Compilation by Janet Kira Lessin (aka Ninmah embodied)

Were Lilith, Eve, Inanna & Ninmah fused into one character/persona over time? Below I’ve listed numerous articles (which I’m studying and trying to unpack), which show that history has mixed up and confused important people and their stories.

CONFLATION: DIFFERENT CULTURES & ERAS COMBINED ANUNNAKI GODS’ NAMES & ATTRIBUTES

When we in our history, folklore, and literature consider the appearance, perpetuation or re-appearance of gods, archetypes, walk-ins, inner fractals or independent beings, we think of them with the garb, insignia, and symbols we associate with them. However our pictures of the gods vary, they represent models, paradigms, and explanations of how people, planets, extraterrestrials, and the Universe work.

Inanna, for example, sometimes appears as the first daughter of Nannar (Allah). Sometimes she’s combined with her younger sister, Ereshkigal (aka Persephone), or her father’s aunt Ninmah. Likewise, Inanna’s uncle Enki had varying names as he or she ages, as when Ea of the planet Nibiru became Enki and Asar in Iraq. He becomes Ptah in Egypt; he’s the Peacemaker in North America. In India, he’s Shiva Greece’s Prometheus, Rome’s Aquarius in Rome, Europe’s Lucifer. For researcher Glenn Bouge, Enki is Jesus. For Jungians, Enki’s a savior archetype. Whatever the moniker, Enki and the other Anunnaki were PEOPLE, not all-knowing, all-good, all-powerful; none of them are what the Anunnaki call “the Creator-of-All,” Native Americans call “Great Spirit.”

We are learning of the elephant of history from the many perceptual perspectives of Earth’s cultures. Celebrate the richness of our many heritages.

For the list of Anunnaki and their various overlapping names and histories, see ANUNNAKI WHO’S WHO at http://wp.me/p1TVCy-1PE

The History of Lilith, From Demon to Adam’s First Wife to Feminist Icon

By: Dave Roos | Apr 14, 2021

https://people.howstuffworks.com/lilith.htm

Adam, Eve and Lilith, stained glass — This stained glass window at Auxerre Cathedral in Burgundy, France, shows Adam, Eve, and Lilith (disguised as a snake) in the Garden of Eden. GODONG/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES. In other renditions of this famous Adam and Eve depiction, the serpent is male. In this version, the snake is female and she’s called Lilith.

In Jewish mythology and folklore, Lilith is a raven-haired demon who preys on helpless newborn infants and seduces unsuspecting men, using their “wasted seed” to spawn hordes of demon babies. Although her name only appears once in the Hebrew Bible, over the centuries Lilith has been cast as Adam’s rebellious first wife, the soul mate of Samael the demon king, and more recently as a feminist icon. So, which is the real Lilith?

‘The Temptation’ – Hugo van der Goes, 1470

Long before Judaism claimed her, Lilith-like demons were haunting the nightmares of ancient Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians. Male and female demons called lilu and lilitu respectively appeared in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Mesopotamian goddess Lamashtu was a winged demon that tormented women during childbirth, caused miscarriages and stole breastfeeding infants.

Michaelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Adam & Eve features a muscular, male serpent human (Lucifer, Satan, Enki?) who, depending on how you look at it, could be female (Lilith?).

What these various “L”-named spirits had in common was a sinister desire to strike at humans when they were most vulnerable, particularly pregnant women and newborns, in a pre-scientific age when infant and maternal mortality rates were wrenchingly high.

This image is similar to the one above but the serpent in this one definitely has breasts.

“To me, these ancient stories recognize the limits of our ability to control the world and reflect a desire to make these awful events seem less random,” says Laura Lieber, a professor of religious studies at Duke University. “The pandemic is a reminder that there are certain things – illness in particular – that are a mystery, why certain people are afflicted and why others are spared.”

This serpent/snake has a male-looking human head.

One ancient tablet recovered in Syria and dated to the seventh century B.C.E. includes a chilling plea to be spared the wrath of the black-winged demon: “O flyer in a dark chamber, go away at once, O Lili!“

Contents

Lilith as Adam’s First Wife

The Canaanites, Hebrews and Israelites undoubtedly absorbed some of the lilitu/Lamashtu demonology, although the only mention of a “lilith” in the Hebrew Bible (known as the Old Testament in Christianity) appears in Isaiah 34:14, in which the prophet describes a barren wilderness laid waste by God’s final judgment:

Adam looks like Jesus and the serpent has wings and a wolf-like head.

“Wildcats shall meet hyenas, Goat-demons shall greet each other; There too the lilith shall repose and find herself a resting place.”

“The word ‘lilith’ is sometimes translated as a screech owl,” says Lieber, “which is connected to the fact that in Ancient Near Eastern mythology, demon goddesses often had wings and bird feet.”

Some early rabbinic commentators on the Hebrew Bible wondered, however, if Lilith hadn’t made a secret appearance in the Book of Genesis. Upon close reading, there appear to be two separate accounts of how God created the first man and woman. In Genesis 1, God created both man and woman at the same time – “male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:27). In Genesis 2, however, God first created Adam “from the dust of the earth” and then removed one of Adam’s ribs to form Eve (Gen. 2: 21-22).

Lilith is depicted as a beautiful, seductive redhead.

Was the unnamed woman created in Genesis 1 someone other than Eve? And was it Lilith? This intriguing question likely circulated in Jewish mythology and folklore for centuries. Then, in the ninth century C.E., we got the first full-blown treatment of Lilith as Adam’s disobedient first wife.

The infamous account appears in “The Alphabet of Ben Sira,” a satirical and borderline heretical Jewish text from the Middle Ages that poked fun at biblical figures and incorporated elements of popular folklore.

According to Ben Sira, the first woman created alongside Adam in Genesis 1 was indeed Lilith, and she and Adam “immediately began to quarrel.” When Adam insisted that Lilith “lie beneath” him during sex, she wasn’t having it, replying, “You lie beneath me! We are both equal, for both of us are from the earth.”

Lilith stormed off, pronouncing the “ineffable name of God” and flying away. God sent three angels after Lilith named Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof, who demanded that she return. By that point, she had already slept with Samael, chief among the demons, and vowed that she would not harm the human offspring of Adam and Eve if they wrote her name on a protective amulet during childbirth. Otherwise, she’d have dominion over newborn human babies during the first weeks of their life.

“What we get from Ben Sira is a desire to pull together different threads of all of the extant traditions surrounding Lilith,” says Lieber, and also an explanation for a childbirth ritual to protect against sudden infant death that had already been in practice for centuries.

Anti-Lilith Amulets and Incantation Bowls

Long before “The Alphabet of Ben Sira” was in circulation, Jewish households were using protective amulets to ward off Liliths and other demonic baby-stealers. Between the fifth to eighth centuries C.E., the most popular form of anti-demonic protection was something called an incantation bowl.

These ceramic bowls were fashioned by “Jewish wizards” in Babylon to trap a specific demon associated with a specific illness or condition. Like the traditional biblical practice of fastening a mezuzah on the doorposts of a house, Jewish families expecting a baby would bury one of these magic incantation bowls under their front door to block entry by otherworldly baby snatchers.

“These magic bowls were a cross between a mezuzah and Aladdin’s lamp,” says Lieber, adding that they were used by non-Jews as well.

As incantation bowls fell out of favor, Jewish families purchased metal or paper amulets inscribed with the image of a bound Lilith and prayers for divine protection, including to Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof. Lieber says that you can still buy anti-Lilith amulets in some Jewish communities.

From Outcast to Feminist Icon

The Rabbinical commentaries and Jewish folktales surrounding Lilith all portrayed her as a wild, fallen woman cursed for her sin of rebelliousness. Since Lilith was unable to have her own human children, she not only stole unprotected infants, but seduced men in their sleep and took their semen (an ancient explanation of “nocturnal emissions”).

The Babylonian Talmud, an ancient source of Jewish law, states: “It is forbidden for a man to sleep alone in a house, lest Lilith get hold of him.” It’s believed that Lilith uses the stolen “seed” to impregnate herself with countless demon babies. Lieber says that some Hasidic folktales tell of court fights between human and demon offspring over an inheritance.

It wasn’t until the late 20th century that feminist writers and activists began to reinterpret the Lilith myth, not as a warning against becoming an uncontrollable, “wanton” woman like Adam’s first wife, but as a role model for a different kind of female existence. In 1972, the writer and filmmaker Lilly Rivlin published a groundbreaking article about Lilith in Ms. magazine, and the Jewish feminist magazine Lilith launched in 1976.

“[S]elf-sufficient women, inspired by the women’s movement, have adopted the Lilith myth as their own,” wrote Rivlin in the 1998 book “Which Lilith?” “They have transformed her into a female symbol for autonomy, sexual choice, and control of one’s own destiny.”

(From left) Erykah Badu, Sarah McLachlan, Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls, Tara McClean, Natalie Merchant and Noelle Hampton perform the finale at the 1998 Lilith Fair at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California.TIM MOSENFELDER/IMAGEDIRECT/GETTY IMAGES

“Lilith is a powerful female, Aviva Cantor Zuckoff wrote, in the first issue of Lilith magazine. “She radiates strength, assertiveness; she refuses to cooperate in her own victimization. By acknowledging Lilith’s revolt and even in telling of her vengeful activities, myth-makers also acknowledge Lilith’s power.”

Lilith has also shown up in TV shows as diverse as “The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina,” “Frasier” and “Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated,” as well as lent her name to the Lilith Fair, a hugely successful all-female music festival co-founded by Sarah McLachlan. It toured America for three summers, 1997 to 1999 and was briefly revived in 2010.

This article is about the Jewish religious figure Lilith. For other uses, see Lilith (disambiguation).

Lilith
Lilith (1887) by John Collier

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Lilith (/ˈlɪlɪθ/ LIH-lith; Hebrew: לִילִית, romanized: Līlīṯ) is a female figure in Mesopotamian and Judaic mythology, alternatively the first wife of Adam^[1] and supposedly the primordial she-demon. Lilith is cited as having been “banished”^[2] from the Garden of Eden for not complying with and obeying Adam.^[2] She is thought to be mentioned in Biblical Hebrew in the Book of Isaiah,^[3] and in Late Antiquity in Mandaean mythology and Jewish mythology sources from 500 CE onward. Lilith appears in historiolas (incantations incorporating a short mythic story) in various concepts and localities^[4] that give partial descriptions of her. She is mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud (Eruvin 100b, Niddah 24b, Shabbat 151b, Baba Bathra 73a), in the Book of Adam and Eve as Adam‘s first wife, and in the Zohar Leviticus 19a as “a hot fiery female who first cohabited with man”.^[5] Many traditional rabbinic authorities, including Maimonides and Menachem Meiri, reject the existence of Lilith.^[6]

The name Lilith stems from lilû, lilîtu, and (w)ardat lilî). The Akkadian word lilu is related to the Hebrew word lilith in Isaiah 34:14, which is thought to be a night bird by some modern scholars such as Judit M. Blair.^[7] In the Ancient Mesopotamian religion, found in cuneiform texts of Sumer, Assyria, and Babylonia Lilith signifies a spirit or demon.^[1]^[8]^[9]

Lilith continues to serve as source material in today’s popular culture, Western culture, literature, occultism, fantasy, and horror.

