Jungfrau Sophia, the Virgin Wisdom
The Virgin Sophia as the central motif, filed under the Crown, with the Hand, Fire, the Heavens and the Sun and the Moon in a secondary part. From Gemma Sapientiae et Prudentiae, c. 1735.
What is happening
Symbolica, 2026 The manuscript's German, put into English here: The Virgin Sophia, the heavenly and earthly Eve, the mother of all creatures.
Wellcome Collection, 2026 “p. 52. Jungfrau Sophia = Geh Fig., fol. 46.”
Wellcome Collection, 2026 “Four of the illustrations have considerable likenesses to those in the 'Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer', originally published at Altona in 1785-1788.”
Key · 5 motifs
Tap a motif on the picture, or a line below. Its note opens under the line, with the reading its author gave it.
- Primary motif
- Secondary motifs · 4
The picture
A hand-coloured page: a crowned naked woman with long hair, a sceptre in her right hand and a globe lettered Archaeus with the four elements in her left, a flame at her womb holding a gold disc lettered Figura Divina, standing behind a great wheel of fire, starry heaven, zodiac and earth, with small coloured circles floating round her and three small figures of the elements and planets along the foot; the Virgin Sophia as the central motif. By eye
The reading
The picture read whole, in the archive's words, from the sources quoted on the marks. Read on, and the picture follows: the motif under discussion keeps its colour.
The caption is the whole doctrine: Jungfrau Sophia, die Himmlische und Irdische Eva, die Mutter aller Creaturen. The Virgin Sophia, the heavenly and earthly Eve, the mother of all creatures. Sophia is Wisdom, who in the Book of Proverbs was with God before the world and in the Book of Wisdom is the breath of his power; in the German mystics of the seventeenth century, Jacob Boehme above all, she became a person, the bride the soul must find again. Here a writer of the 1730s paints her as a naked queen, and the Wellcome's catalogue matches the page to folio 46 of the Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer, printed fifty years later.
She is crowned and carries a sceptre, and a small cross hangs at her breast. The crown says she rules; the cross says under whom. The two Eves of the caption are both present in her, the earthly one who fell and the heavenly one through whom, in Boehme's teaching, the fall is undone.
In her left hand she holds up a globe lettered Archaeus, with fire, air, water and earth in four small discs round it. The archeus was Paracelsus' name for the hidden workman in every natural thing, the inner power that shapes it, and the four elements are its materials. Wisdom holds it the way a queen holds an orb: this is her realm, and it runs by her.
At her womb a red flame encloses a gold disc lettered Figura Divina, the divine figure. That is the title the same writer gave the page of the Godhead twenty-nine leaves earlier in the volume, the eye in the triangle. The manuscript is pointing from one of its pictures to another: what Wisdom carries in her body is the image of God, and you have already been shown it.
She stands behind the whole created world, drawn as a wheel: a rim of fire, the blue starry heaven, the twelve signs of the zodiac, and the earth at the centre in its rings of the elements. Four small coloured circles float in the air round her, and along the foot of the page three small figures count the world out: the four elements as four arrows turning, the seven planets as the corners of a figure, and a half-dark circle whose rays are numbered 1, 2, 3, 6 and 16, the writer's arithmetic of the elements.
The sun, with a face, sits at the top of the wheel where it touches her. It is the only planet given a body here; the others appear as signs. The mother of all creatures stands over the light they live by, and the picture is complete: God in her womb, nature in her hand, the world at her feet.
Decoded: every motif is marked, and each mark carries the reading its author gave it, quoted from the text, or says that it is observed on the picture and not read. The reading above is the archive's own, made from those sources and no others.
Completion, and in the Kabbalistic reading the first sephirah, the point at which the work is no longer yours.
In plain words She wears a crown and carries a sceptre: the Virgin Sophia, Wisdom, whom the caption calls the heavenly and earthly Eve and the mother of all creatures. This is the Wisdom of the Book of Proverbs and the Book of Wisdom, drawn as a queen.
The manuscript, c. 1735 “Jungfrau Sophia, die Himmlische und Irdische Eva, die Mutter aller Creaturen.”
Symbolica, 2026 The manuscript's German, put into English here: The Virgin Sophia, the heavenly and earthly Eve, the mother of all creatures.
The hand as a sign in itself: what it holds, where it points, which fingers are raised. On the Hand of the Mysteries every finger carries a sign of its own.
In plain words In her left hand she holds a globe lettered Archaeus, the word Paracelsus used for the hidden workman in nature that shapes every thing from within, with the four elements set round it: fire, air, water, earth. In her right she holds a sceptre. Wisdom rules, and Wisdom holds nature's engine.
The manuscript, c. 1735 “Archaeus. Feuer. Lufft. Wasser. Erde.”
Symbolica, 2026 The manuscript's German, put into English here: Archeus. Fire. Air. Water. Earth.
The manuscript, c. 1735 “Jungfrau Sophia, die Himmlische und Irdische Eva, die Mutter aller Creaturen.”
Symbolica, 2026 The manuscript's German, put into English here: The Virgin Sophia, the heavenly and earthly Eve, the mother of all creatures.
A count, a catastrophe, or the visible part of something that has no body. Note whether the flames are arranged in a number, breaking something, or standing where a figure would be.
In plain words At her womb a flame holds a golden disc lettered Figura Divina, the divine figure: the very title the manuscript gives its picture of the Godhead twenty-nine pages earlier. Wisdom carries God's image in her body, and the manuscript points from one of its pages to another to say so.
The manuscript, c. 1735 “Figura Divina.”
Symbolica, 2026 The manuscript's Latin, put into English here: The divine figure.
The manuscript, c. 1735 “Jungfrau Sophia, die Himmlische und Irdische Eva, die Mutter aller Creaturen.”
Symbolica, 2026 The manuscript's German, put into English here: The Virgin Sophia, the heavenly and earthly Eve, the mother of all creatures.
A diagram of everything, drawn so that a person can be found inside it. Note where the human figure stands in the scheme.
In plain words She stands behind a wheel of the whole created world, fire at its rim, then the starry heaven in blue, then the twelve signs of the zodiac, and the earth at the centre with the elements round it. Mother of all creatures, the caption says, and here are the creatures' house.
The manuscript, c. 1735 “Jungfrau Sophia, die Himmlische und Irdische Eva, die Mutter aller Creaturen.”
Symbolica, 2026 The manuscript's German, put into English here: The Virgin Sophia, the heavenly and earthly Eve, the mother of all creatures.
The manuscript, c. 1735 “Elementa.”
Symbolica, 2026 The manuscript's Latin, put into English here: The elements.
Gold, the perfected metal, and the illuminated intellect. The most overloaded symbol in the tradition.
In plain words The sun sits at the top of the wheel, with a face, just below her body: the light of the world placed where Wisdom meets the world she made.
The manuscript, c. 1735 “Jungfrau Sophia, die Himmlische und Irdische Eva, die Mutter aller Creaturen.”
Symbolica, 2026 The manuscript's German, put into English here: The Virgin Sophia, the heavenly and earthly Eve, the mother of all creatures.
Symbolica, 2026 The sun's face is the only planet drawn as a body on the wheel; the others are present as signs on the globe in her hand and in the seven-cornered figure at the foot of the page.
Also carrying the Crown
20 works carry it. The closest 6 are here. The symbol.
Where the detail is the subject
the Hand · Fire · the Heavens · the Sun and the Moon
Each of these is in the picture without being what it is about. Below, one work that is about each.
In the same series
Record
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