The Wisdom That Waits

I didn’t grow up with Sophia.

I wasn’t taught her story, her symbolism, or her place in spiritual tradition. I didn’t seek her out deliberately, and I certainly didn’t arrive at her through belief or devotion.

I encountered her through reading.

Specifically, through a book I picked up out of curiosity rather than intention, The Secrets of the Divine Sophia. At the time, I knew very little about Sophia as a figure, and nothing about her role within Gnostic traditions or early spiritual thought.

What struck me wasn’t the theology.

It was the recognition.

Sophia isn’t presented as a deity to be worshipped or a system to be adopted. She appears instead as wisdom; not abstract or hierarchical, but embodied, relational, and deeply human. Wisdom that moves through experience rather than instruction. Wisdom that remembers.

In many traditions, Sophia represents divine feminines wisdom; not as an opposing force, but as a balancing one. She is curiosity, discernment, and creative intelligence. She asks questions rather than issuing commands. She moves through story, symbol, and experience rather than doctrine.

That framing mattered to me.

Especially in the context of writing The Harbinger.

As I reflected on Sophia’s presence in myth and tradition, I realized how closely she mirrored the way wisdom operates in the novel; quietly, indirectly, and without explanation. The story doesn’t teach. It doesn’t persuade. It doesn’t announce meaning. It allows wisdom to surface through recognition, pattern, and memory.

Sophia, in that sense, isn’t a character in the book. She’s a current.

She shows up in the way past and present speak to one another. In the way memory ignites without instruction. In the way knowing arrives before language. She is present not as belief, but as experience; something the reader meets rather than accepts.

What I appreciate most about Sophia is that she doesn’t demand agreement.

You don’t have to subscribe o a woldview to encounter her. You don’t have to interpret her literally. You don’t even have to name her at all. Wisdom, as she represents it, meets people where they are; through story, intuition, discernment, and lived experience.

For some readers, that recognition will feel familiar. For others, it may feel distant or purely symbolic. Both responses are valid.

Sophia doesn’t insist on arrival. She waits.

And perhaps that’s why stories that carry her essence resist explanation. They aren’t meant to convince. They’re meant to awaken something that already exists; a quieter intelligence, a deeper listening, a remembering that doesn’t belong to a single lifetime or narrative.

Whether you call that wisdom divine, intuitive, ancestral, or simply human is entirely your choice.

Sophia doesn’t require a name to be present.

She’s already moving through the story; and through us. Whether we’re ready to notice her or not.