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I.Sophia, We Call to You 1Like Emerson’s apology for his poetry(to his soon-to-be wife Lydian),my poetry voice is rather “husky” and “mostly prose.” 2With Emerson, America’s sophianic sage,we seek “an original relation to the Universe,” 3to its interior, to anima mundi. 4This group and this place,both dedicated to you,invoke and invite you.With Sue’s goddess statue next door,and trust in the dissident daughter in the air,we’re in the right place to invoke Sophia. 5We know you hear with the aged sagacity of Isis,with the suffering compassion of Mary,with the essential wisdom of Sophia.We practice philo-sophy,knowing you as Isis-Mary-Sophia,three names for your singularity. 6Who can count your images as Isis—Goddess as cow, pig, and bird; guardianof the underworld;Sirius; loving mother of your son Horus? 71 This invocation is indebted to Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, The Myth of theGoddess: The Evolution of an Image (NY: Viking/Penguin,1991)—with prodigious scholarship,this book depicts the evolution of the goddess within a framework influenced bythe conception of consciousness developed by C. G. Jung and Joseph Campbell; and toOwen Barfield (who, in turn, acknowledges his debt to Rudolf Steiner).2 Robert D. Richardson, Emerson: The Mind on Fire (Berkeley, CA: University ofCalifornia Press, 1995), p. 179.3 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836), first paragraph.4 “Soul of the world” is a key concept in Jungian arechetypal psychology.5 See Sue Monk Kidd, who is associated with the Sophia Institute of Charleston,SC, and author of Dance of the Dissident Daughter and Secret Life of Bees.6 For the essential identity of Isis-Mary-Sophia, see Christopher Bamford, “Introduction,”Mary-Isis-Sophia: Her Mission and Ours (Great Barrington, MA: Steinerbooks,2003).7 For Isis, see Baring and Cashford, chapter 6.Robert McDermottRobert McDermott composed this invocation for The Reemergence of Sophiain the 21st Century for the Transformation of Self and Society, sponsored by theFetzer Institute, July 20-23, 2009, at The Sophia Institute, Charleston, SC.We recall the litany of your images as Mary—holy mother of God, mother undefiled and faithful,queen of angels and saints, portal of heaven. 8 9These many names and more point to you.Tao, sunyatta, Quan Yin, shakti also name you,but not one is your eternal name.Water, womb, silence, and mother,the inner and subtle, soul and spirit,mystery and secret, all try to name you.As Tao you manifest, as Isis you weep,as Mary you comfort, as Sophia you inspirePlato’s Diotima 10 and Dante’s Beatrice. 11Such subtlety escapes us modernslong accustomed to the guy project,a brilliant Faustian bargain ending too slowly.8 For a Jungian conception of the divine feminine, see Edward C. Whitmont,Return of the Goddess (NY: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1992). For Sophia in thewestern tradition, see Caitlin Matthews, Sophia, the Goddess of Wisdom: The DivineFeminine from Black Goddess to World Soul (London: HarperCollins/Grafton, 1991).9 For Mary, see Jaroslav Pelikan, Mary through the Centuries: Her Place in theHistory of Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996); George H. Tavard, TheThousand Faces of the Virgin Mary (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996); CharleneSpretnak, Missing Mary: The Queen of Heaven (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Thegreat contemporary mystic, Adrienne von Speyr, has written two small, profoundbooks, Mary in the Redemption (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999) and Three Womenand the Lord (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1978). For an anthroposophical interpretationof Mary, see Emil Bock, Threefold Mary (Great Barrington, MA: Steinerbooks,2003).10 See Plato’s Symposium in which Socrates presents the Platonic ideal of love thathe learned from the goddess, or seer, Diotima of Mantinea.11 For Dante’s Beatrice, see Paradiso in Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans.Allan Mandelbaum (NY: Knopf, 1980). See also Jaroslav Pelikan, Eternal Feminines:Three Theological Allegories in Dante’s Paradiso (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UniversityPress, 1980; Helen M. Luke, Dark Wood to White Rose: Journey and Transformationin Dante’s Divine Comedy (NY: Parabola Books, 1989); Peter S. Hawkins, Dante’sTestaments: Essays in Scriptural Imaginations (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,1999).Robert McDermott, Ph.D., is president emeritus and chair ofthe Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program