History

In some Jewish folklore, such as the satirical Alphabet of Sirach (c. 700–1000 AD), Lilith appears as Adam’s first wife, who was created at the same time and from the same clay as Adam.^[a] The legend of Lilith developed extensively during the Middle Ages, in the tradition of Aggadah, the Zohar, and Jewish mysticism.^[12] For example, in the 11th-century writings of Isaac ben Jacob ha-Cohen, Lilith left Adam after she refused to become subservient to him and then would not return to the Garden of Eden after she had coupled with the archangel Samael.^[13]

Interpretations of Lilith found in later Jewish materials are plentiful, but little information has survived relating to the Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian and Babylonian view of this class of demons. While researchers almost universally agree that a connection exists, recent scholarship has disputed the relevance of two sources previously used to connect the Jewish lilith to an Akkadian lilītu – the Gilgamesh appendix and the Arslan Tash amulets^[14] (see below for discussion of these two problematic sources). In contrast, some scholars, such as Lowell K. Handy, hold the view that though Lilith derives from Mesopotamian demonology, evidence of the Hebrew Lilith being present in the sources frequently cited – the Sumerian Gilgamesh fragment and the Sumerian incantation from Arshlan-Tash being two – is scant, if present at all.^[13]^: 174

In Hebrew-language texts, the term lilith or lilit (translated as “night creatures”, “night monster”, “night hag”, or “screech owl”) first occurs in a list of animals in Isaiah 34.^[15] The Isaiah 34:14 Lilith reference does not appear in most common Bible translations such as KJV and NIV. Commentators and interpreters often envision the figure of Lilith as a dangerous demon of the night, who is sexually wanton, and who steals babies in the darkness. In the Dead Sea Scrolls 4Q510-511, the term first occurs in a list of monsters. Jewish magical inscriptions on bowls and amulets from the 6th century AD onward identify Lilith as a female demon and provide the first visual depictions of her.

Etymology

In the Akkadian language of Assyria and Babylonia, the terms lili and līlītu mean spirits. Some uses of līlītu are listed in the Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD, 1956, L.190), in Wolfram von Soden‘s Akkadisches Handwörterbuch (AHw, p. 553), and Reallexikon der Assyriologie (RLA, p. 47).^[16]

The Sumerian female demons lili have no etymological relation to Akkadian lilu, “evening”.^[17]

Archibald Sayce (1882)^{[18][page needed]} considered that Hebrew lilit (or lilith) לילית and the earlier Akkadian līlītu are derived from Proto-Semitic. Charles Fossey (1902) has this literally translating to “female night being/demon”, although cuneiform inscriptions from Mesopotamia exist where Līlīt and Līlītu refers to disease-bearing wind spirits.^{[19][page needed]}

Mesopotamian mythology

Main article: Lilu (mythology)

The spirit in the tree in the Gilgamesh cycle

Samuel Noah Kramer (1932, published 1938)^[20] translated ki-sikil-lil-la-ke as “Lilith” in Tablet XII of the Epic of Gilgamesh dated c. 600 BC. Tablet XII is not part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, but is a later Assyrian Akkadian translation of the latter part of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh.^[21] The ki-sikil-lil-la-ke is associated with a serpent and a zu bird.^[b] In Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld, a huluppu tree grows in Inanna‘s garden in Uruk, whose wood she plans to use to build a new throne. After ten years of growth, she comes to harvest it and finds a serpent living at its base, a Zu bird raising young in its crown, and that a ki-sikil-lil-la-ke made a house in its trunk. Gilgamesh is said to have killed the snake, and then the zu bird flew away to the mountains with its young, while the ki-sikil-lil-la-ke fearfully destroys its house and runs for the forest.^[22]^[23] Identification of the ki-sikil-lil-la-ke as Lilith is stated in the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (1999).^[24] According to a new source from late antiquity, Lilith appears in a Mandaean magic story where she is considered to represent the branches of a tree with other demonic figures that form other parts of the tree, though this may also include multiple “Liliths”.^[25]

Suggested translations for the Tablet XII spirit in the tree include ki-sikil as “sacred place”, lil as “spirit”, and lil-la-ke as “water spirit”,^[26] but also simply “owl”, given that the lil is building a home in the trunk of the tree.^[27]

A connection between the Gilgamesh ki-sikil-lil-la-ke and the Jewish Lilith was rejected on textual grounds by Sergio Ribichini (1978).^[28]

The bird-footed woman in the Burney Relief

Burney Relief Lilith is also conflated with Inanna and her sister Ereshkigal

Main article: Burney Relief

Burney Relief, Babylon (1800–1750 BC)

Kramer’s translation of the Gilgamesh fragment was used by Henri Frankfort (1937)^[29] and Emil Kraeling (1937) to support the identification of a woman with wings and bird feet in the disputed Burney Relief as related to Lilith. Frankfort and Kraeling identified the figure in the relief with Lilith.[30] Modern research has identified the figure as one of the principal goddesses of the Mesopotamian pantheons, most probably Ereshkigal.^[31]

The Arslan Tash amulets

Main article: Arslan Tash amulets

The Arslan Tash amulets are limestone plaques discovered in 1933 at Arslan Tash, the authenticity of which is disputed. William F. Albright, Theodor H. Gaster,^[32] and others, accepted the amulets as a pre-Jewish source which shows that the name Lilith already existed in the 7th century BC but Torczyner (1947) identified the amulets as a later Jewish source.^[33]

EVE AND LILITH. Lilith tempted Eve with an apple in the Garden of Eden. Woodcut, German, 1470, a wood relief of Eve and Lilith (with wings and a naga tail like Melusine) by Granger

In the Hebrew Bible

The word lilit (or lilith) only appears once in the Hebrew Bible, in a prophecy regarding the fate of Edom,^[3] while the other seven terms in the list appear more than once and thus are better documented. The reading of scholars and translators is often guided by a decision about the complete list of eight creatures as a whole.^[34]^[c] Quoting from Isaiah 34 (NAB):

(12) Her nobles shall be no more, nor shall kings be proclaimed there; all her princes are gone. (13) Her castles shall be overgrown with thorns, her fortresses with thistles and briers. She shall become an abode for jackals and a haunt for ostriches. (14) Wildcats shall meet with desert beasts, satyrs shall call to one another; There shall the Lilith repose, and find for herself a place to rest. (15) There the hoot owl shall nest and lay eggs, hatch them out and gather them in her shadow; There shall the kites assemble, none shall be missing its mate. (16) Look in the book of the LORD and read: No one of these shall be lacking, For the mouth of the LORD has ordered it, and His spirit shall gather them there. (17) It is He who casts the lot for them, and with His hands He marks off their shares of her; They shall possess her forever, and dwell there from generation to generation.

Hebrew text

In the Masoretic Text:

Hebrew: ,וּפָגְשׁוּ צִיִּים אֶת-אִיִּים, וְשָׂעִיר עַל-רֵעֵהוּ יִקְרָא; אַךְ-שָׁם הִרְגִּיעָה לִּילִית, וּמָצְאָה לָהּ מָנוֹח

u-pagšu ṣiyyim et-ʾiyyim, w-saʿir ʿal-rēʿēhu yiqra; ʾak-šam hirgiʿa lilit, u-maṣʾa lah manoaḥ

34:14 “And shall-meet wildcats^[35] with jackals
the goat he-calls his- fellow
lilit (lilith) she-rests and she-finds rest^[d]
34:15 there she-shall-nest the great-owl, and she-lays-(eggs), and she-hatches, and she-gathers under her-shadow:
hawks [kites, gledes] also they-gather, every one with its mate.

In the Dead Sea Scrolls, among the 19 fragments of Isaiah found at Qumran, the Great Isaiah Scroll (1Q1Isa) in 34:14 renders the creature as plural liliyyot (or liliyyoth).^[36]^[37]

Eberhard Schrader (1875)^[38] and Moritz Abraham Levy (1855)^[39] suggest that Lilith was a demon of the night, known also by the Jewish exiles in Babylon. Schrader’s and Levy’s view is therefore partly dependent on a later dating of Deutero-Isaiah to the 6th century BC, and the presence of Jews in Babylon which would coincide with the possible references to the Līlītu in Babylonian demonology. However, this view is challenged by some modern research such as by Judit M. Blair (2009) who considers that the context indicates unclean animals.^[7]

Greek version

The Septuagint translates both the reference to Lilith and the word for jackals or “wild beasts of the island” within the same verse into Greek as onokentauros, apparently assuming them as referring to the same creatures and omitting “wildcats/wild beasts of the desert” (so, instead of the wildcats or desert beasts meeting with the jackals or island beasts, the goat or “satyr” crying “to his fellow” and lilith or “screech owl” resting “there”, it is the goat or “satyr”, translated as daimonia “demons”, and the jackals or island beasts “onocentaurs” meeting with each other and crying “one to the other” and the latter resting there in the translation).^[e]

”Death makes angels of us all, and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as ravens claws.”

~Jim Morrison

For those of you who aren’t aware of Kabbalah, the Tree of Life are the emanations of G-d contained within a structured system pertaining to enlightenment and Jewish mysticism. This tree, however, has a system of roots just as complex as its branches, and it is called the Kliphoth. The Kliphoth, which means “husks” in Hebrew, are the shadows cast by the Sephiroth of the Tree of Life. They are the obstacles faced by those trying to connect to G-d. This makes them perfect to learn about for any following the LHP, for quite literally, it was made for those who wish to connect with his opposition. In trying to warn the Light about the Shadows, it has made the Shadows that much stronger.

As you can see, the tree is structured with a downward descension that perfectly mirrors the Kabbalistic tree. We begin our journey at Lilith, which is the shadow dualistically embodied by its sitra achra (other side) Malkuth. It is the culmination of all the spheres above and below it as it is the center of this tree. We can identify Lilith / Malkuth as the manifestation of life in all its aspects, since the Divine is a reflection of us. Lilith is also known as Nahemoth which translates to “Queen of the Night.”

According to the Zohar, Lilith is the original moon that radiated its own light and refused to yield to the sun. Because of this, its light was banished so that it may only reflect the sun’s rays. It is the primeval feminine force of Kliphoth that was banished as there was no room for it in His kingdom. This shadow of Malkuth represents all that is primal, carnal, and wild. It is the physical existence that man cannot control, such as hurricanes and lightning storms.

According to one author, “she is the earthquake that devours skyscrapers and church towers in her womb.” Lilith is a true reflection of Mother Earth as something beyond our control, and seeks us to understand our own carnal desires and truth to our nature as Her beings. Ironically, Lilith is not ruled by Lilith, but by her sister Naamah.

The next sphere we will discuss is Gamaliel, which is the sphere ruled by Lilith. Gamaliel is the shadow of anima mundi, the “world soul.” It is the dream sphere and sitra achra of Yesod. All dreams that man cannot or wish not to remember lie here. We censor our dark dreams since our ego refuses to accept them as a part of us, thus this is the “Kliphah of dark dreams.”

