Names are more than labels in the Book of Esther; they are artefacts of empire, memory, ethnicity, religion, and resistance. The woman at the centre of this story carries not one name but two: Hadassah and Esther. Both names hold a world of meanings, each reflecting the competing identities she navigates. Esther and Hadassah form a powerful artefact that encodes survival strategies, imperial pressure, and the enduring legacy of agency under patriarchy. Esther's Hebrew name, Hadassah, is...

Before patriarchy erased her, people envisioned the Wisdom of God, Sophia, as female. She danced through creation, cried out in the streets, and stood beside God at the dawn of the world.

In reclaiming Sophia’s story, we recover an ancient affirmation of the divine feminine—a voice of insight, comfort, and revolutionary presence.

Sophia at the Beginning

In Proverbs 8, Sophia speaks of herself as preexistent:

“When [God] marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master...