The Perennial Sophia

Not sure about it's meaning, but damn is it beautiful!

It's based on gnostic ideas, largely Christian but also derived from Greek mystery cults. Basically, the mystery cult relies on gnosis (direct, personal knowing of divinity, similar to enlightenment) for its practitioners, who receive important secret wisdom from the gnosis experience. The Greeks had a mystery cult devoted to Orpheus, and later on early Christians picked up the idea.

Gnostic Christianity holds that the true God (from which Christ comes) has a female aspect, a divinity known as Sophia, whose name means "wisdom" -- to know her through gnosis is literally to be enlightened about the true, dual nature of divinity and the true nature of the universe. One of her titles is "Revealer of Perfect Mysteries," meaning she's the ideal figure for a mystery cult to revolve around.

"Shekinah" is repeated several times because it refers to the idea of the "in-dwelling" of the divine Spirit in the believer. Gnosticism holds that there is a dual nature to reality, the crude world of matter, and the luminous world of spirit. Our souls, the divine spark of the Spirit within us, are trapped within our flesh and the deceptive material world, which blinds us to the true nature of the universe. By achieving gnosis, we can escape from the material world and become one with the spiritual when we die. The failure of "normal" Christianity is to acknowledge only the masculine half of the divine; knowledge of Sophia is required for gnosis as well.

Adding to the well informed comment above me, The Shekinah (Shechina, Shekhinah, etc.) is a known concept in Judaism that, much like the Gnostic/Hellenistic Sophia, refers to a feminine aspect of God, that exists in all things. Originating in Jewish writings of the early middle ages, The Shekhinah was mayhap (read: likely) borrowed from the Idea of Sophia, or perhaps older eastern concepts like Shakti (also an omnipresent female embodiment of divine energy).

Lilith is a figure from Jewish kabballism, although her name actually translates literally to "night." In modern paganism, she is thought of as symbolizing an empowered female, generally including sexual empowerment and independence. A painting of Lilith by John Collier, who was strongly antagonistic toward mainstream Christianity, refers to this perception.

It is really a frontal assault on the madonna-whore complex. The madonna-whore complex is an impairment, in men's ability to think about a woman, in which some men are incapable of both being sexually attracted to a woman and also respecting her as a person. This song, on the other hand, elevates a sexually desirable and empowered woman to a state of reverence, heralding even an outright sexually predatory female as being deserving not only of esteem but perhaps even of reverence.

The band is based in Sweden, and Swedish women are among the most empowered in the entire world if not THE most empowered in the entire world. Furthermore, songwriters in the heavy metal genre are notoriously liberal compared with the rest of their cultures, and one making references to a notoriously feminist symbol in modern paganism, a thousand times moreso.

Anything these people write is probably a deliberate and direct slap in the face of mainstream conservative Christianity's concepts of morality. It is designed to instill mortal fear in conservative Lutherans in a culture in which religion, especially conservative interpretations of it, is on the defensive, on the ropes, and halfway unconscious.

That's awesome you guys! Thanks :D