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SOPHIA OF WISDOM III - SOPHIA'S EXILE & RETURN
LIBRARY OF ST SOPHIA & JOHN OF WISDOM III - JUDGEMENT & NOTES - PRESENTATIONS 1
THE
SOPHIA OF ALL SOPHIA OF WISDOMS
AKA
CAROLINE E. KENNEDY
NOVEMBER 11, 2006
RE: SOPHIA'S EXILE AND RETURN
by
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THE
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNION INSTITUTE 440 EAST MCMILLAN STREET CINCINNATI, OHIO 45206-1947 THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN WRITTEN
TO SATISFY THE REQUIREMENTS OF MY PROJECT DEMONSTRATING EXCELLENCE by Kathleen Granville Damiani SOPHIA: EXILE AND RETURN
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Interdisciplinary Humanities with a Specialization
in Philosophy October 12, 1997 Sophia: Exile and Return by Kathleen Damiani 2 Sophia: Exile and Return TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Why Sophia? Wisdom--Light and Dark The Theme of Exile: Glyphs and Definitions Historical Context Beginning the Sophianic
Journey
Part I: Sophia's Historical Exile
Chapter 1: The Path of Crumbs
Sophia's Trail The Dual Energy of
Sophia Finding the Crumbs
Chapter 2: Who is Sophia? Historical Context
Sophia in the History of Religion Sophia's Relation to Other Goddesses
Chapter 3: Sophia's Other Face: Hecate and Lilith
Importance of the Dark Sophia Hecate
Lilith
Part. II:
Individual Exile and the Vital Soul
Chapter 4: The Counterfeit Vital: A Box of Our Own Making
Chapter 5: Sophia's Exile: Historical, Collective, Individual
Historical Exile of Sophia and Modern One-Sidedness Individual
Exile Collective Exile
Chapter 6: Who or What Is Cast Out?--An Examination of the Vital Soul
Vital Soul as Individual Descriptions of the
Vital
Part III: The Return of Sophia Sophia: Exile and Return by Kathleen Damiani 3
Chapter 7: Demeter and Kore and
the Mysteries of Eleusis
The Myth and the Mysteries Mysteries Interpreted as Sophia's Return Myth and Meaning
Chapter 8: Weaving Sophia: The Circuit of Sophia
Circuit of Sophia Weaving Sophia's Girdle: Ties That Bind Sophia:
Ogdoad, Spiral Circle, and World Symbol Food for Thought Sophia's Circuit and the Alchemy of Relationship Chapter 9: Woman's
Role in the Millennium
Our Own Exile Is the Path to Sophia Eve, Lilith, and the Serpent Eve as the Scapegoat of Western
Civilization The Metaphorical World Bringing Humanity into Existence Who is "Woman" and What Is Her Role in the Millennium?
Chapter 10: Wisdom Thunder Power Magic
Logos, the Speaking Out from the Place of Experience Speaking Sophia, Doing Sophia,
Magic Sophia Bride of the Bladed Thunder Chapter 11: The Power of Friendship
Turning, Turning, We Dance the Circuit of
Sophia Where is Sophia? --The Crossroads Freedom to Respond Becoming Aware of Our Own Exile Genius and Friendship
Epilogue:
Image and Inquiry
Illustrations
Selected Bibliography Sophia: Exile and Return by Kathleen Damiani 4 INTRODUCTION
This is a portrait of a phenomenon that is at once embedded in the raw stuff of life--death, fate, groups, violence, body,
sex--yet elusive and mysterious as the unseen object of the longing of the soul. I named it Sophia--or rather, she named herself
in and through my experience as it deepened. Following my husband's death, a number of synchronistic events arose in conjunction
with trying to fathom this tragic web of circumstance. The more I poked around, the more I was helped by myths, stories, symbols
that pointed to a reality beyond consensus reality. I found that while many people are helped by religion, it is possible
to get help from the very circumstances in your life: they become sources of information, requiring only a slight shift of
attention or interest. In fact, it is the delivery of information by events, via one's emotions, interest, or repulsion, that
formulates itself into a different kind of knowledge, evoking the figure of Sophia. This knowledge is available to each person
who is open to the possibility that their life is much much more than cultural conditioning would have us believe. My world
collapsed when my husband Paul at the age of 32 died in an explosion and fire. I felt abandoned by even my way of life--a
way of life that acknowledged soul through daily meditation and ongoing classes at his father's spiritual philosophy center.