This is also the sphere of forbidden sexuality. While Adam and Eve have dutiful reproductive sex, Lilith’s is an initiatory practice that uses the force of Eros to reach enlightenment. Gamaliel also embodies the astral plane in occultism. We learn control, lucidity, and projection through interaction with this sphere. Lilith and her succubi are wonderful mentors for controlling dreams and out of body experiences.

While Yesod is the moon, Gamaliel is the dark side of it. This is not to be confused with the original moon in Nahemoth, as that is the banished celestial body. Gamaliel is the shadow of the second moon. It holds a strong tie to witches due to the menstruation cycles the moon endures, and symbolically represents fertility and the cycles of life and death.

Samael is the sphere that comes next, which is the husk to Hod. With respect to the Fallen who bears the same name, this translates to “Poison of G-d.” While Hod shows the fluctuation and fluidity of the mind, Samael shows us the sparkling, twinkling rays will also blind, and deter us from looking at what’s beneath the surface. Unauthentic brilliance is the beginning of lies and deceit. Hod’s shadow, therefore, is lies and beguilement. Fickleness and indecisiveness is also seen here.

By entering this Kliphah, we destroy our own prideful outer cores and seek to embody who we really are beyond our egos. We can also become more adept at discerning the truth. Tricksters hide here, but tricksters quickly become allies that can show you how to spot a liar from a mile away. Adramelech, also known as the “majestic king,” rules over Samael. The Demon that was once a sun god now shines in the brilliance of mischief and ambition. He teaches you to question all authority, and to spot the weaknesses in someone’s facade to tear them apart.

A’arab Zaraq is the Kliphah corresponding to the Sephirah Netzach. Translating to “Ravens of Dispersion,” the Demons that hide here are hideous beings that resemble ravens, and are said to emerge from a volcano. It is suspected that the ravens that Noah let out of the ark as the water dispersed come from this sphere.

While Netzach is victory (the unbridled passionate energy to overcome obstacles), its unbalanced shadow is one of the unbridled lust of Venus. This uncontrollable passion can turn to desire, greed, and covetousness. Our desires, however, do not have to appear so one sided, for our passions can guide us into a love so deep and profound that we would do anything to attain / keep it.

Baal, ruler of A’arab Zaraq, shows us that our goals are driven to success not because of logic, but because of our passion. It is our love for something that propels us forward. He can teach you how to achieve your hearts true desires by sheer willpower alone. Driving force to success comes from will, and in the words of Crowley, “Love is the Law, Love under Will.”

Thagirion is ruled by Belphegor, the Demon known as the king of sloth. While Tiphareth, the sitra achra, is known for its harmonious beauty at the heart of the tree, this is only because its balance between Chesed and Geburah creates that harmony. An unbalanced shadow like Thagirion becomes not harmony, but disputers (note: Thagirion’s translation is, in fact, “The Disputers”).

Like Tiphareth, Thagirion holds the entire tree together so it won’t fall apart, but does so through through debate and diplomatic democracy. Tiphareth promotes a streamline way of thinking, a sort of unified consciousness, while Thagirion takes every individual thought into account that may come from all parties in the tree. Thus, we create a cacophonic symphony of voices that uphold individuality, compromise, and righteousness in hellfire.

Golacheb, “The Burners with Fire,” corresponds to the Sephirah Geburah. The Demons that appear here have enormous black heads that look like volcanic eruption. Geburah, the Sephirah of restraint, righteously destroys evil and wickedness with the balance of Chesed, loving kindness. Due to their dual harmony, true evil will only ever be punished when it goes against G-d. However, when thrown out of balance, all become burned. Justice thusly becomes biased, and in the hands of those who wish to cast judgment.

While Geburah may say that one should choose to forgive their wrongdoers because they know not what they did was wrong, Golacheb states that it was wrong either way and that they deserve punishment. Thus, we see how cursing is justified within the Tree of Death, for if one person states that they have been wronged, they hold the right to cut down their wrongdoers if they so choose. Asmodeus rules this Kliphah, and shows the initiate how to condemn those who wrong them and destroy opposition.

Chesed is the Sephirah of loving-kindness. It is put into balance by Geburah, who righteously enacts justice upon evil beings. However, the Klipha hold no balance, as the shadows embody chaos and disharmony. Thus, when Chesed falls out of balance, we reach Gha’agsheblah, “The Smiting Ones.” This Klipha is all about love so strong and intense that it smothers and kills through kindness. Astaroth, the Demoness of love and matters concerning the heart, guides us to understand compassion and our own emotions.

Through her and the initiation into this Klipha, we can better grasp our empathy and our love so that it may not come back to hurt us. This can also teach us how to let someone go, for Astaroth can show us that their love has done nothing but hurt us (i.e. a person who repetitively lies with false promises). Forgiveness is good, but not when the forgiveness ends up not adhering to our safety and well-being. Demons of this Klipha are giant black-headed cats.

Satariel corresponds to Binah on the Tree if Life. This is the Concealment of G-d, which hides the face of mercy. Binah is the Sephirah of the eternal womb, and is known to give form to all things. The great mother of the cosmos lies here. Through her, Keter and Chokmah are woven together into matter. When thrown out of balance, we reach Satariel, “The Concealer of Spirit,” who creates the spirits not of our physical matter.

In the Book of Enoch, Satariel is described as the 17th Watcher of the 20 leaders of 200 fallen angels. The name is believed to have Babylonian origins, being a combination of “shetar” and “el,” aka “side of G-d.” Lucifuge Rofocale rules this Klipha, and the Demons that inhabit this labyrinth like sphere all where veils over their heads with piercing eyes. The third eye opens in this Klipha, and clairvoyancy is achieved.

Ghagiel is the husk of Chokmah. Chokmah, or “Wisdom,” is creative phallic energy that acts upon Binah, the receiver, to give form. However, an unbalanced Chokmah becomes Ghagiel, too proud and stubborn to be bound by the mother, and unwilling to bow to man to take a physical form. This hinders the natural flowing evolution of divine energy and maintains itself in illusions and lies. This is a challenge to the wisdom of G-d, and the complexity and lies surrounding them is to confuse His creation.

The Demons of this husk, also called the Hinderers, are described as black evil giants with serpents entwined around them. Beelzebub (the Lord of the Flies) and Adam Belial (the Wicked Man) are the major powers of this sphere, and teach humanity how to rely only on thyself. Self-sufficiency is one of the key components of the left-hand path, and though we propel forward with the help of allies, we still need to be capable of doing things on our own.

The final Klipha at the top of the tree is Thaumiel. Thaumiel’s sitra achra is Keter, the Crown. Keter is the first and purest emanation of divinity. It is the first moment of creation, the moment non self becomes self. It is a single point of indivisible union. Thaumiel, as a result, is the opposite of this divine unity, and is thus broken into two parts that are ruled by two Demons: Satan and Moloch. It is the eternally aggressive tension of duality between two opposing polarities.

The point here is that anything that exists outside of Keter and its balance is something entirely separate from G-d altogether. It is the rationality that for one thing to exist, another will always be there to actualize it. Satan and his angels refused to bow down to Adam, the first man. He represents spiritual pride and arrogance through the integrity of the spirit and self transcendence. Moloch was a pagan sun deity prior to his Demonic standing, and thus is the reflection of the black sun. The two of them embody walking free from G-d’s dream to embody a new one, your own dream. It is the notion that you can be the individual you wish to be without the constraints of another’s rules. This is the truth of the Path of Satan.

☠Kliphoth: Tree of Death☠-[BC]”Death makes angels of us all, and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as ravens cla

Note:

There is another magick system that follows the Kabbalistic structure known as Qabbalah / Qliphoth. I won’t go too in depth on it here, but it is a Hermeticist structure to the original Jewish tradition. Many mystic societies utilize it, from Thelema and the Golden Dawn, to Neopagan New Age movements. I’ll be honest, I truly do not know the differences between Kabbalah and Qabbalah, so I’ll leave it up to you to find out. I also devised my own tarot spread based off of the Kliphoth that I will share now.

Tarot:

1. Nehemoth (Na’amah) – The reflection of one’s unconscious. The shadow.

2. Gamaliel (Lilith) – How to attain pleasure and freedom.

3. Samael (Adramelech) – Destruction of pride. Acceptance of regrets.

4. A’areb Zaraq (Baal) – Success. How to achieve true goals.

5. Thagirion (Belphegor) – Clarity of the mind. Resolving conflict.

6. Golachab (Asmodeus) – Overcoming adversity. Spotting enemies.

7. Gha’agsheblah (Astaroth) – Empathy. Loving and forgiving your familiars.

8. Satariel (Lucifuge Rofocale) – Future sight. Clairvoyancy.

9. Ghagiel (Beelzebub) – Personal advice. Growing as an individual.

10. Thaumiel (Moloch / Satan) – Breaking mortal chains. Embodying duality.

Latin Bible

The early 5th-century Vulgate translated the same word as lamia.^[40]^[41]

et occurrent daemonia onocentauris et pilosus clamabit alter ad alterum ibi cubavit lamia et invenit sibi requiem

— Isaiah (Isaias Propheta) 34.14, Vulgate

The translation is, “And demons shall meet with monsters, and one hairy one shall cry out to another; there the lamia has lain down and found rest for herself”.

English versions

Wycliffe’s Bible (1395) preserves the Latin rendering lamia:

Isa 34:15 Lamya schal ligge there, and foond rest there to hir silf.

The Bishops’ Bible of Matthew Parker (1568) from the Latin:

Isa 34:14 there shall the Lamia lye and haue her lodgyng.

Douay–Rheims Bible (1582/1610) also preserves the Latin rendering lamia:

Isa 34:14 And demons and monsters shall meet, and the hairy ones shall cry out one to another, there hath the lamia lain down, and found rest for herself.

The Geneva Bible of William Whittingham (1587) from the Hebrew:

Isa 34:14 and the screech owl shall rest there, and shall finde for her selfe a quiet dwelling.

Then the King James Version (1611):

Isa 34:14 The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest.

The “screech owl” translation of the King James Version is, together with the “owl” (yanšup, probably a water bird) in 34:11 and the “great owl” (qippoz, properly a snake) of 34:15, an attempt to render the passage by choosing suitable animals for difficult to translate Hebrew words.

Later translations include:

night-owl (Young, 1898)
night spectre (Rotherham, Emphasized Bible, 1902)
night monster (ASV, 1901; JPS 1917, Good News Translation, 1992; NASB, 1995)
vampires (Moffatt Translation, 1922; Knox Bible, 1950)
night hag (Revised Standard Version, 1947)
Lilith (Jerusalem Bible, 1966)
(the) lilith (New American Bible, 1970)
Lilith (New Revised Standard Version, 1989)
(the) night-demon Lilith, evil and rapacious (The Message (Bible), Peterson, 1993)
night creature (New International Version, 1978; New King James Version, 1982; New Living Translation, 1996, Today’s New International Version)
nightjar (New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, 1984)
night bird (English Standard Version, 2001)
night-bird (NASB, 2020)
nocturnal animals (New English Translation (NET Bible))

Jewish tradition[edit]

Major sources in Jewish tradition regarding Lilith in chronological order include:

c. 40–10 BC Dead Sea Scrolls – Songs for a Sage (4Q510–511)
c. 200 Mishnah – not mentioned
c. 500 Gemara of the Talmud
c. 700-1000 The Alphabet of Ben-Sira
c. 900 Midrash Abkir
c. 1260 Treatise on the Left Emanation, Spain
c. 1280 Zohar, Spain.

