[2][3] Tau Malachi is the current lineage holder of the Sophian Gnostic tradition.
Although members claim that the lineage dates back to the 1700s,[4] the current tone of Ecclesia Pistis Sophia was revealed in the 1880s by Tau Miriam, an Englishwoman.
She initiated her protégé Tau Elijah,[5][6] who left England in the early twentieth century to establish the lineage in the Bay Area of Northern California.
In the 1960s, Tau Elijah retired from public teaching and initiating to live in the Lake Tahoe basin, where he died in the 1970s.
Other than Christian Kabbalah and the Gnostic Path, he has also studied and participated in Vajrayana Buddhism, Vedanta, Sufism, and Native American shamanism.