On November 23, The Sophia Institute invites you to a special Sophia Convocation to explore The Mysteries of Sophia, laying the groundwork for our collective return to a peaceful and harmonious way of life.

Sophia, which translates from Ancient Greek as “Divine Wisdom,” is powerful, ancient and timeless, representing the feminine aspect of the Divine. Sophia is the embodiment of wisdom, spirit, and consciousness. She has appeared in various spiritual and religious traditions throughout history, including Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism, Native American and other Indigenous cultures each interpreting and embodying her in unique ways. Sophia is the total inspiration behind The Sophia Institute.

Is it possible that we could return to peace if we work to bring the masculine and feminine energies of the world back into balance? What collective action can we envision if we move from this place of insight? Equipped with the teachings of Sophia, we gain the mastery to overcome the deeply rooted masculine-feminine imbalance of the patriarchy and to embark into an egalitarian future as beings of light, love, and wisdom.

Join The Sophia Institute on Saturday, November 23rd to explore the Mysteries of Sophia and the embodiment of Divine Wisdom in world spiritual traditions and potentially in our own lives.

The day-long program features:

– Lee Irwin, on The Mysteries of Sophia;
– Carolyn Rivers, on the the re-emergence of Sophia in our time and her calling to found The Sophia Institute
– Lama Palden, on Tara as an aspect of the Great Wisdom Mother in Tibetan Buddhism;
– Dena Merriam, on Saraswati and Sita, Devas or Goddesses in the yogic tradition.

Join us for a dynamic day of exploration, applied theory, and practice as we explore the nature of our embodiment and the rising feminine consciousness in these times.

About the Program:

Dr. Lee Irwin on The Mysteries of Sophia:

In his presentation, Dr. Lee Irwin will focus on the Mysteries of Sophia, specifically on four aspects: incarnation, sacred marriage, world soul, and salvation through knowledge (gnosis). Each Mystery has unique aspects of sacred Presence which has long been part of the Sophiana traditions. The emphasis will be on the Wisdom attribute of Sophia as “loving intelligence” and “intuitive insight” arising from embodied, incarnational spirituality. For Sophiana, incarnation references the importance of embodiment, being fully committed to bodily life but also recognizing the mystery of body in the sense of its subtle energies, soul-field, and transphysical, paranormal perceptions. The sacred marriage (Hieros Gamos) refers to the importance of partnership, not only the erotic relation, but partnership as a sacred relation with all loved others, and in mystery, with the world-at-large, with all creatures, all beings. The sacred marriage is epitomized by the union of heart, mind, and soul, within, and in harmony with others, without, including those of the distant past and possible future.

The theme of World Soul (Anima Mundi) references the “sentient universe” that is, the living sense of nature and cosmos as imbued with tremendous vitality and feminized through Sophianic nurture, care, and preservation of life. Sophia teaches reverence for all life, to nurture and protect all beings and to bring those beings into the circle of love and wisdom through education, partnership, and spiritual practices. These practices culminate in the attainment of gnosis, that is salvation from unknowing, from faith to knowledge through direct experiential awareness. Salvation in the Sophianic sense is based on awakening to the sacred in everyday circumstances, to see spirit in the world, throughout the world, and as uplifting sentience to new vistas of perception and sacred awareness. Such awakening is a Sophianic call, to seek illumination of heart-mind-soul in the context of celebrating life and in loving partnership to expand the many shared circles of Wisdom. The presentation will include a guided meditation, slides, inquiry into the meaning of wisdom and its mysteries, and questions and response.

Lama Palden on Tara, The Great Wisdom Mother:

Lama Palden will teach and transmit a Buddhist aspect of the Great Wisdom Mother, called Tara. Green Tara, the blue-green color of a deep high mountain lake, has been very important in the Tibetan and Himalayan regions for over 13 centuries. She is considered an embodiment of wisdom. She manifests as the Mother of All Buddhas. We will discuss Tara’s qualities, attributes, and explore her 21 manifestations that have different energies and activities. Participants will learn about her capacity to remove anxiety, fear, and obstacles, her bestowal of blessing and transmission of awakened body, speech, and mind, as well as about her embodiment of the full spectrum awakened feminine with her 21 manifestations. For example, Tara is both beautiful and fierce, she is the Awakened Mother and she is a sexual being. Slides of Tara and her manifestations will help us to become more familiar with her.

