Russian Sophiology
Kathleen Damiani
While Sophia was exiled from mainstream theology in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, she did not disappear from Russia. She remained as a central figure in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Perhaps the most beautiful work of Byzantine art is the Church of Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) in Byzantium (Istanbul). This magnificent cathedral was responsible for Russia’s conversion to Christianity in the 10th century.
According to legend, a pagan prince ruled Kiev in the Ukraine in 988 C.E. He could not decide whether to convert to Judaism, Islam, or Christianity. He sent messengers to Byzantium who visited the Hagia Sophia. They returned to their ruler, exclaiming that while they were in the church, “we felt as if in Heaven.” (Czeslaw Milosz’s Introduction to Soloviev’s War, Progress, and the End of History). It was the glory of this magnificent architectural tribute to Sophia that accounts for the conversion of Kiev to Christianity. Moslem conquerors in 1453 converted it to a mosque.
Sophia has not been forgotten in Russia and the Ukraine. She is associated with, sometimes identified with the Virgin Mary. The cathedral of Holy Sophia at Kiev in the Ukraine and the Cathedral of Holy Sophia at Novgorod, Russia, were dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The icons of Sophia portray her as a majestic angelic being with crown and scepter, seated on a throne, with rays of divine wisdom pouring forth from her into creation. Within the Russian Church liturgy, there is a service to Sophia, the Wisdom of God, which is combined with another to honor the Assumption of the Virgin Mary on August 15th. The following is an English translation from the Old Slavonic by Natalia Bonetskaya: “People of Earth, honor the Wisdom of God, named Sophia, who lives and reigns forever, for she directs our path of salvation . . . Let us behold the miraculous icon of the Wisdom of God, of the most pure Mother of God. The icon shines brightly in its time-honored temple, and it cheers the hearts of those who come here with faith and who look with fear and reverence at this most pure icon . . . I dare to sing in praise of the Patroness of the world, the most innocent Bride and Virgin. . . Sophia, the Wisdom of God” (Sophia Foundation, 1995)”
The force and vitality of the Sophia impulse in Russia was apparent not only in religion but also philosophy. Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900) was one of Russia’s greatest philosophers. He is renowned as the founder of the Sophiology movement in Russia.
Soloviev was born into the elite of the intelligentsia. His father was a prominent history professor at Moscow University and his mother was Ukrainian and related to the philosopher Hrihoriy Skovoroda. He was a gifted child and read extensively. When he was nine years old, in 1862, he had his first vision of Sophia, during an Orthodox church service. She appeared as a beautiful woman–”an image so radiant and powerful that he would come to pursue its meaning throughout his adult life.” (Kristi A. Groberg, “The Eternal Feminine: Vladimir Solov’ev’s Visions Of Sophia,” in Alexandria Journal #1, ed. David Fideler, 77)
Soloviev’s mother brought him up in strictest piety. But at the age of 14, he went through a crisis of faith that turned him into an atheist with a passionate belief that the world could be transformed. He gradually regained his faith in Christianity. He attended Moscow University and during the 1873-74 academic year he also attended the Theological Academy, an Orthodox seminary 50 miles outside Moscow. In 1874, he submitted his Master’s thesis, “The Crisis in Western Philosophy: Against the Positivists,” which was subsequently published. During these student years, he became intensely interested in esoteric teachings such as Freemasonry and the German mystic idealists. His mentor was Pamfil Iurkevich, a mystic and professor of philosophy at Moscow University, who was a devotee of Jakob Boehme and Emanuel Swedenborg. They were part of an intellectual circle that included Aleksandr Aksakov, editor of an international occult journal, Psychical Studies. (Groberg, “Eternal Feminine,” 78)
Soloviev believed that there was a divine model of truth which humanity had abandoned and that it was possible to recover this model within Orthodox theology. In 1874 Soloviev obtained the post of Lecturer of Religion at Moscow University, accepting the chair of his deceased mentor. Although he was barely 20 years old, he quickly gained a reputation as a charismatic speaker and a free-thinking intellectual. The next year, he took sabbatical leave to conduct research at the British Museum in London. For six months he stayed in London, actively searching for Sophia. “Mysterious forces told him what to read about Her, including Hindu philosophy, Gnosticism, Hermetic writings, and Kabbalah.”(Groberg, “Eternal Feminine,” 79; 90 n7) Soloviev studied the Kabbalistic tome of Christian Knorr, disciple of Boehme, Kabbala Denudata (1677-84). This was the source of Kabbalistic knowledge for European philosophers in the 19th and 20th centuries. He was influenced most by Boehme, Swedenborg and Paracelsus. Soloviev’s first published article, “The Mythological Process in the Paganism of Antiquity” (1873) focuses on the feminine force of primitive divinity. He was probably influenced by the ideas of alchemy (in Paracelsus), which corrects the Christian imbalance of exclusion of the feminine by restoring the feminine to a position of power in the life of soul. (Groberg, “Eternal Feminine,” 80) Soloviev investigated the occult, practicing automatic writing and mediumship. He met with spiritualists and attended seances in London.
