‘The Wings of the Spirit’: Exploring Feminine Symbolism in Early Pneumatology: A Reassessment of a Key Metaphor in the Spiritual Teachings of the ‘Macarian Homilies’ in the Light of Early Syriac Christian Tradition

The book explores the rich symbolism of the Holy Spirit as a mother bird

with hovering wings within early Syriac sacramental liturgies,

proto-monastic rites of initiation, hymnody and teaching on prayer and

spiritual states of inspiration and contemplation. The author traces

these influences into the Greek writings of the Fourth Century

Mesopotamian ascetic teacher and writer of the ‘Macarian Homilies’.

Macarian pneumatology was known to have influenced the Cappadocian

brothers, Basil and Gregory, in the period leading up to the addition of

the clause on the Holy Spirit to the Nicene Creed. By demonstrating a

cultural and religious dialogue between the Cappadocians and Macarian

and Syriac teaching on the Holy Spirit, Julie Hopkins challenges the

current scholarship which claims that the Cappadocian appropriation of

the wings of the Spirit metaphor derived from the Platonic wings of

the soul . In her study, the agency and functions of the Syriac feminine

Holy Spirit were appropriated by Gregory of Nyssa in his mystical

writings as a powerful verbal ikon, even though the gender was lost in

translation.