Lama Palden will lead us in a meditation in order for us to directly feel Tara’s presence, blessing, soothing presence, and to connect with her, the Divine Mother, the essence of unconditional love and wisdom. Connecting with Tara helps to reveal to us our own innate awakened feminine, our sacred wisdom, unconditional love, and pure being. We will inquire into the relevance of Tara and her 21 forms for us personally.

Dena Merriam on Living in the Presence of the Devis, or Goddesses

What do we mean when we talk about the Devi, the Goddess, and what does it mean to live in the company of that living presence?

In the yogic tradition there are three essential powers, forces, the enable the manifestation of the multiple universes, that animate the visible as well as the invisible realms.  There is a creative energy, or thought energy, which brings all that is into existence, stirring movement out of the original unmoving state.  There is a power that maintains the order, balancing and preserving all that has been created.   And there is a transformative power, which allows what has been created to change and evolve, awakening the insentient into the sentient, and the sentient into greater degrees of sentience.  These powers have both what we might call masculine and feminine attributes and are active at every moment.  Without them, there would be nothing, no manifestation at all.

As it is without, so it is within.  The outer world is but a project of the inner, a mirror reflection.  These powers exist at the micro level, within each one of us, while at the same time, they exist at the universal or macro level, maintaining star systems, creating new ones, and helping to awaken us.  That is why it is said the universe exists within.  The devis are cosmic forces that animate galaxies, while at the same time they awaken our hearts, granting intuitive wisdom and helping us to meet the challenges of daily life.

In the yogic tradition, we see the feminine aspect of the creative Wisdom power, the intuitive mind, as the Devi Saraswati.  The power that maintains and upholds the universe through the divine magnetism called love is Devi Lakshmi, or Narayani.  And the power that transforms, that helps us overcome all obstacles, that evolves and awakens, has many names.  We can know her as Kali or Durga.  She is strength, courage and the power of will, that which conquers and helps us overcome harmful patterns and attributes.

Unknowingly, we live with these Devis, as they reside within us, but too often we do not recognize their presence in our lives.  How do we become more aware, awakening their specific energies when we need them.  As they awaken within us, we can see their beautiful forms as they manifest around us. They are real and we can live in their presence.  In this session I will describe experiences with each one, but focus more on Saraswati Devi, the creative Wisdom power so much in need now as we strive to create a more enlightened world community.

Carolyn Rivers

Carolyn Rivers will share her own mystical experience of  Sophia, her learning of the existence of Sophia in the ancient world, later marginalized by the patriarchy in early formalized Christianity, and now re-discovered in our time.  Remembered in only a few places in the Bible, Sophia is found more vividly in the Gnostic Gospels, in mystics such as Hildegard of Bingen, Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Merton, Matthew Fox  and others, and in  many authors writing in the last couple of centuries, including Rudolph Steiner, the Russian Sophiologists, and contemporary Jungians such as Marion Woodman, Jean Shinoda Bolen, and others.  She will speak to her learnings and out of that her ultimate call to found The Sophia Institute. At the center of the great movements, Divine Wisdom can be found, calling us to healing and “wholing” ourselves and our world, to partnership rather than domination, to re-sacralizing our relationship with Nature,  and to honoring our common humanity and the sacred at the center of life.

About Our Presenters:

Dr. Lee Irwin

Dr. Lee Irwin is an emeritus Professor of Religious Studies, now retired from the Department of Religion at the College of Charleston where he taught world religions with an emphasis on Native American traditions, western esotericism, hermeticism, contemporary spirituality, mystical cosmology, and transpersonal religious experience as related to dreams and visions. He is a founding member of the Association for the Study of Esotericism (ASE) and of Hieros: Honoring  Sacred Space. He is also a current a member of the Sufi Inayati Order and the Ancient Mystical Order of Rosicrucians. He has been a workshop leader, group facilitator, and public speaker for over thirty years, particularly in the areas of mediation, visionary cosmology, mystical dreams, and the development of the sacred human. He is the author of over 60 articles and 10 books, most recently: Dreams Beyond Time: On Sacred Encounter and Spiritual Transformation (Lexington Press 2022); Sophos Ontology: On Post-Traditional Spirituality (Lexington Press 2024), as well as his forthcoming publication, The Divine Feminine Gnosis: The Lesser and Greater Mysteries of Sophia (Inner Traditions 2025)