Soloviev had prayed for Sophia to reveal herself to him again. One day, when he was studying in the British Museum reading room, he had his second vision of her. This is his poem that records the event that was to suddenly changed the course of his life:
I said to her: O, blossom of a deity!
You’re here, I sense it–why haven’t you revealed
Yourself to my eyes since childhood years?
And no sooner had I thought this prayer
Than everything was filled with a golden azure,
And before me she shined once more–
But only her face–it alone. . . .
I said to her: your face has appeared,
But I want to have a look at all of you. . . .
“Be in Egypt!” a voice within me sounded.
To Paris! and a vapor carried me south.
My feelings didn’t even struggle with my reason:
Reason kept silent like an idiot. (Groberg, “Eternal Feminine,” 81)
Soloviev immediately stopped his research and left for Paris. He caught the first train to Cairo. Before he left, he confided to an acquaintance that “spirits” had revealed to him the existence of a Kabbalistic society in Egypt and had promised that they would introduce him to the society.
After arriving in Cairo, he received another mysterious order to go to Thebes. Melchior de Vogue, who met him in Cairo, gives an account of Soloviev’s strange journey. Soloviev claimed to be looking for a “tribe in which the initiated preserved, he had been told, some secrets of the Kabbalah, some Masonic traditions inherited directly from King Solomon.”(Groberg, “Eternal Feminine,” 82; 91n 13)
The tall thin Soloviev set out on foot across the desert for Thebes, dressed in his black frock coat and tall Victorian top hat. He apparently terrified a group of Bedouins who, he claimed, mistook him for a demon and captured him. They released him and he spent the night in the desert. He awoke to the scent of roses and had his third and last vision of Sophia:
And in the purple of the heaven’s splendor,
With eyes filled with an azure fire,
You looked like the first radiance
Of a universal and creative day. . . .
I saw everything, and everything was one thing only–
A single image of female beauty. . .
The infinite fit within its dimensions:
Before me, in me–were you alone.
O, radiant woman! In you I am not deceived:
In the desert I saw all of you. . .
Those roses will not wither in my soul wherever life’s wave may speed.
Only an instant! The vision concealed itself–
And the sun’s orb rose in the sky.
The desert was silent.
My soul was praying,
And the ringing of church bells didn’t cease in it. (Groberg, “Eternal Feminine,” 82-82)
It was this third and last vision of Sophia in 1876 that profoundly altered Soloviev and his philosophy. He regarded the first two visions as preparations for the ultimate vision in the desert. He considered himself a changed man. He returned to Moscow University but resigned the following year to take another teaching position through the Education Ministry in St. Petersburg.
What was Soloviev’s philosophy and how was Sophia central to it? Sophia was first articulated in the lecture series “Lectures on Godmanhood,” [Lectures on Divine Humanity] given in St. Petersburg between 1877-78. These lectures were so popular that they drew not only the cynical, nihilistic student body of Petersburg University, but also Orthodox clerics, aristocratic intelligentsia, and women students. Even Dostoevski and Tolstoy came. He received a lot of money for these lectures, which he donated to a fund for the restoration of the True Cross on top of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Sophia was identified as the “Eternal Companion” who manifests as the magical systems of esoteric traditions. He explained that Sophia is a manifestation of God, and what her place is in the Kabbalah, and the Old and New Testaments.
From this, and especially the poems that Soloviev wrote about his visions, we can see that the Sophianic archetype possessed him. True to Wisdom’s being outside of any “box” Soloviev’s writings continue to inspire thought and controversy even today.
Kathleen Damiani, Ph.D.
copyright © 2005
kathleendamiani@yahoo.com
