Lilith
I. Demon
is a mythological
female Mesopotamian storm demon associated with wind and was thought to be a
bearer of disease, illness, and death. The figure of Lilith first appeared in a
class of wind and storm demons or spirits as Lilitu, in Sumer, circa 3000 BC.
Many scholars place the origin of the phonetic name "Lilith" at
somewhere around 700 BC.[1] Lilith appears as a night demon in Jewish lore and
as a screech owl in the King James version of the Bible. She is also apocryphally
the first wife of Adam.
A female demon of
the night who supposedly flies around searching for newborn children either to
kidnap or strangle them. Also, she sleeps with men to seduce them into
propagating demon sons. Legends told about Lilith are ancient. The rabbinical
myths of Lilith being Adam's first wife seem to relate to the Sumero-Babylonian
Goddess Belit-ili, or Belili. To the Canaanites, Lilith was Baalat, the
"Divine Lady." On a tablet from Ur, ca. 2000 BCE, she was addressed
as Lillake.
II. First Wife of Adam Legend
One story is that
God created Adam and Lilith as twins joined together at the back. She demanded
equality with Adam, failing to achieve it, she left him in anger. This is
sometimes accompanied by a Muslim legend that after leaving Adam Lilith slept
with Satan, thus creating the demonic Djinn.
In another
version of the myth of Lilith, she was Adam's first wife before Eve. Adam
married her because he became tired of coupling with animals, a common
Middle-Eastern herdsmen practice, though the Old Testament declared it a sin
(Deuteronomy 27:21). Adam tried to make Lilith lie beneath him during sexual
intercourse. Lilith would not meet this demand of male dominance. She cursed
Adam and hurried to her home by the Red Sea.
Adam complained
to God who then sent three angels, Sanvi, Sansanvi and Semangelaf, to bring
Lilith back to Eden. Lilith rebuffed the angels by cursing them. While by the
Red Sea Lilith became a lover to demons and producing 100 babies a day. The
angels said that God would take these demon children away from her unless she
returned to Adam. When she did not return, she was punished accordingly. And,
God also gave Adam the docile Eve.
According to some
Lilith's fecundity and sexual preferences showed she was a Great Mother of
settled agricultural tribes, who resisted the invasions of the nomadic
herdsmen, represented by Adam. It is felt the early Hebrews disliked the Great
Mother who drank the blood of Abel, the herdsman, after being slain by the
elder god of agriculture and smithcraft, Cain (Genesis 4:11). Lilith's Red Sea
is but another version of Kali Ma's Ocean of Blood, which gave birth to all
things but needed periodic sacrificial replenishment.
Speculation is
that perhaps there was a connection between Lilith and the Etruscan divinity
Lenith, who possessed no face and waited at the gate of the underworld along
with Eita and Persipnei (Hecate and Persephone) to receive the souls of the
dead. The underworld gate was a yoni, and also a lily, which had "no
face." Admission into the underworld was frequently mythologized as a
sexual union. (see Tantrism) The lily or lilu (lotus) was the Great Mother's
flower-yoni, whose title formed Lilith's name.
Even though the
story of Lilith disappeared from the canonical Bible, her daughters the lilim
haunted men for over a thousand years. It was well into that Middle Ages that
Jews still manufactured amulets to keep away the lilim. Supposedly they were
lusty she-demons who copulated with men in all their dreams, causing nocturnal
emissions.
The Greeks adopted
the belief of the lilim, calling them Lamiae, Empusae (Forcers-In), or
Daughters of Hecate. Likewise the Christians adopted the belief, calling them
harlots of hell, or succubi, the counterpart of the incubi. Celebrant monks
attempted to fend them off by sleeping with their hands over their genitals,
clutching a crucifix.
Even though most
of the Lilith legend is derived from Jewish folklore, descriptions of the
Lilith demon appear in Iranian, Babylonian, Mexican, Greek, Arab, English,
German, Oriental and Native American legends. Also, she sometimes has been
associated with legendary and mythological characters such as the Queen of
Sheba and Helen of Troy. In medieval Europe she was proclaimed to be the wife,
concubine or grandmother of Satan.
Men who experienced
nocturnal emissions during their sleep believed they had been seduced by Lilith
and said certain incantations to prevent the offspring from becoming demons. It
was thought each time a pious Christian had a wet dream, Lilith laughed. It was
believed that Lilith was assisted in her bloodthirsty nocturnal quests by
succubi, who gathered with her near the "mountains of darkness" to
frolic with her demon lover Samael, whole name means "poison of God"
(sam-el). The Zohar, the principal work of the Kabbalah, describes Lilith's
powers at their height during the waning of the moon.
According to
legend Lilith's attraction for children comes from the belief that God took her
demon children from her when she did not return to Adam. It was believed that
she launched a reign of terror against women in childbirth and newborn infants,
especially boys. However, it also was believed that the three angels who were
sent to fetch her by the Red Sea forced her to swear that whenever she saw
their names or images on amulets that she would leave the infants and mothers
alone.