Lama Palden

Lama Palden has been a student and practitioner of Buddhism for over 35 years, and of Comparative Mysticism for over 40 years. She is the founding teacher of Sukhasiddhi Foundation in Marin County, California, a Tibetan Buddhist center in the Shangpa Kagyu lineage and co-founder of Zen Heart Vajra Heart, a Zen teacher and personal disciple of Suzuki Roshi’s. She also co-founded the Feminine Wisdom School, dedicated to helping actualize the deep feminine wisdom for individuals and for humanity as a whole. The school just completed a year-long pilot program entitled “Unfolding the Sacred Feminine.” Also a licensed therapist, Lama Palden is engaged in facilitating psycho-spiritual integration and development

Dena Merriam

Ms. Merriam began working in the interfaith movement in the late 1990s when she served as Vice Chair of the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders held at the United Nation in New York.  She subsequently convened a meeting of women religious and spiritual leaders at the Palais des Nations in Geneva and from that gathering founded the Global Peace Initiative of Women (GPIW) in 2002, an organization chaired by a multi-faith group of women spiritual leaders.  The original mission of this organization was to enable women to facilitate healing and reconciliation in areas of conflict and post-conflict, and to bring spiritual resources to help address critical global problems.  In its early years GPIW organized dialogues in many regions of conflict, primarily with women, but due to great interest among men to join this work, GPIW soon moved to a more inclusive model, fostering greater gender balance and harmony.  At the same time, it’s work in peacebuilding expanded beyond open conflict to fostering new models of development, inclusive and sustainable, addressing the inner or spiritual dimensions of the climate crisis, and to awakening humanity to the often-forgotten sense of awe, respect and reverence for earth and her life systems.

In 2008, Ms. Merriam became one of the founding members of the Contemplative Alliance, an initiative to bring together contemplative practitioners from across traditions to demonstrate how the mainstreaming of contemplative practice is changing the American spiritual landscape and can ultimately contribute to the positive transformation of American society.  Her work today focuses on the shifts in consciousness, the awakening that will bring about a more evolved world community.

For over five decades, Dena Merriam has been a student of the Hindu Master Paramahansa Yogananda and a practitioner of Kriya Yoga meditation.  She is also a long-time student of the great texts of the Vedic tradition.  Ms. Merriam received her master’s degree from Columbia University and over the years has served on various boards, including the Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions, the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy, The Interfaith Center of New York, Seven Pillars, the Manitou Foundation, the All India Movement (AIM) for Seva, and the Hindu American Foundation.  She has served as an advisor to the board of Dharma Drum Mountain Buddhist Association, and has been on the advisory council of The Gross National Happiness Center in Bhutan.  Currently she is the Chair of the International Advisory Council for the Auroville Foundation in India. In 2014 Dena was awarded the Niwano Peace Prize by the Niwano Peace Foundation in Japan for her many years of commitment to interfaith dialogue. Dena is the author of My Journey Through Time:  A Spiritual Memoir of Life, Death and Rebirth, The Untold Story of Sita, When the Bright Moon Rises: Awakening of Ancient Memories, Rukmini & the Turning of Time, and To Dance with Dakinis. Dena often gives book readings and speaks to groups on subjects related to the themes of her books.

Carolyn Rivers

Carolyn Rivers founded The Sophia Institute based in Charleston, South Carolina in 2001. She serves as both the organization’s spiritual and executive director. As a visionary, convener and teacher, her work centers on personal and societal transformation that fosters the rise of the Feminine, cultivating wisdom, mindfulness, and well-being, for a more just, regenerative, flourishing world for all people. Over the years Carolyn has worked professionally with many of the most renowned transpersonal leaders of our time, many of whom are now part of the faculty of The Sophia Institute.

Carolyn has cultivated a nationally and internationally recognized faculty and National Advisory Board of thought leaders and experts on a broad range of personal transformational and spiritual topics. Participants join programs at The Sophia Institute from the local Charleston area, all 50 states and 47 countries around the world.

The Sophia Institute’s core work for personal transformation and the initiative for social transformation focus on fostering a more egalitarian world where power with, rather than power over, becomes a way of living and being on the earth that honors our interdependence and our shared humanity. The work of The Sophia Institute is centered in personal and societal transformation and care and protection for all people and for Mother Earth.