination of what could come about in the world, more so than looking back and trying to hold onto an imagined past of what the world used to be. The hoped-for world of alchemical imagination is not a utopian paradise, but concerns developing new capacities of sensing, feeling and thinking by which it would be possible to live consciously in conjunction with creative spiritual beings while being fully engaged with our home, the Earth. Our relationship with spirit beings would not take the form of guidance from above but rather of mutual creative dialogue with spiritual beings from within a unified Earth-Heaven continuum. Attentiveness would replace assertiveness in the world, and deeds would not be accomplished by energy, but by love. A first aspect of alchemical imagination of Sophia, then, concerns gradually coming to a conscious mode of imagination in which we experience ourselves, others, and the world, as an ongoing intermingled metamorphosis that is open ended, but oriented toward the evolution of creative love as the driving force of a new Earth.

For the alchemical imagination, creation is not yet completed. Sophia is the central being of ongoing creation, but She cannot be imagined as a spiritual being outside the process of creation itself; She is not a completely transcendent being; she is the creating being within creation. She is the metamorphic process and She is within us and we are within Her.

The alchemical tradition of Sophia is inherently imagistic, where all that happens is true without being literalized, preventing the longing for Sophia from developing into a cult, a sect, or a religion. The central characteristic of working with images does not mean just having images, or experiencing images to be interpreted, but rather knowing and understanding, consciously, through images, because images are the mutual medium characterizing our soul life and the soul life of the world.

Sophia cannot be separated from how she can be known; that is to say, She is not a being that can be known separately from the way we go about knowing Her. We can thus say that Sophia herself is a certain kind of knowing, She who calls herself Wisdom; the Wisdom that is imagination. Further, alchemy indicates that in imagining she imagines, and thus creates the whole ongoing creation of the form of Earth and all its substance and creatures in such a way that every part is also the whole. Sophia brings forth the forms of the visible cosmos - from the outermost stars to the very center of the Earth. Everything of the Earth - from the mineral realm to the human, and out to the starry cosmos, is an expression of the imagining activity of Sophia as creator of the particular form of every Earthly and cosmic being that is available to perception.

Alchemical imagination begins with an awakening of the individual soul to the life of the senses and when soul touches the senses we experience directly the ever-newness of Earthing the Earth. Nowhere does this beginning express itself as well as in the 13th century alchemical treatise titled Aurora Consurgens. The name, Aurora Consurgens, means Dawn Arising. This alchemical text details in intricate ways the every-moment, coming-into-being of Earth. Earth at dawn is always new, starting afresh; the Earth awakens. What is so compelling about the moment of dawn? In the glow of dawn, it is as if Earth Herself emanates a radiating corona. How paltry it sounds to say of this moment that the sun is coming up; that is already a judgment of what is happening, and not what the senses immediately experience. Rather, the senses sense a glowing of Earth. When the sun does rise, its intensity overtakes Earth's glow and this radiating body within which all things live then appears as a solid substance, the surface upon which we live. From the viewpoint of the immediacy of the imagination of dawn, however, we do not in fact live on the Earth, but rather we live within the Earth; dawn gives the momentary, but absolutely true experience of Earth as extending, radiating out toward the cosmos, and of the cosmos reaching down to embrace the Earth, according to the alchemical text indicated above.

A related phenomenon of the dawn is the appearance of dew. At dawn, dew emerges from Earth, rises into the air, and then condenses on plants and the surrounding ground; the grass sparkles with purity. Look at the drops of dew on a rosebud about to blossom. The weight of the rosebud should weigh the fragile supporting stem down to the ground, but it does not. The laws of gravity are canceled by the force of drew, coming to dwell and uplift the forces emerging from the dark Earth. If the rose is uprooted, almost immediately the stems go limp. The alchemists saw in this phenomenon the forces of life returning underground. And, as the day progresses, we see the stems bend under the weight of the buds. It is apparent that the invisible life forces are more in evidence in the morning than at mid-day, and are aided by dew. Then, besides dew and the invisible life force, the alchemists also observed sap, the mysterious juice of life rising in plants - more in the spring than at other times; thus Spring is the Rising Dawn of the cycle of the year. Each year, at certain times, you will see Earth born afresh, bursting and blossoming, giving forth leaves and flowers. The flowers are followed by fruit, and then harvesting, and then life withdraws again, deep into the Earth for the Winter. Spring is thus the Rising Dawn of the cycle of the year.