This philosophy center could not provide the container that I needed for my grief and confusion, for the relentless urgency
to understand. So here I was, a wife, a mother, a spiritual seeker typical of millions in my generation, studying and meditating,
thinking that I was living a non-collective, soul-saturated life. I was suddenly catapulted out of this illusion. Within 24
hours of Paul's death, I was sitting alone in a relative's cottage in a stupor. An image appeared in my imagination. It was
a boat speeding through the water. Following it was a huge wake. A message arose that the boat was his father, Anthony, a
Sophia: Exile and Return by Kathleen Damiani 5 philosopher and teacher whose spiritual genius had been noticed by his friend
and advisor, the Dalai Lama. Another message drifted into my mind and settled there: it was Anthony's "wake" that killed Paul.
(I think of such messages as being like dream motifs: some images can convey meanings that point out what the conscious mind
misses.) Anthony being a yogi--one who intensifies his consciousness to a great degree, much more so than us ordinary folk--his
"boat" or psychic energy would be travelling faster than other people's. The wake is an unintended effect generated by the
power of good intentions and yogic discipline. Although to this day, more than ten years later, I do not fully understand
the meaning of these messages, the effect of them (what Jung would call active imagination) was profound. It gave me a life
raft. My future, my identity, my belief system, my entire way of life, slowly dissolved with Paul's passing. I was being swallowed
by the abyss that had yawned beside me during the nine days of unspeakable, agonizing horror that he had to endure following
the fire, in which he sustained 95% third degree burns. While some people might say that such messages were the intellect's
way of compensating for a meaningless tragedy, I would say the reverse--that the refusal to allow for meaning or interior
guidance is itself an intellectual construction, one which demarcates self-constructed boundaries over what life should include
and what it should reject. That such a message might indeed be a compensation for my own incapacity to entertain the notion
of brute chance--a "random accident" that statistically will happen to a few people (as several relatives assured me)--did
occur to me. I felt that it was important--maybe not to me, maybe it was for the sake of my dead Paul--to find out why he
died. On the other hand, there are limits to the human capacity to see clearly into the soul's reasons, to see what is veiled
from ordinary human understanding, despite the claims of mediums, channelers, and visionaries. That is not to disclaim their
experience of other dimensions, but rather that interpretation of that experience remains dependent upon their level of understanding,
their cultural conditioning, and their belief system. I felt that either to believe the message uncritically or to capitulate
to consensus reality was to shut down the very real living quality of my need to understand more of the complexity of life
than I currently was able to. Sophia: Exile and Return by Kathleen Damiani 6 I think now that most of me was pulled into Hades,
into the abyss, with Paul. The life raft that kept me afloat was constructed of these messages that arose spontaneously and
those that came from reading about myths and stories that resonated with my feeling of being abandoned, of being exiled from
every satisfaction, comfort, and love that most people seemed to enjoy. Rather than just believe the message that came up
that day following Paul's death--even though it did carry with it a calm certainty--I decided to check it out, to investigate
it and to find someone to talk to about it. Looking back, I think this was healthy, to retain both the doubt and belief in
its reality at the same time. The message was like a little beacon of light in the abyss: it simply spoke, but what it was
saying was beyond my capacity to understand. I went to New York City to the Jung Institute Library where the most remarkable
librarian, Doris Albrecht, took all of five minutes to find an article when I asked her where I could find information on
the meaning of wakes. This article (Schwartz et al, "On the Coupling of Psychic Entropy and Negentropy") was a psychological
analysis of wakes as entropy. Thus began my underworld journey. It began with an urgent need to see the forces that erupted
in my husband's death, forces that unfolded as this drama in which I was the actor as well as the audience, with my past issues
and interpretations the script. I stayed in our home one year, unable to sleep at night, feeling the lurid horror surrounding
our home. Inundated by synchronistic events and images but unable to decipher their deeper scheme or meaning, I despaired
of making sense of it there. One day, quickly, I decided to leave. I took my two little boys, aged three and four, rented
the house, and moved to Virginia to be near my mother. A number of vivid dreams punctuated decisive turning points that led
