“Ave Hypatia,

You taught us of The One, Immeasurable Mind, so do we hold you in ours.

Alike our tradition and our Lady Sophia, you were  cruelly torn down and obscured.

To restore our Sacred Church and to reconcile our souls with the divine, we do this in your name and honour.

We restore your image, O manifestation of Sophia Hagion.

We shall carry the torch of illumination you have passed unto us.”

Above is the prayer we use at the beginning of our Narthex, encapsulating why we attribute her name and patronage to our group.

Hypatia was a Neoplatonist Philosopher living in Alexandria and born between 350-370 AD, she taught Pagans and Christians alike, with the central philosophy being the approach of ‘The One’, a higher mind and reality reached through contemplation and understanding of Platonic forms.

During the times of her teachings, Alexandria was embroiled with Religious and Political strife. While some early Christian denominations exalted women from their status of subservience under Roman rule, others continued to enforce female submission and diminish women’s roles in Christianity, such as the Apostle Mary. The Church in Alexandria was in the hands of the Patriarch Cyril, who was an extremist with he and his followers growing more zealous and more violent, destroying Pagan temples, burning books and destroying icons. Their zealotry turned to the teacher Hypatia, whose Neoplatonism was branded as Paganism, culminating with a mob pulling her from her chariot and violently murdering her.

So why do we as a Christian group, use her name and patronage? The answer to this is within our opening prayer.

Hypatia is a shining icon of feminine Wisdom, an archetype upheld within Gnosticism as presented in our opening prayer:

“We restore your image, O manifestation of Sophia Hagion.”
Just as Sophia shines through in the Wisdom of all teachers, she is especially exemplified in Hypatia.
Sophia in the Gnostic myth is the feminine redeemer, the counterpart to Christ, and an essential archetype in the currents of early Christianity that we strive to be a continuation of.
“Alike our tradition and our Lady Sophia, you were  cruelly torn down and obscured.”
Gnosticism and by extension Sophia, were largely overshadowed and discarded by competing dogmatic and patriarchal Churches, such as the one that produced the zealots in Alexandria. We see the suppression of the Feminine in the exoteric sense, like the murder of Hypatia, as the mirroring of the esoteric obscuration of the Feminine Wisdom.

Lastly, we uphold her name as an act of distinction and reconciliation. We wish to distinguish ourselves as Christians from those who use the religion to preach and cause violence, as well as ensure we counterbalance the overly masculine expression of exoteric Christianity. The reconciliation we desire, is the expression of the True Catholic Church. Catholic etymologically means ‘Universal’, alike Hypatia’s students whom she taught regardless of expression of faith or creed, we wish to hold a sacred space where all humanity is welcome to approach the ‘The One’.

It should be noted that all thoughts provided above are my own and not official AJC doctrine, which is provided in ‘The statement of principles’.

Written by Angus Wallace – Sol in Libra, 2025 Anno Domini