For one who observes the living Earth carefully, the beautiful and yet fleeting quality of the image-perceptions cited above impresses itself deeply. Sensitively experiencing the moment of dawn can be an initiation into the realms of Sophia. With our ordinary consciousness we can be present only to the physical body of the Earth. Perceiving glowing light arising from Earth is a special moment in which the soul of Earth Herself is seen, pushing upward, like the sap rising in plants. The appearance of dew has such a magical quality because it is the condensation of the spirit of Earth. At the moment of dawn, the body, soul, and spirit of Earth form a single, unified perception of the living, spiritual being of Earth, and at that moment Earth is not separated from the heavens. The incredible awe felt at this moment is a revelation from below.

Could it be that a wholly other direction of spiritual practice is intimated by such perceptions? An epiphany of Sophia such as this can re-orient us from a spirituality of the heights to a spirituality of the depths. In our own time, Jung set out in this direction, but in such a way that he never quite discovers a new Earth. I believe the absence in Jung of seeing Earth in a new way has limited psychology to a concern for the inner life of the individual soul, but fails to see that we are each individually also belong to a world process. Taking into account the larger context shifts depth psychology into spiritual psychology, where concern for the soul is not so much for our sake, but for the sake of the soul of the world.

The alchemical way of knowing is non-dualistic. The revelation of dawn also reveals something about us - about ourselves as beings of body, soul, and spirit. In the non-dualistic perception of alchemical imagination, the moment of dawn also reveals the waking time of the human being; it is an image of the moment between sleep and awakening into ordinary day consciousness. When we are fully awake in our ordinary consciousness, then the epiphany of Earth as a spiritual being disappears. At our own dawn, between being asleep and being awake, our own soul and spirit also radiates. We know that this is so; if you have ever been conscious enough at the transition between sleep and waking to be present to what is going on, you experience yourself as mingled with whatever is around you. As you continue to awaken a separation occurs between you and the surroundings, and your body becomes more of an object and objects are clear and separate from each other. But, at the moment of waking, this is not our perception. At the moment of waking, all is intermingled and in motion and coming-into-being. This activity goes all the time, subconsciously.

Imagine now what it would be like to live more constantly in this state between sleep and waking. It would be quite uncomfortable because we would lose a great deal of the freedom we experience in ordinary consciousness. It would feel like floating through the world with no standpoint of stability, a lot like dreaming. Things around us would be animated and mobile and would change when our own thinking, feeling, and willing changed. And since our soul and spirit would be more outward, time and space would not exist as it does for us now, but would every moment be in the process of being created. But, what would be lost is the freedom of being independent beings. What the alchemists sought was to be within the world in this creative way without, however, losing the freedom brought about through individuality. Such a condition would constitute living in conscious conjunction with Sophia.

What happens when we are fully awake in day consciousness? We are not aware of Earth in the process of coming to be. It is as if it is there, already complete and finished. We are not present to the world in an imaginative way. We are present only to separate things and these things appear in a single, literal way to us -- as a tree, a flower, a rabbit, a house, and so on. From simple observations such as these the alchemists came to understand that it is the state of ordinary consciousness that inhibits the revelation of Sophia; they realized that it was not just that we cannot perceive a Sophianic World due to the limitations of our consciousness, but that our limitations of consciousness actually keeps Sophia trapped within the Earth.

In order to bring Sophia what she needs in order to be freed from entrapment in literalized perception, the human soul must gradually enlarge the ordinary activity of its natural imagining to that of becoming a conscious medium through which Sophia can find Her way to Her homeland. To say this in a more simple way, on the alchemical path, the individual takes on the task of redeeming Sophia; this work is not for the benefit of the individual, but for the Soul of the World. Thus, the alchemical path represents a supremely sacrificial act. As such, this path is not initiated by an individual, who could never escape enough from his or her egotism enough to take on such a work. Sophia Herself initiates this path. Sophia desires us. To feel Her attraction is truly a shattering experience for us to undergo. What the spiritual alchemist gradually learns along this path, every step along this path, is the actual practice of creative love. The fleeting passage of the dawn is known and felt as a moment of almost a union of the Earth below and the heavens above - the yellow and red of the dawn being the colors of this almost achieved union. Thus, this moment is also felt as one of tremendous longing. In this longing, an ephemeral but nonetheless certainty of knowing dawns - the Earth belongs together with the Heavens, with the spiritual worlds - it is as if they are held apart as lovers wrenched from each others arms at the moment of ecstasy. And yet another part of this imaginal knowing consists of an equal certainty within the longing - the possible re-union of Earth with Her lover, the Sky, the spiritual worlds, is dependent upon human beings developing a relationship with Sophia. We are each now called to become spiritual alchemists.