In Jewish Kabbalah the Feminine Aspect of God is refered to as Shekinah. In Christian Gnosticism the Feminine Aspect of God is refered to as Barbelo (Holy Spirit). Sophia (Wisdom) is also Female and is the "Wisdom of God" and is present in both Old and New Testaments as personified and female, and is present in both Kabbalah and Gnostic Traditions. Sophia's Offspring is Zoe (Life) and is the consort of Adam Kadmon (Old Testament God). Interesting, as Adam's wife is Eve (Life). Adam means Humanity, Eve means Life.
The Ten Sephiroth of Jewish Kabbalah include both masculine and feminine qualities. Right side masculine, left side feminine. Jewish Kabbalah pays a great deal of attention to the feminine aspects of God.
Christian Gnosticism portrays God as Father, Mother and Son, a Trinity in which the Holy Spirit is identified as female, e.g. Apocryphon of John 2:9-14. For further reading on female divinities in Gnosticism, see Pagels, pp. 48-69.
From Gnosis.Org:
"The Gnostic Christians did not read Genesis as history with a moral, but as a myth with a meaning. To them, Adam and Eve were not actual historical figures, but representatives of two intrapsychic principles within every human being. Adam was the dramatic embodiment of psyche, or soul, while Eve stood for the pneuma, or spirit. Soul, to the Gnostics, meant the embodiment of the emotional and thinking functions of the personality, while spirit represented the human capacity for spiritual consciousness. The former was the lesser self (the ego of depth psychology), the latter the transcendental function, or the "higher self," as it is sometimes known. Obviously, Eve, then, is by nature superior to Adam, rather than his inferior as implied by orthodoxy.
Nowhere is Eve's superiority and numinous power more evident than in her role as Adam's awakener. Adam is in a deep sleep, from which Eve's liberating call arouses him. While the orthodox version has Eve physically emerge from Adam's body, the Gnostic rendering has the spiritual principle known as Eve emerging from the unconscious depths of the somnolent Adam. Before she thus emerges into liberating consciousness.
Eve calls forth to the sleeping Adam in the following manner, as stated by the Gnostic Apocryphon of John:
I entered into the midst of the dungeon which is the prison of the body. And I spoke thus: "He who hears, let him arise from the deep sleep." And then he (Adam) wept and shed tears. After he wiped away his bitter tears he spoke, asking: "Who is it that calls my name, and whence has this hope come unto me, while I am in the chains of this prison?" And I spoke thus: "I am the Pronoia of the pure light; I am the thought of the undefiled spirit. . . . Arise and remember . . . and follow your root, which is I . . . and beware of the deep sleep."
In another scripture from the same collection, entitled On the Origin of the World, we find further amplification of this theme. Here Eve whose mystical name is Zoe, meaning life, is shown as the daughter and messenger of the Divine Sophia, the feminine hypostasis of the supreme Godhead:
Sophia sent Zoe, her daughter, who is called "Eve," as an instructor in order that she might raise up Adam, in whom there is no spiritual soul so that those whom he could beget might also become vessels of light. When Eve saw her companion, who was so much like her, in his cast down condition she pitied him, and she exclaimed: "Adam, live! Rise up upon the earth!" Immediately her words produced a result for when Adam rose up, right away he opened his eyes. When he saw her, he said: "You will be called 'mother of the living', because you are the one who gave me life."
Therefore, Adam (Humanity) is Spiritually Liberated by Eve (Life). As in Spiritual Life.
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