The cosmic-wisdom principle, feminine pole of the divine intelligence, who becomes Anthroposophia through the Mystery of Golgotha.
Sophia in Anthroposophy is the cosmic-wisdom principle, the feminine pole of the divine intelligence that orders the spiritual hierarchies and works toward the human being. Steiner systematized this teaching in Esoteric Christianity and the Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz (GA 130, 1911 to 1912) and in The Gospel of St. Luke (GA 114, Basel, 1909), where he identifies the heavenly Sophia with the soul of the Nathan-Jesus Mary, restored to her virginal state at the Baptism in the Jordan. Through the Mystery of Golgotha she becomes Anthroposophia, the Wisdom-being who has descended into humanity to dwell in the human as the wisdom of the human being. The Foundation Stone Meditation, given at the Christmas Conference of 1923, names Father, Son, and Spirit; readers of Sergei Prokofieff's Sophiology at the Goetheanum School of Spiritual Science recognise Sophia as the implicit fourth pole, the cosmic feminine in whose mirror the threefold divine is beheld.
Sophia is the heavenly Wisdom-being who, in Steiner's anthroposophic Christology, stands as the feminine cosmic counterpart to the Logos. She is not an abstract personification of wisdom but a real spiritual reality, identified through the soul of the Nathan-Jesus Mary and, after the Baptism in the Jordan, made virginal again as the bearer of the cosmic Christ.
In Steiner's Own Words
'Jesus of Nazareth' was now a Being, whose inmost nature comprised all the blessings of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. A momentous destiny awaited him, a destiny altogether different from that of any others baptized by John in the Jordan. And we shall see that later on, when the Baptism took place, the Christ was received into the inmost nature of this Being. Then, too, the immortal part of the original mother of the Nathan Jesus descended from the spiritual world and transformed the mother who had been taken into the house of the Nathan Joseph, making her again virginal. Thus the soul of the mother whom the Nathan Jesus had lost was restored to him at the time of the Baptism in the Jordan. The mother who had remained to him harboured within her the soul of his original mother, called in the Bible the 'Blessed Mary'.
What it Means Today
Sophia, in the anthroposophic reading, is not the Sophia of the gnostic Pleroma. The Pistis Sophia of the Valentinian gnosis is a partial parallel: a feminine Wisdom-being whose fall and redemption frame the cosmos. The two referents touch but do not coincide. Steiner's Sophia is not a fallen aeon but the wisdom that, through the Nathan-Jesus Mary, becomes the mother of the Christ-bearer, then through the Mystery of Golgotha turns inward to dwell in the human soul as Anthroposophia, the wisdom of the human being.
Sergei Prokofieff, who taught at the Goetheanum School of Spiritual Science until his death in 2014, made this the heart of his Sophiology. His The Heavenly Sophia and the Being Anthroposophia (1996) reads the Foundation Stone Meditation laid by Steiner at the 1923 Christmas Conference as a threefold invocation (Father, Christ, Spirit) whose fourth pole is Sophia herself, the cosmic feminine in whose mirror the divine triad is beheld. The Christian Community, founded with Steiner's collaboration in 1922, venerates the cosmic Sophia in its sacramental life, particularly in the Act of Consecration of Man. The Thalira reading places Sophia at the crown, the upper pole of the human being where the Logos has its complement, and treats every act of true thinking as a small Pentecost of Sophia: the cosmic Wisdom briefly meeting the wisdom that has become indwelling. To work with Sophia, then, is to take responsibility for one's own cognition as a sacramental, not merely cognitive, act. Steiner identifies the heavenly Sophia specifically with the Nathan-Jesus Mary in his Christological exegesis — see Mary-Sophia.
Where to Read More
- Esoteric Christianity and the Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz, GA 130, full text
- The Gospel of St. Luke, GA 114, full text
- Sergei Prokofieff, The Heavenly Sophia and the Being Anthroposophia (SteinerBooks)
- Sophia in Gnosticism: The Fall and Redemption of Divine Wisdom
- Pistis Sophia: The Complete Guide to the Gnostic Gospel
- The Most Holy Trinosophia: The Alchemical Manuscript of the Comte de St. Germain