Dead Sea Scrolls[edit]

The Dead Sea Scrolls contain one indisputable reference to Lilith in Songs of the Sage (4Q510–511)^[42] fragment 1:

And I, the Instructor, proclaim His glorious splendour so as to frighten and to te[rrify] all the spirits of the destroying angels, spirits of the bastards, demons, Lilith, howlers, and [desert dwellers] … and those which fall upon men without warning to lead them astray from a spirit of understanding and to make their heart and their … desolate during the present dominion of wickedness and predetermined time of humiliations for the sons of lig[ht], by the guilt of the ages of [those] smitten by iniquity – not for eternal destruction, [bu]t for an era of humiliation for transgression.^[43]

Photographic reproduction of the Great Isaiah Scroll, which contains a reference to plural liliyyot

As with the Massoretic text of Isaiah 34:14, and therefore unlike the plural liliyyot (or liliyyoth) in the Isaiah scroll 34:14, lilit in 4Q510 is singular, this liturgical text both cautions against the presence of supernatural malevolence and assumes familiarity with Lilith; distinct from the biblical text, however, this passage does not function under any socio-political agenda, but instead serves in the same capacity as An Exorcism (4Q560) and Songs to Disperse Demons (11Q11).^[44] The text is thus, to a community “deeply involved in the realm of demonology”,^[45] an exorcism hymn.

Joseph M. Baumgarten (1991) identified the unnamed woman of The Seductress (4Q184) as related to the female demon.^[45]^[46] However, John J. Collins^[47] regards this identification as “intriguing” but that it is “safe to say” that (4Q184) is based on the strange woman of Proverbs 2, 5, 7, 9:

Her house sinks down to death,
And her course leads to the shades.
All who go to her cannot return
And find again the paths of life.

— Proverbs 2:18–19

Her gates are gates of death, and from the entrance of the house
She sets out towards Sheol.
None of those who enter there will ever return,
And all who possess her will descend to the Pit.

— 4Q184

Early Rabbinic literature

Lilith does not occur in the Mishnah. There are five references to Lilith in the Babylonian Talmud in Gemara on three separate Tractates of the Mishnah:

“Rav Judah citing Samuel ruled: If an abortion had the likeness of Lilith, its mother is unclean by reason of the birth, for it is a child even if it has wings.” (Babylonian Talmud on Tractate Nidda 24b)^[48]
“[Expounding upon the curses of womanhood] In a Baraitha it was taught: Women grow long hair like Lilith, sit when urinating like a beast, and serve as a bolster for her husband.” (Babylonian Talmud on Tractate Eruvin 100b)
“For gira he should take an arrow of Lilith and place it point upwards and pour water on it and drink it. Alternatively he can take water of which a dog has drunk at night, but he must take care that it has not been exposed.” (Babylonian Talmud, tractate Gittin 69b). In this particular case, the “arrow of Lilith” is most probably a scrap of meteorite or a fulgurite, colloquially known as “petrified lightning” and treated as antipyretic medicine.^[49]
“Rabbah said: I saw how Hormin the son of Lilith was running on the parapet of the wall of Mahuza, and a rider, galloping below on horseback could not overtake him. Once they saddled for him two mules which stood on two bridges of the Rognag; and he jumped from one to the other, backward and forward, holding in his hands two cups of wine, pouring alternately from one to the other, and not a drop fell to the ground.” (Babylonian Talmud, tractate Bava Bathra 73a-b). Hormin who is mentioned here as the son of Lilith is most probably a result of a scribal error of the word “Hormiz” attested in some of the Talmudic manuscripts. The word itself in turn seems to be a distortion of Ormuzd, the Zendavestan deity of light and goodness. If so, it is somewhat ironic that Ormuzd becomes here the son of a nocturnal demon.^[49]
“R. Hanina said: One may not sleep in a house alone [in a lonely house], and whoever sleeps in a house alone is seized by Lilith.” (Babylonian Talmud on Tractate Shabbath 151b)

The above statement by Hanina may be related to the belief that nocturnal emissions engendered the birth of demons:

“R. Jeremiah b. Eleazar further stated: In all those years [130 years after his expulsion from the Garden of Eden] during which Adam was under the ban he begot ghosts and male demons and female demons [or night demons], for it is said in Scripture: And Adam lived a hundred and thirty years and begot a son in own likeness, after his own image, from which it follows that until that time he did not beget after his own image … When he saw that through him death was ordained as punishment he spent a hundred and thirty years in fasting, severed connection with his wife for a hundred and thirty years, and wore clothes of fig on his body for a hundred and thirty years. – That statement [of R. Jeremiah] was made in reference to the semen which he emitted accidentally.” (Babylonian Talmud on Tractate Eruvin 18b)

The Midrash Rabbah collection contains two references to Lilith. The first one is present in Genesis Rabbah 22:7 and 18:4: according to Rabbi Hiyya God proceeded to create a second Eve for Adam, after Lilith had to return to dust.^[50] However, to be exact the said passages do not employ the Hebrew word lilith itself and instead speak of “the first Eve” (Heb. Chavvah ha-Rishonah, analogically to the phrase Adam ha-Rishon, i.e. the first Adam). Although in the medieval Hebrew literature and folklore, especially that reflected on the protective amulets of various kinds, Chavvah ha-Rishonah was identified with Lilith, one should remain careful in transposing this equation to the Late Antiquity.^[49]

The second mention of Lilith, this time explicit, is present in Numbers Rabbah 16:25. The midrash develops the story of Moses’s plea after God expresses anger at the bad report of the spies. Moses responds to a threat by God that He will destroy the Israelite people. Moses pleads before God, that God should not be like Lilith who kills her own children.^[49] Moses said:

[God,] do not do it [i.e. destroy the Israelite people], that the nations of the world may not regard you as a cruel Being and say: ‘The Generation of the Flood came and He destroyed them, the Generation of the Separation came and He destroyed them, the Sodomites and the Egyptians came and He destroyed them, and these also, whom he called My son, My firstborn (Ex. IV, 22), He is now destroying! As that Lilith who, when she finds nothing else, turns upon her own children, so Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land… He hath slain them’ (Num. XIV, 16)!^[51]

Incantation bowls

Incantation bowl with an Aramaic inscription around a demon, from Nippur, Mesopotamia, 6–7th century

An individual Lilith, along with Bagdana “king of the lilits”, is one of the demons to feature prominently in protective spells in the eighty surviving Jewish occult incantation bowls from Sassanid Empire Babylon (4th–6th century AD) with influence from Iranian culture.^[47]^[52] These bowls were buried upside down below the structure of the house or on the land of the house, in order to trap the demon or demoness.^[53] Almost every house was found to have such protective bowls against demons and demonesses.^[53]^[54]

The centre of the inside of the bowl depicts Lilith, or the male form, Lilit. Surrounding the image is writing in spiral form; the writing often begins at the centre and works its way to the edge.^[55] The writing is most commonly scripture or references to the Talmud. The incantation bowls which have been analysed, are inscribed in the following languages, Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, Syriac, Mandaic, Middle Persian, and Arabic. Some bowls are written in a false script which has no meaning.^[52]

The correctly worded incantation bowl was capable of warding off Lilith or Lilit from the household. Lilith had the power to transform into a woman’s physical features, seduce her husband, and conceive a child. However, Lilith would become hateful toward the children born of the husband and wife and would seek to kill them. Similarly, Lilit would transform into the physical features of the husband, seduce the wife, she would give birth to a child. It would become evident that the child was not fathered by the husband, and the child would be looked down on. Lilit would seek revenge on the family by killing the children born to the husband and wife.^[56]

Key features of the depiction of Lilith or Lilit include the following. The figure is often depicted with arms and legs chained, indicating the control of the family over the demon(ess). The demon(ess) is depicted in a frontal position with the whole face showing. The eyes are very large, as well as the hands (if depicted). The demon(ess) is entirely static.^[52]

One bowl contains the following inscription commissioned from a Jewish occultist to protect a woman called Rashnoi and her husband from Lilith:

Thou liliths, male lili and female lilith, hag and ghool, I adjure you by the Strong One of Abraham, by the Rock of Isaac, by the Shaddai of Jacob, by Yah Ha-Shem by Yah his memorial, to turn away from this Rashnoi b. M. and from Geyonai b. M. her husband. [Here is] your divorce and writ and letter of separation, sent through holy angels. Amen, Amen, Selah, Halleluyah! (image)

— Excerpt from translation in Aramaic Incantation Texts from Nippur.^[57]

Alphabet of Ben Sira

Main article: Alphabet of Ben Sira

Lilith, illustration by Carl Poellath from 1886 or earlier

The pseudepigraphical^[58] 8th–10th centuries Alphabet of Ben Sira is considered to be the oldest form of the story of Lilith as Adam’s first wife. Whether this particular tradition is older is not known. Scholars tend to date the Alphabet between the 8th and 10th centuries AD. The work has been characterized by some scholars as satirical, but Ginzberg concluded it was meant seriously.^[59]

In the text an amulet is inscribed with the names of three angels (Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof) and placed around the neck of newborn boys in order to protect them from the lilin until their circumcision.^[60] The amulets used against Lilith that were thought to derive from this tradition are, in fact, dated as being much older.^[61] The concept of Eve having a predecessor is not exclusive to the Alphabet, and is not a new concept, as it can be found in Genesis Rabbah.^{[citation needed]} However, the idea that Lilith was the predecessor may be exclusive to the Alphabet.

The idea in the text that Adam had a wife prior to Eve may have developed from an interpretation of the Book of Genesis and its dual creation accounts; while Genesis 2:22 describes God’s creation of Eve from Adam’s rib, an earlier passage, 1:27, already indicates that a woman had been made: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” The Alphabet text places Lilith’s creation after God’s words in Genesis 2:18 that “it is not good for man to be alone”; in this text God forms Lilith out of the clay from which he made Adam but she and Adam bicker. Lilith claims that since she and Adam were created in the same way they were equal and she refuses to submit to him:

After God created Adam, who was alone, He said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” He then created a woman for Adam, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, “I will not lie below,” and he said, “I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.” Lilith responded, “We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.” But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air.

Adam stood in prayer before his Creator: “Sovereign of the universe!” he said, “the woman you gave me has run away.” At once, the Holy One, blessed be He, sent these three angels Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof, to bring her back.

