From Barbara Walker's The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
Idea
"Inner-Goddess." Occult traditon said an idea emanated from the Female Soul of the World (Shakti, Shekina, Psyche, Sophia, etc.). Her "ideas" were like personal Muses, "which forms she did in the Heavens above the Stars frame to herself."(1)
Medieval theologians disliked the Idea's feminine connotations and trned away from the ancient theory of the eide to the astral theology of Aristotle, that is, to astrological determinaton of thoughts.(2) Feminine "idea" was replaced by masculine "concept," which used to mean the same as conception, from Latin concipere semina, a gathering-up of semen.(3)
Early Christian Gnostics however regarded God the Creator as a mere demiurge, child of the Mother who created in his mind all the "ideas" he used to make things in the material world. His sin was that he arrogantly claimed all these ideas to be his own, because "he was ignorant of the ideas of whatever he created and of the Mother herself."(4) This notion that God was guilty of the sin of hubris against the Goddess recurred again and again among early Gnostic sects, until the orthodox church declared the notion heretical and forcibly changed the minds of its adherents.
Notes:
(1) Agrippa, 65.
(2) Lindsay, O.A., 102.
(3) Potter & Sargent, 224.
(4) Jonas, 191.
Idea
"Inner-Goddess." Occult traditon said an idea emanated from the Female Soul of the World (Shakti, Shekina, Psyche, Sophia, etc.). Her "ideas" were like personal Muses, "which forms she did in the Heavens above the Stars frame to herself."(1)
Medieval theologians disliked the Idea's feminine connotations and trned away from the ancient theory of the eide to the astral theology of Aristotle, that is, to astrological determinaton of thoughts.(2) Feminine "idea" was replaced by masculine "concept," which used to mean the same as conception, from Latin concipere semina, a gathering-up of semen.(3)
Early Christian Gnostics however regarded God the Creator as a mere demiurge, child of the Mother who created in his mind all the "ideas" he used to make things in the material world. His sin was that he arrogantly claimed all these ideas to be his own, because "he was ignorant of the ideas of whatever he created and of the Mother herself."(4) This notion that God was guilty of the sin of hubris against the Goddess recurred again and again among early Gnostic sects, until the orthodox church declared the notion heretical and forcibly changed the minds of its adherents.
Notes:
(1) Agrippa, 65.
(2) Lindsay, O.A., 102.
(3) Potter & Sargent, 224.
(4) Jonas, 191.
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