Lilith is a controversial figure in modern society. She's the first wife of Adam according to medieval Jewish folklore, a Sumerian demoness, the screech owl of the night in the Bible, a soul and blood sucking vampire, a succubus who create monsters form the seed of sleeping men, the ultimate virgin whore, an infanticidal adulteress, a positive role model for Pagan and Jewish women and she's even had a music festival named after her, but who or what is Lilith really?
Lilith was the first wife of Adam according to most interpretations in mainstream culture and the Jewish apocryphal text The Alef-bet of Ben-Sira. She also appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh as the Sumerian Goddess Lilitu. She is the Lamia of Greek mythology as well. She is a single feminine entity that goes by many names and has many faces. As Adam's help meet pre-dating Eve, Lilith was created from the dust and was breathed into by God himself/itself. Lilith was the first woman and the complete equal of the male. When it came time to have sex, Lilith refused to lie beneath Adam, as she was his equal. She wanted to be on top and felt she was entitled to pleasure and that Adam was not superior to her simply for being created first. After arguing her equality to Adam and a compromise being unable to be reached, she fled from his side. Adam complained to God that his companion had fled the Garden and begged God to bring her back. God sent three angels to collect Lilith. By the time the angels caught up with this assertive earthly first woman, she had already created the lilim, demons who are her children and was creating them at a rate of hundreds a day. She was immortal, as she was not cursed by Eve's choice to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Lilith refused to return to Adam and was sentenced to endure a hundred of her demonlings dying per day. In accepting this punishment for refusing to stay with Adam and be submissive, she revenges herself by having power over male children for the eight days before circumcision and over female children for the first 20 days of life unless an amulet of the three angels sent to retrieve her was upon the child, in which case she would turn on and
kill her own children.
Lilith figures in Jewish folklore and superstition as an admonition to not sleep alone and to not be vain, as her children possess women who are vain as mirrors are the gateway into her world. Looking too much or too long into a mirror caused a woman to be promiscuous and wicked as they were the tools of Lilith. Men who slept alone or were unmarried were warned against noctural emissions as the semen contained the materials needed for her to create lilim. She became a succubus, bedding sleeping men and taking their lifeforce from them. She is forced to only procreate from onanism, unpartnered ejaculation and unwholeseome and loveless intercourse. She is the male complement of the whore, while for Eve, the children are human, being taken from Adam's rib and unnamed until she eats of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and her human children are conceived in submission. Modern pagans and Jewish women herald Lilith as a Goddess of feminine power and assertive, but dark sexuality. Many view her as the incarnation of the Shekinah, the feminine aspect of the Judeo-Christian Divine, the Judaic Queen of Heaven. In the mystical Kabbalah text, The Zohar Book, Lilith is not the Matronit, the queen, and rather is a "slave woman" and God is not King of the Universe until the Matronit herself is restored to him. In the Zohar, Lilith herself is blamed for Israel's historical plight and constant warfare with its geographic neighbors. Lilith is also portrayed as the serpent in many Renaissance works of art, including the Sistine Chapel, in which the serpent of the Fall is portrayed having a woman's head and torso. Many modern feminist scholars can overlook her infanticide in order to hold her up as a positive role model, so what is positive about Lilith as a concept and as a woman?
Lilith has been the dark muse to the Lilith Fair, a music festival which toured and brought a new awareness of women
singer-songwriters and women's music to a largely female audience. The empowerment seen in the figure of Lilith was an inspiration to such performers as Sarah McLachlan, Sheryl Crow and the Indigo Girls. Lilith has also served to inspire art and creativity. The visual art gallery, the Lilith Gallery of Toronto is a gallery dedicated to feminist art and art by women artists and dealing with social and sexual issues pertaining to the female sex. George McDonald even wrote a romance about her in 1895. Lilith has been a figure in Pre-Raphealite art and poetry and is used by contemporary artists such as Lilian Broca and Richard Callner. Prints of a Lilith series by Jan Collins Selman reveal the dangerous allure of the seductive dark image of Lilith. Progressive bands such as the contemporary "The Legendary Pink Dots" sing about Lilith, writers such as Aleister Crowley and Dante Gabriel Rosetti devoted poems to her and on the internet many shrines exist.
Lilith the figure can certainly be seen positively as a woman who understood and demanded to be in control of her own sexuality. Even as a virgin, she refused to be meek and submissive to her partner. She was willing to argue with Adam and not accept everything eh said as the way it had to be. She also was willing to leave Paradise to be alone for what she felt was the right reasons and was not dependant on men or faith for her survival. Lilith is the first independent woman. Lilith is a mother, even if it is of demons, and she is oft-times portrayed as a single mother. In many variations of her legend, she
becomes the wife of Sammael, the highest throne angel of God, "the chief of Satans", and simultaneously one of the angels who were cast out with Lucifer and who alternately is called "the severity of God" and who serves as the Angel of Death. Sammael is also according to legend the angel that held back Abraham's arm as he went to sacrifice Issac and alternatively the angel who seduced Eve. In many legends, Sammael is the father of her children. She becomes the wife of God's counterpart and highest tool of Divine Justice. She transcends being of the same Earth as Adam regardless of which myth one chooses or which they compile to create ones own individual interpretation of the Lilith tale. Who are whatever Lilith is to each person is personal, but in her, there is a bit of all of us, women who refuse to be lesser based on biology and in us, there is a bit of her defiance in all women who are not weak and who speak up for themselves. In all of us, there is something far older than Eve.
