• Draws on Gnosticism and Hermeticism to explore seven esoteric mysteries of feminine wisdom that are supported by practices

• Offers a wisdom teaching on integral spirituality and pansentience, encounters with spiritual entities, dreams, and reincarnation

• Explores the masculine principle of logos and how to integrate it with feminine eros in sacred marriage—Hieros Gamos—to achieve wholeness and mystical insight

Since the dawn of Christianity, the Sophia tradition has been suppressed and shrouded in secrecy. Drawing on Gnosticism and Hermeticism, this book presents divine feminine principles and teachings that are at the heart of the Sophia tradition, and how they can be applied to enrich spiritual knowledge and practice.

Lee writes from a masculine perspective that honors and celebrates feminine insights, relations, and shared attitudes toward the sacred. The mysteries he shares are grouped in two sections: the lesser mysteries of body, mind, and soul and the greater mysteries of salvation, sacred union, the world soul, and reincarnation. The lesser mysteries encourage greater personal awareness through the healing of old wounds and empowerment through responsibility. Lee explores sacred sexuality and Incarnation as a praxis that emphasizes the celebration of the body as temple. Through the greater mysteries readers learn how to develop transpersonal awareness, raise consciousness, and open to gnosis through encounters with spiritual entities and dreams. Lee then describes the masculine principle of logos and how to integrate it with feminine eros through alchemical union—Hieros Gamos—to achieve wholeness and mystical insight.

Feminine wisdom is a process, not a content—a way and not a destination. Divine Feminine Gnosis offers readers on any spiritual path an approach to living that is aimed toward heart-centered wisdom and an embodied experience of the transcendent.

Lee Irwin is an emeritus professor of religious studies at the College of Charleston where he taught world religions with an emphasis on Native American traditions, Western esotericism, Hermeticism, and transpersonal religious experience as related to dreams and visions. He is a founding member of the Association for the Study of Esotericism and member of the Sufi Inayati Order, the Ancient Mystical Order of Rosicrucians, the Sophia Institute, and co-founder of Hieros: Honoring Sacred Space.

Acknowledgments

Preface

Opening: The Feminine Eros

PART ONE
The Lesser Mysteries
Praxis

1 Praxis of Incarnation

Body

The Body as Temple

Passion as Sacred Eros

Thought as Embodied Logos

Incarnate Knowing as Story

2 Praxis of Relatedness

Soul

Love as Living Kindness

The Earth and Her Children

Hidden Spirits, Sacred Worlds

The Web of Living Lights

3 Praxis of Awareness

Mind

Healing Old Wounds

Taking Full Responsibility

Dreams and Inspirations

Visionary Knowledge

PART TWO
The Greater Mysteries
Sophiana

4 Mystery of Salvation

Hieros Logos

A New Feminine Wisdom

Many Mystical Pathways

The Ground of All-Knowing

Communitas and Self-Awareness

5 Mystery of Deep Union

Hieros Gamos

The Christ-Sophia Union

Beyond Dark and Light

The Fullness of the All

Ecstasy and Revelation

6 Mystery of the World Soul

Psyche Kosmou

The Vital Life-Force

Animated and Aware

Elemental and Astral Being

Aeons and Holy Spirituals

7 Mystery of Rebirth

Metempsychosis

Creative Self-Becoming

More than Fully Human

Transpersonal Embodiments

Simplicity and Purity of Mind

Closing: The Masculine Logos

Notes

Bibliography

Index