me to return to graduate school. Everywhere I turned in an effort to heal, to not let myself become consumed and obsessed
by the necessity to understand the daemonic terror that had devoured Paul and destroyed our lives, I confronted fire. I entered
a graduate program in Humanities with a specialization in Jungian thought. Everything I studied in the graduate program brought
up images, information, and synchronistic events that led me deeper and Sophia: Exile and Return by Kathleen Damiani 7 deeper
into the mystery of fire and its relation to the vital spark within the person, equivalent to and source of, according to
the Greeks, genius and sexuality. The fire path pointed to a knowledge rooted in life and guarded by the dragon--the image
of inertia, collective opinion that holds in its claws the radiant jewel of human vitality. I received the M.A. in Humanities
with a certificate in Jung Studies in 1991, from Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia. My thesis was entitled, "'But
Where Shall Understanding Be Found?' Searching for Sophia, Personified Wisdom." Doing the research was the high point of my
life: all the "otherness" of being woman in the misogynist world of philosophy and theology, of feeling inferior and marginalized,
gradually went away, as the redistribution of power began to circulate. There were reasons why the feminine was so threatening
to these desiccated male theologians! Everything turned around, as it dawned on me that what was truly worthwhile would never
be welcomed by the status quo. Dogma and agendas are inimical to wisdom. WHY SOPHIA? When I first heard about Sophia, she
meant little or nothing. I was not moved to investigate her. I was in graduate school and taking a philosophy course on nineteenth-century
philosophers. I had to do a term paper on any thinker covered that semester. With great reluctance and inertia I plodded to
the library to gather material on Kierkergaard. I got to the section and tried to overcome waves of nausea and fatigue. I
had to leave and went to the reference section. I decided to put off the assignment until the next day. I relaxed and began
to poke around the Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible. I was randomly thumbing through, stopped and read the entry under
"abzu" (the deep): here was the abode of Wisdom and Ea, father of arts and creativity. All of a sudden, lots of connections
were instantly made: Sophia was wisdom; abzu was the unconscious; and Sophia was related to the source of creative inspiration,
poetry and art. Wisdom and creativity paired! I changed the topic of my paper: never mind Kierkergaard, I'd do Sophia: Exile
and Return by Kathleen Damiani 8 Nietzsche's question "What if Truth was a woman?"--truth being Sophia, personified wisdom.
Her abode, abzu would correspond to Nietzsche's Dionysian realm. The emotional part of this experience--the reason why it
pulled me into it--I think was because not only were creativity and inspiration interesting but their association with the
feminine Sophia drew me right into my inferiority about being a woman. Here was a place (the abzu quote) that associated all
these things inside: my desire for understanding personified as this feminine deity Sophia, my attraction to the unconscious,
to creativity. I copied the quote, went home, spent the next two weeks on the paper. The energy was abundant; I was "in the
flow." What I discovered while doing the research on Sophia was this: all the feelings I had had all my life of being different,
of not fitting in anywhere, of an inability to fit into groups, of the humiliation from hearing the cultural message of woman's
inferiority and stupidity, all of these feelings were stirred up into consciousness. The ejection from my lifestyle following
Paul's death was not so unfamiliar, after all. What the history of Sophia revealed was that she herself was exiled, pushed
out, was neutered or masculinized by theologians. The feeling of not being alone anymore, that out here in the trash bin was
such a powerful, feminine presence was intriguing. Imperceptibly, a shift began to happen in my own soul. I began to realize
that the forces of exclusion and oppression were the same ones that banished Sophia from the mainstream. I was in good company
in exile! The path through Hades led me into the academic world, but what I found in the research led me into mythology and
symbols. It is this back and forth from personal experience to study, from myth and symbol to the struggle to understand,
that carved a "twisting circuit of Sophia" through my life. Here's an example: Our entire Western civilization is based upon
Homer's story of the battle of Troy. Throughout history, from Alexander the Great to Napoleon, generals and scholars and ordinary
people have visited Troy and sung eloquently about the heroism and battles that gave birth in Homer's epic poems to our Western
consciousness. But what few people notice (except mythologists and archetypal psychologists) is that the ten-year battle fought
over Helen originated in a beauty contest between the goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodit
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