These beliefs
continued for centuries. As late as the 18th century, it was a common practice
in many cultures to protect new mothers and their infants with amulets against
Lilith. Males were most vulnerable during the first week of life, girls during
the first three weeks. Sometimes a magic circle was drawn around the
lying-in-bed, with a charm inscribed with the names of the three angels, Adam
and Eve and the words "barring Lilith" or "protect this newborn
child from all harm." Frequently amulets were place in the four corners
and throughout the bedchamber. If a child laughed while sleeping, it was taken
as a sign that Lilith was present. Tapping the child on the nose, it was
believed, made her go away.
III. From biblical texts:
(a) Having
decided to give Adam a helpmeet lest he should be alone of his kind, God put
him into a deep sleep, removed one of his ribs, formed it into a woman, and
closed up the wound, Adam awoke and said: 'This being shall be named
"Woman", because she has been taken out o f man. A man and a woman
shall be one flesh.' The title he gave her was Eve, 'the Mother of All
Living''. [1]
(b) Some say that God created man and
woman in His own image on the Sixth Day, giving them charge over the world;
[2] but that Eve did not yet
exist. Now, God had set Adam to name every beast, bird and other living thing.
When they passed before him in pairs, male and female, Adam-being already like
a twenty-year-old man-felt jealous of their loves, and though he tried coupling
with each female in turn, found no satisfaction in the act. He therefore cried:
'Every creature but I has a proper matel', and prayed God would remedy this
injustice. [3]
(c) God then formed Lilith, the first
woman, just as He had formed Adam, except that He used filth and sediment
instead of pure dust. From Adam's union with this demoness, and with another
like her named Naamah, Tubal Cain's sister, sprang Asmodeus and innumerable
demons that still plague mankind. Many generations later, Lilith and Naamah
came to Solomon's judgement seat, disguised as harlots of Jerusalem'. [4]
(d) Adam and Lilith never found peace
together; for when he wished to lie with her, she took offence at the recumbent
posture he demanded. 'Why must I lie beneath you?' she asked. 'I also was made
from dust, and am therefore your equal.' Because Adam tried to compel her
obedience by force, Lilith, in a rage, uttered the magic name of God, rose into
the air and left him.
Adam complained
to God: 'I have been deserted by my helpmeet' God at once sent the angels
Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof to fetch Lilith back. They found her beside the
Red Sea, a region abounding in lascivious demons, to whom she bore lilim at the
rate of more than one hundred a day. 'Return to Adam without delay,' the angels
said, `or we will drown you!' Lilith asked: `How can I return to Adam and live
like an honest housewife, after my stay beside the Red Sea?? 'It will be death
to refuse!' they answered. `How can I die,' Lilith asked again, `when God has
ordered me to take charge of all newborn children: boys up to the eighth day of
life, that of circumcision; girls up to the twentieth day. None the less, if
ever I see your three names or likenesses displayed in an amulet above a
newborn child, I promise to spare it.' To this they agreed; but God punished
Lilith by making one hundred of her demon children perish daily; [5] and if she
could not destroy a human infant, because of the angelic amulet, she would
spitefully turn against her own. [6]
(e) Some say that Lilith ruled as queen
in Zmargad, and again in Sheba; and was the demoness who destroyed job's sons.
[7] Yet she escaped the curse of death which overtook Adam, since they had
parted long before the Fall. Lilith and Naamah not only strangle infants but
also seduce dreaming men, any one of whom, sleeping alone, may become their
victim. [8]
(f) Undismayed by His failure to give
Adam a suitable helpmeet, God tried again, and let him watch while he built up
a woman's anatomy: using bones, tissues, muscles, blood and glandular
secretions, then covering the whole with skin and adding tufts of hair in
places. The sight caused Adam such disgust that even when this woman, the First
Eve, stood there in her full beauty, he felt an invincible repugnance. God knew
that He had failed once more, and took the First Eve away. Where she went,
nobody knows for certain. [9]
(g) God tried a third time, and acted
more circumspectly. Having taken a rib from Adam's side in his sleep, He formed
it into a woman; then plaited her hair and adorned her, like a bride, with
twenty-four pieces of jewellery, before waking him. Adam was entranced. [10]
(h) Some say that
God created Eve not from Adam's rib, but from a tail ending in a sting which
had been part of his body. God cut this off, and the stump-now a useless
coccyx-is still carried by Adam's descendants. [11]
(i) Others say that God's original
thought had been to create two human beings, male and female; but instead He
designed a single one with a male face looking forward, and a female face
looking back. Again He changed His mind, removed Adam's backward-looking face,
and built a woman's body for it. [12]
(j) Still others hold that Adam was
originally created as an androgyne of male and female bodies joined back to
back. Since this posture made locomotion difficult, and conversation awkward,
God divided the androgyne and gave each half a new rear. These separate beings
He placed in Eden, forbidding them to couple. [13]