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This image above of a black goddess, the Gnostic 'Sophia-Achamoth', has profound significance. Gnosticism was a religious/philosophical movement of the 1rst - 4th centuries AD. Though this movement was made up of various groups, the earliest was a group of Jewish priests who, amazingly, developed a disgust for the God of Israel. According to the esoteric theology of the Jerusalem priesthood (which ended with the destruction of the temple in 70 AD), God was a divine man with a black body, called in the Hebrew Bible 'araphel' which means literally "thick blackness." According to this priestly theology, God at creation was originally a divine man of pure light, with a body of pure light called his 'kavod (Glory)'. Because the intensity of this light threatened to burn the material world, Elohim, the creator-God of Israel/the Bible, cloaked his luminous body, kavod, with an external black body, araphel. This black body served as a 'veil' to his luminous body, refracting the intense light so as to not burn up creation. This was the esoteric theology of the Jerusalem priesthood who, by the way, were responsible for the Hebrew Bible as we know it.Around the 1rst century, a particular circle of priests left the temple and revolted against the faith of their ancestors. They articulated a hatred for the God of Israel in particular. What was it about the God of their ancestors that they found so loathsome? Gnostic texts such the "Apocraphon of John," the "Hypostasis of the Archons," and "On the Origin of the World" leave no room to doubt: it was the material blackness of this God, or his body, that this group of priests revolted against. They had come under the spell of Greek philosophy. Particularly influential on their thinking was the Pythagorean Table of Opposites. According to Pythagoras, that which is characterized by light, spirit, and maleness was good, and that characterized by darkness, materiality, and femininity was bad: the two groups were antithetical. Thus, The God of Israel, with his black material body, was seen as evil. Because materiality was associated with femininity according to the Pythagorean Table of Opposites, these early Gnostics represented Yahweh-Elohim’s black material body as a black goddess, Sophia-Achamoth.This is part of the history of the Black mother Goddess that you wont get from Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code.