Said the Holy One to Adam, “If she agrees to come back, what is made is good. If not, she must permit one hundred of her children to die every day.” The angels left God and pursued Lilith, whom they overtook in the midst of the sea, in the mighty waters wherein the Egyptians were destined to drown. They told her God’s word, but she did not wish to return. The angels said, “We shall drown you in the sea.”

“Leave me!’ she said. “I was created only to cause sickness to infants. If the infant is male, I have dominion over him for eight days after his birth, and if female, for twenty days.”

When the angels heard Lilith’s words, they insisted she go back. But she swore to them by the name of the living and eternal God: “Whenever I see you or your names or your forms in an amulet, I will have no power over that infant.” She also agreed to have one hundred of her children die every day. Accordingly, every day one hundred demons perish, and for the same reason, we write the angels’ names on the amulets of young children. When Lilith sees their names, she remembers her oath, and the child recovers.

The background and purpose of The Alphabet of Ben-Sira is unclear. It is a collection of stories about heroes of the Bible and Talmud, it may have been a collection of folk-tales, a refutation of Christian, Karaite, or other separatist movements; its content seems so offensive to contemporary Jews that it was even suggested that it could be an anti-Jewish satire,^[62] although, in any case, the text was accepted by the Jewish mystics of medieval Germany.^[49]

Adam clutches a child in the presence of the child-snatcher Lilith. Fresco by Filippino Lippi, basilica of Santa Maria Novella, Florence

The Alphabet of Ben-Sira is the earliest surviving source of the story, and the conception that Lilith was Adam’s first wife became only widely known with the 17th century Lexicon Talmudicum of German scholar Johannes Buxtorf.

In this folk tradition that arose in the early Middle Ages Lilith, a dominant female demon, became identified with Asmodeus, King of Demons, as his queen.^[63] Asmodeus was already well known by this time because of the legends about him in the Talmud. Thus, the merging of Lilith and Asmodeus was inevitable.^[64] The second myth of Lilith grew to include legends about another world and by some accounts this other world existed side by side with this one, Yenne Velt is Yiddish for this described “Other World”. In this case Asmodeus and Lilith were believed to procreate demonic offspring endlessly and spread chaos at every turn.^[64]

Two primary characteristics are seen in these legends about Lilith: Lilith as the incarnation of lust, causing men to be led astray, and Lilith as a child-killing witch, who strangles helpless neonates. These two aspects of the Lilith legend seemed to have evolved separately; there is hardly a tale where she encompasses both roles.^[64] But the aspect of the witch-like role that Lilith plays broadens her archetype of the destructive side of witchcraft. Such stories are commonly found among Jewish folklore.^[64]

The influence of the rabbinic traditions

Although the image of Lilith of the Alphabet of Ben Sira is unprecedented, some elements in her portrayal can be traced back to the talmudic and midrashic traditions that arose around Eve.

First and foremost, the very introduction of Lilith to the creation story rests on the rabbinic myth, prompted by the two separate creation accounts in Genesis 1:1–2:25, that there were two original women. A way of resolving the apparent discrepancy between these two accounts was to assume that there must have been some other first woman, apart from the one later identified with Eve. The Rabbis, noting Adam’s exclamation, “this time (zot hapa‘am) [this is] bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23), took it as an intimation that there must already have been a “first time”.

According to Genesis rabbah 18:4, Adam was disgusted upon seeing the first woman full of “discharge and blood”, and God had to provide him with another one. The subsequent creation is performed with adequate precautions: Adam is made to sleep, so as not to witness the process itself (Sanhedrin 39a), and Eve is adorned with fine jewellery (Genesis rabbah 18:1) and brought to Adam by the angels Gabriel and Michael (ibid. 18:3). However, nowhere do the rabbis specify what happened to the first woman, leaving the matter open for further speculation. This is the gap into which the later tradition of Lilith could fit.

Second, this new woman is still met with harsh rabbinic allegations. Again playing on the Hebrew phrase zot hapa‘am, Adam, according to the same midrash, declares: “it is she [zot] who is destined to strike the bell [zog] and to speak [in strife] against me, as you read, ‘a golden bell [pa‘amon] and a pomegranate’ [Exodus 28:34] … it is she who will trouble me [mefa‘amtani] all night” (Genesis Rabbah 18:4).

The first woman also becomes the object of accusations ascribed to Rabbi Joshua of Siknin, according to whom Eve, despite the divine efforts, turned out to be “swelled-headed, coquette, eavesdropper, gossip, prone to jealousy, light-fingered and gadabout” (Genesis Rabbah 18:2). A similar set of charges appears in Genesis Rabbah 17:8, according to which Eve’s creation from Adam’s rib rather than from the earth makes her inferior to Adam and never satisfied with anything.

Third, and despite the terseness of the biblical text in this regard, the erotic iniquities attributed to Eve constitute a separate category of her shortcomings. Told in Genesis 3:16 that “your desire shall be for your husband”, she is accused by the Rabbis of having an overdeveloped sexual drive (Genesis Rabbah 20:7) and constantly enticing Adam (Genesis Rabbah 23:5). However, in terms of textual popularity and dissemination, the motif of Eve copulating with the primeval serpent takes priority over her other sexual transgressions. Despite the rather unsettling picturesqueness of this account, it is conveyed in numerous places: Genesis Rabbah 18:6, and BT Sotah 9b, Shabbat 145b–146a and 156a, Yevamot 103b and Avodah Zarah 22b.^[49]

Kabbalah

Main article: Lilith (Lurianic Kabbalah)

Kabbalistic mysticism attempted to establish a more exact relationship between Lilith and God. With her major characteristics having been well developed by the end of the Talmudic period, after six centuries had elapsed between the Aramaic incantation texts that mention Lilith and the early Spanish Kabbalistic writings in the 13th century, she reappears, and her life history becomes known in greater mythological detail.^[65] Her creation is described in many alternative versions.

One mentions her creation as being before Adam’s, on the fifth day, because the “living creatures” with whose swarms God filled the waters included Lilith. A similar version, related to the earlier Talmudic passages, recounts how Lilith was fashioned with the same substance as Adam was, shortly before. A third alternative version states that God originally created Adam and Lilith in a manner that the female creature was contained in the male. Lilith’s soul was lodged in the depths of the Great Abyss. When God called her, she joined Adam.

After Adam’s body was created a thousand souls from the Left (evil) side attempted to attach themselves to him. However, God drove them off. Adam was left lying as a body without a soul. Then a cloud descended and God commanded the earth to produce a living soul. This God breathed into Adam, who began to spring to life and his female was attached to his side. God separated the female from Adam’s side. The female side was Lilith, whereupon she flew to the Cities of the Sea and attacked humankind.

Yet another version claims that Lilith emerged as a divine entity that was born spontaneously, either out of the Great Supernal Abyss or out of the power of an aspect of God (the Gevurah of Din). This aspect of God was negative and punitive, as well as one of his ten attributes (Sefirot), at its lowest manifestation has an affinity with the realm of evil and it is out of this that Lilith merged with Samael.^[66]

An alternative story links Lilith with the creation of luminaries. The “first light”, which is the light of Mercy (one of the Sefirot), appeared on the first day of creation when God said “Let there be light”. This light became hidden and the Holiness became surrounded by a husk of evil. “A husk (klippa) was created around the brain” and this husk spread and brought out another husk, which was Lilith.^[67]

Midrash ABKIR

The first medieval source to depict Adam and Lilith in full was the Midrash A.B.K.I.R. (c. 10th century), which was followed by the Zohar and other Kabbalistic writings. Adam is said to be perfect until he recognises either his sin or Cain’s fratricide that is the cause of bringing death into the world. He then separates from holy Eve, sleeps alone, and fasts for 130 years. During this time “Pizna”, either an alternate name for Lilith or a daughter of hers, desires his beauty and seduces him against his will. She gives birth to multitudes of djinns and demons, the first of them being named Agrimas. However, they are defeated by Methuselah, who slays thousands of them with a holy sword and forces Agrimas to give him the names of the rest, after which he casts them away to the sea and the mountains.^[68]

Treatise on the Left Emanation

Main article: Treatise on the Left Emanation

The mystical writing of two brothers Jacob and Isaac Hacohen, Treatise on the Left Emanation, which predates the Zohar by a few decades, states that Samael and Lilith are in the shape of an androgynous being, double-faced, born out of the emanation of the Throne of Glory and corresponding in the spiritual realm to Adam and Eve, who were likewise born as a hermaphrodite. The two twin androgynous couples resembled each other and both “were like the image of Above”; that is, that they are reproduced in a visible form of an androgynous deity.

19. In answer to your question concerning Lilith, I shall explain to you the essence of the matter. Concerning this point there is a received tradition from the ancient Sages who made use of the Secret Knowledge of the Lesser Palaces, which is the manipulation of demons and a ladder by which one ascends to the prophetic levels. In this tradition it is made clear that Samael and Lilith were born as one, similar to the form of Adam and Eve who were also born as one, reflecting what is above. This is the account of Lilith which was received by the Sages in the Secret Knowledge of the Palaces.^[67]

Another version^[69] that was also current among Kabbalistic circles in the Middle Ages establishes Lilith as the first of Samael’s four wives: Lilith, Naamah, Eisheth, and Agrat bat Mahlat. Each of them are mothers of demons and have their own hosts and unclean spirits in no number.^[70] The marriage of archangel Samael and Lilith was arranged by Tanin’iver (“Blind Dragon”), who is the counterpart of “the dragon that is in the sea”. Blind Dragon acts as an intermediary between Lilith and Samael:

Blind Dragon rides Lilith the Sinful – may she be extirpated quickly in our days, Amen! – And this Blind Dragon brings about the union between Samael and Lilith. And just as the Dragon that is in the sea (Isa. 27:1) has no eyes, likewise Blind Dragon that is above, in the likeness of a spiritual form, is without eyes, that is to say, without colors…. (Patai 81:458) Samael is called the Slant Serpent, and Lilith is called the Tortuous Serpent.^[71]

The marriage of Samael and Lilith is known as the “Angel Satan” or the “Other God”, but it was not allowed to last. To prevent Lilith and Samael’s demonic children Lilin from filling the world, God castrated Samael. In many 17th century Kabbalistic books, this seems to be a reinterpretation of an old Talmudic myth where God castrated the male Leviathan and slew the female Leviathan in order to prevent them from mating and thereby destroying the Earth with their offspring.^[72] With Lilith being unable to fornicate with Samael anymore, she sought to couple with men who experience nocturnal emissions. A 15th or 16th century Kabbalah text states that God has “cooled” the female Leviathan, meaning that he has made Lilith infertile and she is a mere fornication.^{[citation needed]}

The Fall of Man by Cornelis van Haarlem (1592), showing the serpent in the Garden of Eden as a woman

The Treatise on the Left Emanation also says that there are two Liliths, the lesser being married to the great demon Asmodeus.

The Matron Lilith is the mate of Samael. Both of them were born at the same hour in the image of Adam and Eve, intertwined in each other. Asmodeus the great king of the demons has as a mate the Lesser (younger) Lilith, daughter of the king whose name is Qafsefoni. The name of his mate is Mehetabel daughter of Matred, and their daughter is Lilith.^[73]

Another passage charges Lilith as being a tempting serpent of Eve.

