Taoderf:   "Why do you think you had a vision of Sophia?
                   Do you think you would have had it if you hadn't    
                   heard the word Sophia growing up?"

Aurora:  "As I have said, I speak and write Greek and I did
               attend a Greek Orthodox Cathedral with my parents
               when I was growing up.  The priest would come out
               of the vestibule and raise both arms to the heavens
               and announce to the congregation. 
                'Aghia Sophia, orthe kai akousame.' 
                'Holy Sophia, stand and attend.'
               I would ask my mother, 'Who is She?'
               And my mother would say, 'Sophia is Wisdom.  He
               is asking us all to stand and attend 'Wisdom'.

               But at the same time, people all over the planet have
               had and are having visions of Sophia or some sort of
               manifestation of
               Sophia and never really thought about the word.  I
               do know most people do know that philosophy is 'love
               of wisdom' and theosophy is 'divine wisdom'.

               The summer of 1951 when I was nine years old, I
                went to Greece with my family.  The ship stopped in
                Pompeii and I saw the devastation of a volcano and
                then when we got to Greece, I saw the devastation
                of World War II.  It did make quite an impression on
                me.  I saw starving people and bombed buildings.

                If Love is all there is, or if Love is the answer, I
                did wonder how people would come to that realization
                without wisdom.

                When I was in Greece again in 1961, my father's
                 family told me how their house had been occupied
                 by German generals.  My father had purchased the
                 ex-mayor's mansion for his parents and the German
                 generals took it over except for one room that my
                 grand-parents stayed in and were allowed garden
                 visits for one hour a day.

                 Also, when the communists took over, the commanders
                 and troops would gather all of the men in the village,
                 and line them up.  One day they would shoot every
                 other man, the next time, maybe every seventh man,
                 and so on. 

                 There are also the stories of the women of the villages,
                  that would sing and dance off the cliffs to their deaths,
                  not to be raped by the conquerors.  (The beginning
                  of the spiral dance?)

                  When Sophia appeared to me in the New Forest
                   in 1971 something deep in my heart resonated
                   with 'I knew you had to be a beautiful feminine
                   spirit.'

Sophia Re-Emerging For Me....

New Forest, England ~ Summer Solstice ~ 1971

Sophia re-emerged for me brighter than the noon day sun.

"Now it was the darkest hour before dawn, the hour, they say when only the wise can see;
That a sense of awe did awaken and mystify me.
Descending from a throne, on a pillar of clouds, in royal splendor ~

An image of feminine divinity, I did see and I fell in love with Her beauty as I saw face to face the most magnificent symbol of the spirit of solace and grace. 

"Instantly.  Totally.  Inescapably.
Indescribable, immeasurable, unconquerable and impervious to time, was this beauty of the Love above all loves, that connected her heart and mine.

And in the silence of her reflection, of what was, and is, and forever more will be;
I felt the power of the Queen of Enchantment, Herself unchanging, fill me from within, make me new, and Love did consume and conquer me."


quotations from 'My Sister the Unicorn' @1988 by Aurora Terrenus

island lady

                                      Island Lady

After a head-on-collision that totalled my car and almost totalled me, I was resting in bed trying to read "The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation" when I opened to a page that said, "forget everything that you have ever read."  So I closed the book and began meditating during my prescribed periods of rest.

Excruciating pain kept me from resting peacefully but I continued my meditations.  During my meditations, a beautiful island lady, old and full of years, appeared walking on a solitary silver sand beach with the ocean softly lapping away her footprints in the sand.

I did not know her; I only knew that whenever she appeared, she lifted me in body and spirit.

A year and a half later, still in pain, I was walking on a deserted beach in Hawaii.  As I turned to return home, I noticed one path of footprints in the sand and they were my own.

Ancient Hawaiian legend says if you step into the footprints of another, you may get their karma.  So usually when I walked on a beach with footprints, I would dodge the footprints.

But this day, as I turned, I stepped into my footprints on the beach and in a magical moment I knew they were the footprints of the island lady that I had seen walking in my meditations.  Now I was the island lady walking on the beach ~ she and I were one ~ and I was healed. 

Great Mother of Peace Prayer

On our altar we have a Peace Candle.
In the daily lighting of this candle, we offer this prayer:

O Great Mother of Peace,
in the names of your children
and the children of your children,
We light this candle.
In reverence, in honor,
in gratitude and in remembrance of you.

O Holy Mother, O Spiritual Mother
of the Divine Spark of Light
that you reflect and ignite in our souls,
Be here now.

We are called the Peacemakers,
Blessed are our ways.
We are known as the true children
of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom,
your spiritual children on Earth.