at the CaliforniaInstitute of Integral Studies (CIIS). His publications includeRadhakrishnan (1970); The Essential Aurobindo (1974, 1987); TheEssential Steiner (1984); The New Essential Steiner (2009) and TheBhagavad Gita and the West (2009). He has also published on WilliamJames, Josiah Royce, M. K. Gandhi, the evolution of consciousness,and American thought. His administrative service includespresident of the New York Center for Anthroposophy; presidentof the Rudolf Steiner [summer] Institute; chair of the board of SunbridgeCollege (New York) and of Rudolf Steiner College (California).He was a member of the council of the Anthroposophical Societyin America (1996–2004). He is the founding chair of the board ofthe Sophia Project, an anthroposophic home in Oakland, California,for mothers and children at risk of homelessness. He is a Lindisfarnefellow, a Fetzer mentor, and a member of the Esalen Corporation.30 Evolving News for Members & Friends
II.That We Lost YouYou reigned as Isis for three millennia,as Mary you inspired Christendom,as Sophia you revealed the Grail. 12Then cosmic alienation seized the modern mind.We didn’t lose you in a day or a year.Cosmic transformations take a century or two. 13A Cartesian-Newtonian billiard ball cosmos,not to mention the quest for gold,fueled passion for control and power.The modern project can’t handle interiors and subtleties:bring on the visible and solid, surfaces only;nothing too soft, fluid, or flexible.They say the takeover started with Enu Elish,in Baghdad—still in the news—as Tiamat you hung on a hook for three days.Crucifixion has been a male specialty;no more the generative goddesses,give us the thunderbolt gods.As goddess, you’re assigned to girls and crones,but empires need Marduk;a god’s gotta do what a god’s gotta do.On he came morphing and starring—as Zeus, ruling the sky and mountain tops,as YHWH, vengeful god of the garden.All sin then traceable to a woman,childbirth a curse, males in charge,sin and salvation over service and generation.Your archetypal image surfacedin mediaeval European towns,hundreds of cathedrals to Notre Dame!Too good to be unopposed,from Notre Dame of Paris to the Temple of Reason,analysis and argument over affectionate insight.12 For the Grail, see A. E. Waite, The Holy Grail: The Galahad Quest in the ArthurianLiterature (New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1933/61); Rene Querido, The Mysteryof the Holy Grail: A Modern Path of Initiation (Fair Oaks, CA: Rudolf Steiner College Publications,1991); Linda Sussman, The Speech of the Grail: A Journey Toward Speaking thatHeals and Transforms (Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne Books, 1995); Sergius (Sergei)Bulgakov, The Holy Grail and the Eucharist (Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne Books,1997).13 For the fundamental disenchantment resulting from the Newtonian-Cartesianworldview, see Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind (NY: Crown/Harmony,1991), especially “The Post-Copernican Double Bind,” 416-22.Following the dark side of the Enlightenment,knowledge and power over wisdom,nature on the rack, control at all cost.Bacon is our Man: We will have knowledge,get the secret, blow the atom,take charge, go the limit, no price too high.And we did, and it feels good.We have dominion, even over death. Sort of.Why are we so depressed, fearful, and violent?What shall we make of the hard images,Kali and her company of destroyers?Are they you embracing all opposites?Should we accept your embrace of suffering and evil—war, hunger, rape, HIV/AIDS, cancer, despair, suicide?Does your hard mother-love find these useful?Are you the source of such pain, illness, loss?We really need to know this!Are you really Kali? 14Were you behind Gettysburg, Verdun, Hiroshima?Could you have stopped them?What are you doing about sex slaves?We believe you bind each nation’s wounds,comforting soldiers slain,and their widows and orphans. 15But why are these? Why?Is this your way to make us conscious?For us to try harder? What a strange way!And what of spiritual suffering?Have you led the Westto suffer the loss of your comfort?14 For Kali, see Ajit Mookerjee, Kali: The Feminine Force (London: Thames & Hudson,1988).15 See Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, 1865: “With malice toward none, withcharity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive onto finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shallhave borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieveand cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”Fall-Winter 200931
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