And the Serpent, the Woman of Harlotry, incited and seduced Eve through the husks of Light which in itself is holiness. And the Serpent seduced Holy Eve, and enough said for him who understands. And all this ruination came about because Adam the first man coupled with Eve while she was in her menstrual impurity – this is the filth and the impure seed of the Serpent who mounted Eve before Adam mounted her. Behold, here it is before you: because of the sins of Adam the first man all the things mentioned came into being. For Evil Lilith, when she saw the greatness of his corruption, became strong in her husks, and came to Adam against his will, and became hot from him and bore him many demons and spirits and Lilin. (Patai81:455f)

Zohar

References to Lilith in the Zohar include the following:

She roams at night, and goes all about the world and makes sport with men and causes them to emit seed. In every place where a man sleeps alone in a house, she visits him and grabs him and attaches herself to him and has her desire from him, and bears from him. And she also afflicts him with sickness, and he knows it not, and all this takes place when the moon is on the wane.^[74]

This passage may be related to the mention of Lilith in Talmud Shabbath 151b (see above), and also to Talmud Eruvin 18b where nocturnal emissions are connected with the begettal of demons.

According to Rapahel Patai, older sources state clearly that after Lilith’s Red Sea sojourn (mentioned also in Louis Ginzberg‘s Legends of the Jews), she returned to Adam and begat children from him by forcing herself upon him. Before doing so, she attaches herself to Cain and bears him numerous spirits and demons. In the Zohar, however, Lilith is said to have succeeded in begetting offspring from Adam even during their short-lived sexual experience. Lilith leaves Adam in Eden, as she is not a suitable helpmate for him.^[75] Gershom Scholem proposes that the author of the Zohar, Rabbi Moses de Leon, was aware of both the folk tradition of Lilith and another conflicting version, possibly older.^[76]

The Zohar adds further that two female spirits instead of one, Lilith and Naamah, desired Adam and seduced him. The issue of these unions were demons and spirits called “the plagues of humankind”, and the usual added explanation was that it was through Adam’s own sin that Lilith overcame him against his will.^[75]

17th-century Hebrew magical amulets

Medieval Hebrew amulet intended to protect a mother and her child from Lilith

A copy of Jean de Pauly‘s translation of the Zohar in the Ritman Library contains an inserted late 17th century printed Hebrew sheet for use in magical amulets where the prophet Elijah confronts Lilith.^[77]

The sheet contains two texts within borders, which are amulets, one for a male (‘lazakhar’), the other one for a female (‘lanekevah’). The invocations mention Adam, Eve and Lilith, ‘Chavah Rishonah’ (the first Eve, who is identical with Lilith), also devils or angels: Sanoy, Sansinoy, Smangeluf, Shmari’el (the guardian) and Hasdi’el (the merciful). A few lines in Yiddish are followed by the dialogue between the prophet Elijah and Lilith when he met her with her host of demons to kill the mother and take her new-born child (‘to drink her blood, suck her bones and eat her flesh’). She tells Elijah that she will lose her power if someone uses her secret names, which she reveals at the end: lilith, abitu, abizu, hakash, avers hikpodu, ayalu, matrota …^[78]

In other amulets, probably informed by The Alphabet of Ben-Sira, she is Adam’s first wife. (Yalqut Reubeni, Zohar 1:34b, 3:19^[79])

Charles Richardson‘s dictionary portion of the Encyclopædia Metropolitana appends to his etymological discussion of lullaby “a [manuscript] note written in a copy of Skinner” [i.e. Stephen Skinner‘s 1671 Etymologicon Linguæ Anglicanæ], which asserts that the word lullaby originates from Lillu abi abi, a Hebrew incantation meaning “Lilith begone” recited by Jewish mothers over an infant’s cradle.^[80] Richardson did not endorse the theory and modern lexicographers consider it a false etymology.^[80]^[81]

Alsatian Krasmesser (16th to 20th century)

Not so much an amulet as a ritual object for protection, the “Krasmesser” (or “Kreismesser”, circle knife) played a role in Jewish birth rituals in the area of Alsace, Switzerland and Southern Germany between the 16th and 20th century. The Krasmesser would be used by a midwife or by the husband to draw a magic circle around the pregnant or birthing woman to protect her from Lilith and the evil eye, which were considered to represent the greatest danger for children and pregnant women.^[82]

Rabbi Naphtali Hirsch ben Elieser Treves described this custom as early as 1560, and later references to a knife or sword by the birthing bed by both Paul Christian Kirchner and Johann Christian Georg Bodenschatz indicate its continuance. A publication about birth customs by the Jewish Museum of Switzerland also includes oral accounts from 20th century Baden-Württemberg which likewise mention circling movements with a knife in order to protect a woman in childbirth.^[82]

Greco-Roman mythology

Main article: Lamia (mythology)

Lamia (first version) by John William Waterhouse, 1905

In the Latin Vulgate Book of Isaiah 34:14, Lilith is translated lamia.

According to Augustine Calmet, Lilith has connections with early views on vampires and sorcery:

Some learned men have thought they discovered some vestiges of vampirism in the remotest antiquity; but all that they say of it does not come near what is related of the vampires. The lamiae, the strigae, the sorcerers whom they accused of sucking the blood of living people, and of thus causing their death, the magicians who were said to cause the death of new-born children by charms and malignant spells, are nothing less than what we understand by the name of vampires; even were it to be owned that these lamiae and strigae have really existed, which we do not believe can ever be well proved. I own that these terms [lamiae and strigae] are found in the versions of Holy Scripture. For instance, Isaiah, describing the condition to which Babylon was to be reduced after her ruin, says that she shall become the abode of satyrs, lamiae, and strigae (in Hebrew, lilith). This last term, according to the Hebrews, signifies the same thing, as the Greeks express by strix and lamiae, which are sorceresses or magicians, who seek to put to death new-born children. Whence it comes that the Jews are accustomed to write in the four corners of the chamber of a woman just delivered, “Adam, Eve, be gone from hence lilith.” … The ancient Greeks knew these dangerous sorceresses by the name of lamiae, and they believed that they devoured children, or sucked away all their blood till they died.^[83]

According to Siegmund Hurwitz the Talmudic Lilith is connected with the Greek Lamia, who, according to Hurwitz, likewise governed a class of child-stealing lamia-demons. Lamia bore the title “child killer” and was feared for her malevolence, like Lilith. She has different conflicting origins and is described as having a human upper body from the waist up and a serpentine body from the waist down.^[84] One source states simply that she is a daughter of the goddess Hecate, another, that Lamia was subsequently cursed by the goddess Hera to have stillborn children because of her association with Zeus; alternatively, Hera slew all of Lamia’s children (except Scylla) in anger that Lamia slept with her husband, Zeus. The grief caused Lamia to turn into a monster that took revenge on mothers by stealing their children and devouring them.^[84]

Lamia had a vicious sexual appetite that matched her cannibalistic appetite for children. She was notorious for being a vampiric spirit and loved sucking men’s blood.^[85] Her gift was the “mark of a Sibyl”, a gift of second sight. Zeus was said to have given her the gift of sight. However, she was “cursed” to never be able to shut her eyes so that she would forever obsess over her dead children. Taking pity on Lamia, Zeus gave her the ability to remove and replace her eyes from their sockets.^[84]

In Mandaeism

In Mandaean scriptures such as the Ginza Rabba and Qolasta, liliths (Classical Mandaic: ࡋࡉࡋࡉࡕ) are mentioned as inhabitants of the World of Darkness.^[86]

Arabic culture

The occult writer Ahmad al-Buni (d. 1225), in his Sun of the Great Knowledge (Arabic: شمس المعارف الكبرى), mentions a demon called “the mother of children” (ام الصبيان), a term also used “in one place”.^[87] Folkloric traditions recorded around 1953 tell about a jinn called Qarinah, who was rejected by Adam and mated with Iblis instead. She gave birth to a host of demons and became known as their mother. To take revenge on Adam, she pursues human children. As such, she would kill a pregnant mother’s baby in the womb, causes impotence to men or attacks little children with illnesses. According to occult practices, she would be subject to the demon-king Murrah al-Abyad, which appears to be another name for Iblis used in magical writings. Stories about Qarinah and Lilith merged in early Islam.^[88]

In Western literature

In German literature

Faust and Lilith by Richard Westall (1831)

Lilith’s earliest appearance in the literature of the Romantic period (1789–1832) was in Goethe‘s 1808 work Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy.

Faust:
    Who’s that there?
Mephistopheles:
    Take a good look.
    Lilith.
Faust:
    Lilith? Who is that?
Mephistopheles:
    Adam’s wife, his first. Beware of her.
    Her beauty’s one boast is her dangerous hair.
    When Lilith winds it tight around young men
    She doesn’t soon let go of them again.

— 1992 Greenberg translation, lines 4206–4211

After Mephistopheles offers this warning to Faust, he then, quite ironically, encourages Faust to dance with “the Pretty Witch”. Lilith and Faust engage in a short dialogue, where Lilith recounts the days spent in Eden.

Faust: [dancing with the young witch]
    A lovely dream I dreamt one day
    I saw a green-leaved apple tree,
    Two apples swayed upon a stem,
    So tempting! I climbed up for them.
The Pretty Witch:
    Ever since the days of Eden
    Apples have been man’s desire.
    How overjoyed I am to think, sir,
    Apples grow, too, in my garden.

— 1992 Greenberg translation, lines 4216 – 4223

In English literature

Lady Lilith by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1866–1868, 1872–1873)

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which developed around 1848,^[89] were greatly influenced by Goethe’s work on the theme of Lilith. In 1863, Dante Gabriel Rossetti of the Brotherhood began painting what would later be his first rendition of Lady Lilith, a painting he expected to be his “best picture hitherto”.^[89] Symbols appearing in the painting allude to the “femme fatale” reputation of the Romantic Lilith: poppies (death and cold) and white roses (sterile passion). Accompanying his Lady Lilith painting from 1866, Rossetti wrote a sonnet entitled Lilith, which was first published in Swinburne’s pamphlet-review (1868), Notes on the Royal Academy Exhibition.

Of Adam’s first wife, Lilith, it is told
(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,)
That, ere the snake’s, her sweet tongue could deceive,
And her enchanted hair was the first gold.
And still she sits, young while the earth is old,
And, subtly of herself contemplative,
Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave,
Till heart and body and life are in its hold.
The rose and poppy are her flower; for where
Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?
Lo! As that youth’s eyes burned at thine, so went
Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent
And round his heart one strangling golden hair.

— Collected Works, 216

The poem and the picture appeared together alongside Rossetti’s painting Sibylla Palmifera and the sonnet Soul’s Beauty. In 1881, the Lilith sonnet was renamed “Body’s Beauty” in order to contrast it and Soul’s Beauty. The two were placed sequentially in The House of Life collection (sonnets number 77 and 78).^[89]

Rossetti wrote in 1870:

Lady [Lilith] … represents a Modern Lilith combing out her abundant golden hair and gazing on herself in the glass with that self-absorption by whose strange fascination such natures draw others within their own circle.

