Representations of the “feminine universe” in the Laozi and Jane Lead’s visions of Sophia

Abstract

This article aims to compare the feminisation of the cosmos in the Laozi (Dao De Jing) with that in the spiritual and esoteric writings by the seventeenth-century mystic Jane Lead (also Jane Leade, 1624–1704), based on Erich Neumann’s “the Great Mother” archetype. My study suggests that both authors celebrated female-centred cosmology, though the cosmos’ femininity is portrayed in different ways. In the Laozi, the sage-like narrator creates the image of ‘the Great Mother’ to illustrate the creative energy of the cosmos, while Lead, as Julie Hirst points out in Jane Leade: Biography of a Seventeenth-Century Mystic (2005), develops visions of “Virgin Sophia” in Fountain of Gardens (V.2, 1697) and The Wonders of God’s Creation (1696), referring to the image of Sophia as the “virgin body” of God, who revealed the secrets of the cosmos to her. By comparing and contrasting the two authors’ narratives about a “female universe,” I hope to explore the ways in which both challenged the established male-centred cosmology in their societies through a cross-cultural critical approach.