Maya Sophia's name has many roots. First and foremost she is named for "Maya," the Greco-Roman goddess of the earth. Maya is described in The Book of Goddesses:When we look into the night sky, we can recognize the seven stars which make up the constellation called the Pleiades. The ancient Greeks thought that these stars were the seven daughters of Atlas and that the goddess Maia was the youngest of them. When Atlas took part in a revolt led by the giants against the gods of Olympus, he was made to bear the world on his shoulders as punishment. Maia and her sisters mourned their father's humiliation so much that the gods turned them into doves to spare them any more pain. Then they flew to the highest heaven and became brightly shining stars - the seven stars we call the Pleiades.
Maia is mainly remembered today as the goddess of spring and rebirth, like the month of May that bears her name. "Maia" means "the maker," and every spring she makes the lush green grass and the fragrant flowers grow again. She is also praised as "the grandmother of magic" because her son the god Hermes, was the first to discover that mysterious art. Soon after Maia gave birth to Hermes, she knew her son was a genius. While still a crawling baby, he created the first lyre by stretching strings across a tortoise shell, and the first panpipe from marsh reeds. People still celebrate Maia every year on the first of May, which is called May Day in honor of the goddess. Men and women rejoice over the rebirth of spring by dancing circles around the maypole and by wearing vibrant green - the color of the earth itself. Maya Deren was a pioneer of avant-garde and experimental cinema from the middle of the twentieth century.
Maya is also named for the Sanskrit notion of "Maya" one of the great philosophic concepts of Indian Hinduism embodied in female form. In Hindu thought, the male energy is essentially passive, while the female is the force of action. Maya is one of those active powers: the constant movement of the universe, the sanscrit veil of illusionl. There is no life -- no existence, even -- without Maya, but she is so powerful that we cannot see the essence of things and mistake her movement for reality. For this reason, Maya is often called "the veil of illusion," the dance of multiplicity that distracts us so that we cannot see all matter as essentially identical. Maya is not a negative force, but can be a mesh through which we perceive the ultimate reality of existence -- if we are not distracted by her magnificent creativeness and complexity. The Greco-Roman earth goddess Maia and the Sanskrit Maya are, in fact, connected and have a common Indo-European earth goddess Maya underlying them. Barbara Walker describes the Greco-Roman goddess Maia in her Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets:"Grandmother of Magic," mother [by Zeus] of the Greeks' Enlightened One, Hermes, the western version of Maya, "Magic," mother of the Hindus' Enlightened One, Buddha. She personified the powers of transformation and material "appearances," the same powers attributed to Maya-Kali, who made the universe by her magic. Greek writers called Maia one of the Pleiades, but also understood that she was the Great Goddess of the Maytime festivals, of the renewal and rebirth of the dead. She made her son Hermes the Conductor of Souls in the underworld, just as the Hindu Maya made her masculine counterpart Ya-Ma into a Conductor of Souls and Lord of Death.
Maya's name also connects her to the great civilizations of the Mayan people of Central America. Amazingly, Walker traces all three Mayas (Greco-Roman, Hindu, and Mesoamerican) to a common source in her entry on the Hindu Maya:"Magic," title of the Virgin Kali as the creatress of earthly appearances, i.e., all things made of matter and perceptible to the senses. As in India, Mayan divine images were painted blue and Mayan women pierced the left nostril for insertion of a jewel. Another version of the Creatress seems to have been the Mother Goddess Mayauel of the Mexican Agave, called "Woman with Four Hundred Breasts," with a strong resemblance to the world-nurturing Many-Breasted Artemis and other eastern forms of the deity who mothered all the world's creatures.
Sophia (Gr. Wisdom)
Sophia (pronounced sew-fee'ah) in Greek means wisdom,. The Judeo-Christian God's female soul, source of his true power is Sophia. As Goddess of wisdom and fate , her faces are many: Black Goddess, Divine Feminine, Mother of God The Gnostic Christians, Sophia was the Mother of Creation; her consort and assistant was Jehovah. Her sacred shrine, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, is one of the seven wonders of the world. Her symbol, the dove, represents spirit; she is crowned by stars, a Middle Eastern icon, to indicate her absolute divinity.
Sophia is found throughout the wisdom books of the Bible. There are references to Her in the book of Proverbs,and the Wisdom of Solomon. She is usually associated with wise King Solomon. 1 Kings 4:29-31 tells us that God gave wisdom to Solomon, and that he became wiser than all the kings of the East and all the wise people of Egypt. Wisdom 8:2, 16, 18 tells us that Solomon was seen as married to Sophia.
The Song of Songs - known as Song of Solomon or Canticle of Canticles - speaks of Solomon's marriage to Holy Sophia.
Wisdom(Sophia) is the ability, developed through
experience,
insight and
reflection, to discern truth and exercise good judgment.. Wisdom is often considered to be a trait that can be developed by experience, but not taught. When applied to practical matters, the term wisdom is synonymous with
prudence. Some see wisdom as a quality that even a child, otherwise immature, may possess independent of experience or complete knowledge.
Beginning with the ancient Greeks, European culture associates wisdom with
virtue. For example, many philosophers talk about the virtue of wisdom in relation to courage and moderation, wisdom (
Prudence) stands with
justice,
fortitude and
moderation as one of the four
cardinal virtues. They are outlined in the Hebrew book of Wisdom 8:7. These virtues are praised under other names in many passages of Scripture.
Plato's dialogues mention the virtue of wisdom, as knowledge about the Good and the
courage to act accordingly. The
Good would be about the right relations between all that exists. The Good, as a Platonic
Form, would involve the perfect ideas of good government, love, friendship, community, and a right relation to the Divine. Perhaps the search or love of wisdom is more important than any proven claim. Some religions hold that wisdom may be given as a gift from God.
In the Christian Bible, for example, the magi (or "wise men") sent by God to give the newly born Jesus three types of gifts. Wisdom is also represented by the sense of justice by the lawful and wise king
Solomon.The seventh verse of the first chapter of the
Jewish book of
Proverbs in the
Old Testament states "
Fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom" (Proverbs 1:7). The beginning of fear of God is hating evil, the ways of evil, arrogance, pride and a duplicitous mouth (Proverbs).
Confucius stated that wisdom can be learned by three methods: Reflection (the noblest), imitation (the easiest) and experience (the bitterest).
Buddha taught that a wise person is endowed with good bodily conduct, good verbal conduct & good mental conduct (AN3:2) and a wise person does actions that are unpleasant to do but give good results and doesn’t do actions that are pleasant to do but give bad results (AN4:115). This is called
karma.