— Rossetti, W. M. ii.850, D. G. Rossetti’s emphasis^[89]

This is in accordance with Jewish folk tradition, which associates Lilith both with long hair (a symbol of dangerous feminine seductive power in Jewish culture), and with possessing women by entering them through mirrors.^[90]

The Victorian poet Robert Browning re-envisioned Lilith in his poem “Adam, Lilith, and Eve”. First published in 1883, the poem uses the traditional myths surrounding the triad of Adam, Eve, and Lilith. Browning depicts Lilith and Eve as being friendly and complicitous with each other, as they sit together on either side of Adam. Under the threat of death, Eve admits that she never loved Adam, while Lilith confesses that she always loved him:

As the worst of the venom left my lips,
I thought, ‘If, despite this lie, he strips
The mask from my soul with a kiss — I crawl
His slave, — soul, body, and all!

— Browning 1098

Browning focused on Lilith’s emotional attributes, rather than that of her ancient demon predecessors.^[91]

Scottish author George MacDonald also wrote a fantasy novel entitled Lilith, first published in 1895. MacDonald employed the character of Lilith in service to a spiritual drama about sin and redemption, in which Lilith finds a hard-won salvation. Many of the traditional characteristics of Lilith mythology are present in the author’s depiction: Long dark hair, pale skin, a hatred and fear of children and babies, and an obsession with gazing at herself in a mirror. MacDonald’s Lilith also has vampiric qualities: she bites people and sucks their blood for sustenance.

Australian poet and scholar Christopher John Brennan (1870–1932), included a section titled “Lilith” in his major work “Poems: 1913” (Sydney : G. B. Philip and Son, 1914). The “Lilith” section contains thirteen poems exploring the Lilith myth and is central to the meaning of the collection as a whole.

C. L. Moore‘s 1940 story Fruit of Knowledge is written from Lilith’s point of view. It is a re-telling of the Fall of Man as a love triangle between Lilith, Adam and Eve – with Eve’s eating the forbidden fruit being in this version the result of misguided manipulations by the jealous Lilith, who had hoped to get her rival discredited and destroyed by God and thus regain Adam’s love.

British poet John Siddique‘s 2011 collection Full Blood has a suite of 11 poems called The Tree of Life, which features Lilith as the divine feminine aspect of God. A number of the poems feature Lilith directly, including the piece Unwritten which deals with the spiritual problem of the feminine being removed by the scribes from The Bible.

Lilith is also mentioned in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C.S.Lewis. The character Mr. Beaver ascribes the ancestry of the main antagonist, Jadis the White Witch, to Lilith.^[92]

Lilith is a poem by Vladimir Nabokov, written in 1928. Many have connected it to Lolita, but Nabokov adamantly denies this: “Intelligent readers will abstain from examining this impersonal fantasy for any links with my later fiction.”^[93]

In Western esotericism and modern occultism

The depiction of Lilith in Romanticism continues to be popular among Wiccans and in other modern Occultism.^[89] A few magical orders dedicated to the undercurrent of Lilith, featuring initiations specifically related to the arcana of the “first mother”, exist. Two organizations that use initiations and magic associated with Lilith are the Ordo Antichristianus Illuminati and the Order of Phosphorus. Lilith appears as a succubus in Aleister Crowley‘s De Arte Magica. Lilith was also one of the middle names of Crowley’s first child, Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith Crowley (1904–1906), and Lilith is sometimes identified with Babalon in Thelemic writings. Many early occult writers that contributed to modern day Wicca expressed special reverence for Lilith. Charles Leland associated Aradia with Lilith: Aradia, says Leland, is Herodias, who was regarded in stregheria folklore as being associated with Diana as chief of the witches. Leland further notes that Herodias is a name that comes from west Asia, where it denoted an early form of Lilith.^[94][95]

Gerald Gardner asserted that there was continuous historical worship of Lilith to present day, and that her name is sometimes given to the goddess being personified in the coven by the priestess. This idea was further attested by Doreen Valiente, who cited her as a presiding goddess of the Craft: “the personification of erotic dreams, the suppressed desire for delights”.^[96] In some contemporary concepts, Lilith is viewed as the embodiment of the Goddess, a designation that is thought to be shared with what these faiths believe to be her counterparts: Inanna, Ishtar, Asherah, Anath, Anahita and Isis.^[97] According to one view, Lilith was originally a Sumerian, Babylonian, or Hebrew mother goddess of childbirth, children, women, and sexuality.^[98]^[99]

Raymond Buckland holds that Lilith is a dark moon goddess on par with the Hindu Kali.^[100]^{[page needed]}

Many theistic Satanists consider Lilith as a goddess. She is considered a goddess of independence by those Satanists and is often worshipped by women, but women are not the only people who worship her. Lilith is popular among theistic Satanists because of her association with Satan. Some Satanists believe that she is the wife of Satan and thus think of her as a mother figure. Others base their reverence for her on her history as a succubus and praise her as a sex goddess.^[101] A different approach to a Satanic Lilith holds that she was once a fertility and agricultural goddess.^[102]

The western mystery tradition associates Lilith with the Qliphoth of kabbalah. Samael Aun Weor in The Pistis Sophia Unveiled writes that homosexuals are the “henchmen of Lilith”. Likewise, women who undergo wilful abortion, and those who support this practice are “seen in the sphere of Lilith”.^[103] Dion Fortune writes, “The Virgin Mary is reflected in Lilith”,^[104] and that Lilith is the source of “lustful dreams”.^[104]

The Story of Adam and Eve Is Not Unique to the Bible

By: Dave Roos | Jan 11, 2021

https://people.howstuffworks.com/adam-and-eve.htm

Adam and Eve, stained glass — This stained-glass window from Sacred Heart Basilica, in Paray-le-Monial, France depicts the Biblical story of Adam and Eve and the serpent. FRED DE NOYELLE/GODONG/GETTY IMAGES

Does the following story sound familiar? In the beginning, a divine force created the universe by separating elements from the chaotic void: light and dark, heaven and earth. The first humans were formed from clay and lived in a paradise free of pain, sin and toil. But a clever creature tricked the humans and they fell from their perfect state into the flawed world we know today.

If you think that’s the story of Adam and Eve from the Bible, you’re right. But it’s also a story common to other religions. Nearly every ancient culture told its own set of creation myths and they share a remarkable number of similarities, including key elements of the Adam and Eve story: humans fashioned from clay, a trickster figure who subverts the gods’ plans for creation, and a woman taking the blame for sin and pain.

It appears that ancient authors from China, Egypt, Iceland, Greece, Mesopotamia and the Americas were all wrestling with the same big questions — where did we come from and why is our world the way it is? — and they used myth to make sense of it all.

“Human beings know that they’re alienated from the divine somehow, but they also know that they’re part of the divine and that the divine is part of them,” says Eva Thury, an English professor at Drexel University and co-author (with Margaret Devinney) of “Introduction to Mythology: Contemporary Approaches to Classical and World Myths.”

“All of these stories are expressing that relationship, and it gets expressed in terms of whatever the society is up to at that point, whether it’s putting women in their place like the Greeks or cultivating oneness with the land like the Native Americans.”

Contents

Two Biblical Creation Stories — Which Came First?

Before we look at the ways in which the Adam and Eve story is echoed in other myth traditions, it’s worth noting that Adam and Eve is actually one of two distinct creation stories in the Bible. Thury explains that the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible (known to Christians as the Old Testament) was edited together from different authors writing centuries apart.

The first creation story starts with the immortal phrase, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” In that account, which comprises Chapter 1 of Genesis, God labors for six days to create the sun and moon, the land and sea, and plants and animals. On the last day, he creates human beings in his own image: “male and female he created them.”

Chapter 2 of Genesis, which contains the Adam and Eve story, seems like a continuation of the creation account from Chapter 1, but it’s actually very different. In this second creation story, God forms the first man before creating any other animal, and when God finds no suitable “helper” for the man from the animal kingdom, he fashions the first woman from one of the man’s ribs.

“There are two creation stories in Genesis which don’t fit together at all,” says Thury. “In one of them, human beings are all made at the same time, and in the second one man is made first and woman second. It probably reflects the views of the culture in which they were written.”

Interestingly, many scholars believe that the Adam and Eve story from Chapter 2 of Genesis was actually written first, around 950 B.C.E. in Palestine, according to Thury. The “In the beginning” version from Chapter 1 was written 400 years later during the Babylonian captivity, when the Jews were living in exile. The priestly Jewish author of Chapter 1 wrote his account to directly refute the Babylonian creation myths, which credited gods like Marduk and Tiamat with creating heaven and earth.

Mankind Made from Clay

Adam isn’t called by name until nearly the end of Chapter 2 (before that, he’s simply “the man”), and his name is actually a clever play on words. Adam is created from the “dust of the ground” — usually interpreted as earth or clay — and the Hebrew word for “ground” is “adamah.” So Adam’s name is basically dirt.

This is a common theme in creation myths the world over. In China, the goddess Nüwa took a walk among the majesties of creation, but she grew lonely, so she paused along the banks of a river and began to fashion creatures out of clay. After making a few animals, Nüwa got bored, and catching her beautiful reflection in the river, decided to create creatures in her own image and name them humans.

In Ovid’s “Metamorphosis,” written in Ancient Rome, the gods first separated light from dark, then earth from sky, then created all of the animals before deciding to make “[a]n animal with higher intellect, more noble, able — one to rule the rest.” Borrowing from older mythological sources, Ovid credited Prometheus with making men “by mixing new-made earth with fresh rainwater; and when he fashioned man, his mold recalled the masters of all things, the gods.”

In one Egyptian creation myth, the god Amun commands the ram-headed god Khmun to create human beings “as a potter who molds clay on a potter’s wheel.” And according to Sumerian creation myths, which are some of the oldest on record, the primeval mother goddess Namma created mankind to do chores for the gods and birthed them by placing clay in her womb.

Enter the Serpent, a Classic ‘Trickster’ Figure

In the biblical story of Adam and Eve, God places his human creations in the Garden of Eden, and tells them they can freely eat of every tree of the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “for when you eat from it you will certainly die,” God warns.

Then along comes the serpent, more cunning than other animals (and the only one that can talk, apparently), and asks Eve what God said about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When she repeats the prohibition against eating its fruit, the serpent scoffs, “You will not certainly die … For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

So Eve, seeking wisdom, takes a bite of the forbidden fruit and gives some to her husband, Adam. As the serpent promised, they don’t die and their eyes are indeed opened to the existence of good, evil and shame (they were naked!). But as punishment for breaking God’s commandment, they are expelled from the garden into our fallen world of pain and toil.

Later Christian theologians cast Satan in the role of the serpent, but to the ancient authors of Genesis, the snake represented an even older mythological figure: the trickster. In mythology, a trickster is a slippery figure who inhabits both the heavenly and earthly realms and refuses to play by anyone’s rules. Loki is the infamous trickster of Norse mythology and Anansi is the trickster of many African myths.