O Holy Mother, gather all of your children
and grace us with Peace on Earth now.

In extinguishing the candle:
O Holy Sophia,
May the sacred smoke from the fire
cover the earth like a mist,
May all people and nations
be under your influence and power
So that we might understand
the true meaning of love
and fulfill our dreams for Peace on Earth now.
Amena.*
c. 1990. Aurora Terrenus
The Holy Order of Wisdom
(Also included in John Matthew's book, "Paths to Peace")

Amen is a Hebrew word that means 'truly'.

Amena is an Arabic word that menas 'to make complete'.

Because we feel that it is the divine feminine that is lacking

to make the world complete, we use Amena at the end of our prayers.

"Called 'Hypatia' .. a towering abstract sculpture of a nude woman is cut from slabs of steel and shows the outline of a graceful woman with full breasts.  It is named after a female mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher of ancient Alexandria.  A placard on the statue notes that Hypatia was murdered by people 'who considered her one of the defenders of paganism and the Classic era, but she was actually a victim of fanatic ideologists."
The sculpture of Hypatia is in the "Library of Alexandria, a gleaming, modern facility that opened in 2002 a short distance from the site of its Ptolemaic predecessor, the most significant library of ancient times."
National Geographic, May 2012
A footnote to "IS LOVE STRONGER THAN DEATH?" 

They Are Only Words

(Sibyl comes via Latin from the Greek word sibylla, meaning Prophetess ~ she can reach forward and back thousands of years by her voice by the aid of the goddess.)
This story is based on true events.*
THEY ARE ONLY WORDS
"They are only words" said the King to the Sibyl (or Prophetess) who stood before him offering nine of her books for sale for 300 pieces of gold.
She stood before him, hauntingly beautiful. Her eyes were deeper than any abyss. She wore an earth colored dress, wrapped in a mid-night blue cape studded with stars.
This old woman, in a voice of magnificence, energy and power said to the King:
"Yes. Words. Words that begin the night before the sun was born and narrate a sacred history of ancestral memories and all of the wisdom of the ancients. Words create and destroy in a multitude of meanings. I tried to paint a picture of words so precise, so perplexing that all would understand and see perchance my paint dripping from their hands. I wanted to invoke a feeling and a love for the quest for the fruits of the inner life ~ that individually and collectively they could have an experience of the deepest significance."
"It is preposterous that you ask such an enormous price," said the King. "I am lead to believe that you are a madwoman."
"Three books ~ if you do not attend ~ are burned together in the end ~ Three books you do not desire ~ to be exalted in the fire." she chanted.
Before his eyes, the Sibyl burned three books and asked the same price for the remaining six books.
Now the King was totally convinced that she was a madwoman.
The smoke from the fire of the burning books rose and she spoke as if her voice was a vapor from the flames:
"A psychograph sets out the picture of the soul. Is there a soul? What is the fate of a Soul after Death? Does a philosopher whose thoughts transcend this world commit so absurd an act as dying? Or do they disdain to die and only disappear? Is there an apocalypse of the world within? Are we wonder workers? Can we be two or more places at the same time?"
The King shook his head signifying a 'no' to the enormous price of the remaining six books.
"Three books if you do not attend ~ are burned together in the end~ Three books you do not desire ~ to be exalted in the fire." she cited again.
And the Sibyl proceeded to burn three more books before his eyes and the price for the remaining three books remained the same - 300 pieces of gold.
With spiritual determination and a mystic force the Sibyl pointed to her remaining three books and to the King and said:
"To you then who have absolute power, I speak, in hopes that you might love wisdom ~ the ways of wisdom and words of wisdom and not lead your people astray. What is to become of a world without wisdom? A world without imagination, forgiveness, inspiration, poetry, art, intuition, music, dreams, visions? Who will explore the unknown and communicate the incommunicable? Who will attempt to speak of the ineffable and the incomparable beauty of love and wisdom? Who will adhere to the maxim: Know thyself?"
The King immediately changed his mind and bought the remaining three books for her original asking price of 300 pieces of gold.
These famous Sibylline Books were kept in the Capitoline Temple in Rome and consulted in emergencies by the Senate. But they were burned along with the Temple in 83 BC.
Why? I do not know. They are only words.

©Aurora Terrenus, 2006


* The oracles of the Cumaean Sibyl composed nine books and she offered them to Tarquin the Proud, the last of the seven kings of Rome. She did burn the books in threes until the King bought the remaining three for her price of nine books. The three books were burned in 83BC along with the temple. Modern archaeologists are satisfied that they have identified her cave at Cumae.