Skip Content
intro-img

The Eternal Feminine Draws Us on High

Notice: This event is not booking at the moment (see below).

Date: Thursday 2nd October 2025 Location: Online
Start time: 7:30pm End time: 9:30pm Type: Webinar Refreshments: NA

The Eternal Feminine Draws Us on High (Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan): Jacob Boehme, Sophia and the Eternal Feminine

In Hellenistic philosophy and in Judeo-Christian theology the figure of Sophia is a personification of Divine Wisdom. More recently, in Orthodox theology a school of Sophiology has emerged, building on the work of late nineteenth and early twentieth century thinkers as Vladimir Solovyov, Pavel Florensky, and Sergei Bulgakov. But the figure of Sophia can also be found in the thought of Jacob Boehme, the 400th anniversary of whose death (in 1624) falls in 2024 while the 450th anniversary of his birth (in 1575) falls in 2025. So now seems a good time to consider the role of Sophia in one of the most significant mystics of the Reformation era — whose ideas influenced, among others, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In the conclusion to the Second Part of Faust, we are given a glimpse of the post-mortem world as imagined by medieval Catholic theology in which Faust — in striking contrast to the original legend — finds redemption. In the final lines of Goethe’s drama, we are told, “The Eternal Feminine / Draws us on high”; can this celebrated conclusion help us understand the dynamic by which Sophia shares her divine grace?

 
Image: Personification of Wisdom (Koinē Greek: Σοφία, Sophía) at the Library of Celsus in Ephesus (second century)

Speaker: Paul Bishop

Paul Bishop, Ph.D. is a professor of German at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford University where he was a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Modern Languages, and spent a year as the Lady Julia Henry Fellow at Harvard. He earned his Ph.D. from Oxford in 1994 with the dissertation, C.G. Jung’s Reception of Friedrich Nietzsche, which was later published as the book, The Dionysian Self. For twelve years, he held the position of Professor of German at the University of Glasgow where he was involved with language and literature course design and delivery, research, writing, and international speaking. In 2013, he was named the William Jacks Chair in Modern Languages at the university’s School of Modern Languages & Cultures. He underwent internal coach training, received a diploma in translation, and was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Linguists. Professor Bishop has worked widely on different aspects of analytical psychology and its place in intellectual history. His books examine the history of ideas with an emphasis on Jung, Nietzsche, and Ludwig Klages. He is the editor of numerous volumes including Jung in Contexts, The Persistence of Myth as Symbolic Form, A Companion to Goethe’s Faust, and The Descent of the Soul & the Archaic. He is the author of more books than I could possibly name. They include Jung’s Answer to Job, Nietzsche’s The Anti-Christ, the two-volume series Analytical Psychology & German Classical Aesthetics, and his latest, Reading Plato through Jung: Why Must the Third become the Fourth? (books linked below) In 2020, he presented the Zürich Lecture Series, Reading Goethe at Midlife: Ancient Wisdom, German Classicism, and Jung, at the International School of Analytical Psychology in Zürich. (Note: This is somewhat cleared up during the interview.) And in 2022, he presented his essay, “The Red Book & Other Searchers for the Soul: The Case of Klages & Jung,” at the Eranos Conference, Jung’s Red Book for Our Time: Searching for Soul in the 21st Century, published as Volume 5 in the book series by Chiron. Professor Bishop is a former member of the Advisory Board of Spring: Journal of Archetype & Culture and is currently on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Jungian Studies, and the Special Advisory Board of the Journal of Analytical Psychology.