Pistis Sophia

Pistis Sophia is a late Gnostic scripture, preserved in Coptic and composed in early Christian Egypt, presenting extended revelations delivered by the risen Jesus to his disciples. Elaborate and visionary, it maps a complex cosmos of luminous realms and aeons through which souls must pass, and dwells at length on the means of their ascent.

At its heart is the drama of the soul named Sophia, who falls from her place among the realms of light into confusion and suffering, and is redeemed through repentance and the aid of her saviour. Her story stands as a figure for the soul's larger condition: existence is portrayed as a descent of consciousness into forgetfulness, and salvation as a reawakening to its true origin in the light.

For a study of mind, the text frames the whole of existence as a movement of consciousness between forgetting and remembering. By casting the spiritual predicament as one of lost knowledge to be recovered, and redemption as the soul's reawakening to where it came from, it joins the Gnostic conviction that liberation turns upon the restoration of inner knowing rather than outward observance.