“A trickster being involved with the creation of the world as we know it is a very prominent theme,” says Thury, citing the example of Raven in Native American creation myths of the Pacific Northwest.

Raven is at once a shape-shifting trickster and a creator god, creating land by dropping grains of sand into the sea, and the rivers by spitting out stolen water. But his gifts to mankind are achieved by deceit. He brings light to the world, for example, by pretending he’s a newborn baby and crying incessantly until the ancient “grandfather” releases the stars, sun and moon.

In classical Greek mythology, Prometheus is the top trickster. Prometheus steals fire from the gods and gifts it to the humans he fashioned out of clay, enabling the rise of civilization. Prometheus is punished for his treachery, condemned by Zeus to have his liver eaten by an eagle every day for eternity.

Prometheus, eagle — Zeus punished Prometheus for giving fire to mankind by having him bound to a rock while a great eagle ate his liver every day (which grew back overnight). On the left is Hercules, about to kill the eagle and free Prometheus from his torment.GRAFISSIMO/GETTY IMAGES

Compare Prometheus to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Both broke the rules of all-powerful gods in order to bring light and knowledge to mankind. And both were punished for it. Prometheus had his liver eternally consumed and the serpent was damned to wallow on its belly and be hated by humans.

Blame the Woman (Of Course)

Prometheus wasn’t the only one punished for stealing fire. Zeus was so steaming mad that he delivered the ultimate curse on mankind: women. According to the Ancient Greek poet Hesiod, Zeus created the first woman, Pandora, and filled her with “lies and persuasive words and cunning ways.” He set Pandora loose on mankind armed with a “cask” or box containing a dark weapon.

“Before this time men lived upon the earth apart from sorrow and from painful work, free from disease, which brings the Death-gods in,” wrote Hesiod in Theogony. “But now the woman opened up the cask, and scattered pains and evils among men. Inside the cask’s hard walls remained one thing, Hope, only, which did not fly through the door. The lid stopped her, but all the others flew, Thousands of troubles wandering the earth.”

Hesiod was writing in the eighth century B.C.E. as part of a Greek culture that “didn’t think very highly of women,” says Thury, “so woman is seen as a punishment. Woman is what brings evil into the world.”

The biblical story of Adam and Eve was written a century earlier in a culture that wasn’t nearly as chauvinistic, yet Eve is blamed for eating the forbidden fruit and for getting them expelled from paradise. When God asks Eve, “What is this you have done?” she responds, “The serpent beguiled me, and I ate.”

Eve is punished with pain in childbirth and also to be ruled over by her husband, which appears to offer divine justification for a rigidly patriarchal society. (Adam was punished too for listening to his wife and eating the fruit as well. He is sentenced to toiling for his daily bread.)

Eve has long hair that covers her genitals. The serpent is a female with breasts.

Paradise Lost, Again and Again

In many myth traditions, the first humans are immortal and live in a world free from sin, pain, work or death, but that paradisiacal spell is quickly broken.

In Ovid’s “Metamorphosis,” the first age is described as “an age of gold: no law and no compulsion then were needed; all kept faith; the righteous way was freely willed.”

But after Saturn is banished to Tartarus, the ruthless Jove takes over (the Roman version of Zeus) and creation passes through successively darker ages: silver, bronze and finally iron. “And this, the worst of ages, suddenly gave way to every foul impiety; earth saw the flight of faith, modesty and truth — and in their place came snares and fraud.”

We also see this in the African creation myth known as The Origin of Death, where there was once a time before death and disease in which “Everybody was well and happy.” Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a man died. The people didn’t know what to do, so they told a worm to ask the gods how to respond. The sky gods told the worm to instruct the people to place the dead body in the fork of a tree and “throw mush at it” until it comes back to life. After that, there would be no death.

But here again a trickster intervened. A lizard named Agadzagadza heard what the sky gods said and ran ahead of the worm to tell the humans a lie, that they should wrap up the body and bury it in the ground. Which they did. When the worm finally arrived and told the humans to dig up the body, they “were overcome by laziness” and refused. And death has been here ever since.

Notes

^ Compare Genesis 1:27^[10] (this contrasts with Eve, who was created from one of Adam’s ribs).^[11]
^ Kramer translates the zu as “owl“, but most often it is translated as “eagle“, “vulture“, or “bird of prey“.
^ See The animals mentioned in the Bible Henry Chichester Hart 1888, and more modern sources; also entries Brown Driver Briggs Hebrew Lexicon for tsiyyim, ‘iyyim, sayir, liylith, qippowz and dayah.
^ מנוח, manoaḥ, used for birds as Noah’s dove, Gen.8:9 and also humans as Israel, Deut.28:65; Naomi, Ruth 3:1.
^ 34:14 καὶ συναντήσουσιν δαιμόνια ὀνοκενταύροις καὶ βοήσουσιν ἕτερος πρὸς τὸν ἕτερον ἐκεῖ ἀναπαύσονται ὀνοκένταυροι εὗρον γὰρ αὑτοῖς ἀνάπαυσιν Translation: And daemons shall meet with onocentaurs, and they shall cry one to the other: there shall the onocentaurs rest, having found for themselves [a place of] rest.

References

^ Jump up to:^a ^b McDonald, Beth E. (2009). “In Possession of the Night: Lilith as Goddess, Demon, Vampire”. In Sabbath, Roberta Sternman (ed.). Sacred Tropes: Tanakh, New Testament, and Qur’an As Literature and Culture. Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishers. pp. 175–178. doi:10.1163/ej.9789004177529.i-536.42. ISBN 978-90-04-17752-9.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b “Blood, Gender and Power in Christianity and Judaism”. www2.kenyon.edu. Retrieved 2022-01-08.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Isaiah 34:14
^ Müller-Kessler, Christa (2001). “Lilit(s) in der aramäisch-magischen Literatur der Spätantike”. Altorientalische Forschungen. Walter de Gruyter GmbH. 28 (2): 338–352. doi:10.1524/aofo.2001.28.2.338. S2CID 163723903.
^ Davidson, Gustav (1971) Dictionary of Angels.pdf A Dictionary of Angels including the Fallen Angels, New York, The Free Press, p. 174. ISBN 002907052X
^ B., Shapiro, Marc (2008). Studies in Maimonides and his interpreters. University of Scranton Press. p. 134. ISBN 978-1-58966-165-3. OCLC 912624714.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Blair
^ Farber, Walter (1990) Reallexikon der Assyriologie und vorderasiatischen Archäologie (RLA), 7, Berlin, de Gruyter, pp. 23–24, ISBN 3-11-010437-7.
^ Hutter, Manfred (1999) “Lilith”, in K. van der Toorn et al. (eds.), Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, Leiden, Brill, pp. 520–521. ISBN 90-04-11119-0.
^ Genesis 1:27
^ Genesis 2:22
^ Schwartz, Howard (2006). Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism. Oxford University Press. p. 218. ISBN 978-0-19-532713-7.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Kvam, Kristen E.; Schearing, Linda S.; Ziegler, Valarie H. (1999). Eve and Adam: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Readings on Genesis and Gender. Indiana University Press. pp. 220–221. ISBN 978-0-253-21271-9.
^ Freedman, David Noel (ed.) (1997, 1992). Anchor Bible Dictionary. New York: Doubleday. “Very little information has been found relating to the Akkadian and Babylonian view of these figures. Two sources of information previously used to define Lilith are both suspect.”
^ Isaiah 34:14
^ Ebeling, Erich; Meissner, Bruno; Edzard, Dietz Otto Reallexikon der Assyriologie Vol. 9, pp. 47, 50. De Gruyter.
^ Astour, Michael C. (1965) Hellenosemitica: an ethnic and cultural study in west Semitic impact on Mycenaean. Greece. Brill. p. 138.
^ Archibald Sayce, Hibbert Lectures on Babylonian Religion 1887.
^ Charles Fossey, La Magie Assyrienne, Paris: 1902.
^ Kramer, S. N. (1938) Gilgamesh and the Huluppu-Tree: A Reconstructed Sumerian Text. Assyriological Studies 10. Chicago.
^ George, A. (2003) The epic of Gilgamesh: the Babylonian epic poem and other texts in Akkadian. p. 100 Tablet XII. Appendix The last Tablet in the ‘Series of Gilgamesh’ . ISBN 9780713991963
^ Chicago Assyrian Dictionary. Chicago: University of Chicago. 1956.
^ Hurwitz, p. 49
^ Manfred Hutter article in Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, Pieter Willem van der Horst – 1999 pp. 520–521, article cites Hutter’s own 1988 work Behexung, Entsühnung und Heilung Eisenbrauns 1988. pp. 224–228.
^ Müller-Kessler, C. (2002) “A Charm against Demons of Time”, in C. Wunsch (ed.), Mining the Archives. Festschrift Christopher Walker on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday (Dresden), p. 185. ISBN 9783980846608
^ Sterman Sabbath, Roberta (2009) Sacred tropes: Tanakh, New Testament, and Qur’an as literature and culture.
^ Sex and gender in the ancient Near East: proceedings of the 47th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Helsinki, July 2–6, 2001, Part 2 p. 481.
^ Ribichini, S. (1976) “Lilith nell-albero Huluppu”, pp. 25 in Atti del 1° Convegno Italiano sul Vicino Oriente Antico, Rome.
^ Frankfort, H. (1937). “The Burney Relief”. Archiv für Orientforschung. 12: 128–135. JSTOR 41680314.
^ Kraeling, Emil (1937). “A Unique Babylonian Relief”. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 67 (67): 16–18. doi:10.2307/3218905. JSTOR 3218905. S2CID 164141131.
^ Albenda, Pauline (2005). “The “Queen of the Night” Plaque: A Revisit”. Journal of the American Oriental Society. 125 (2): 171–190. JSTOR 20064325.
^ Gaster, T. H. (1942). A Canaanite Magical Text. Or 11:
^ Torczyner, H. (1947). “A Hebrew Incantation against Night-Demons from Biblical Times”. Journal of Near Eastern Studies. University of Chicago Press. 6 (1): 18–29. doi:10.1086/370809. S2CID 161927885.
^ de Waard, Jan (1997). A handbook on Isaiah. Winona Lake, IN. ISBN 1-57506-023-X.
^ “Isaiah 34:14 (JPS 1917)”. Mechon Mamre. Retrieved 28 May 2020.
^ Blair, p. 27.
^ Morray-Jones, Christopher R. A. (2002) A transparent illusion: the dangerous vision of water in Hekhalot. Brill. ISBN 9004113371. Vol. 59, p. 258: “Early evidence of the belief in a plurality of liliths is provided by the Isaiah scroll from Qumran, which gives the name as liliyyot, and by the targum to Isaiah, which, in both cases, reads” (Targum reads: “when Lilith the Queen of [Sheba] and of Margod fell upon them.”)
^ Jahrbuch für Protestantische Theologie 1, 1875. p. 128.
^ Levy, [Moritz] A.[braham] (1817–1872)]. Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft. Vol. ZDMG 9. 1885. pp. 470, 484.
^ “The Old Testament (Vulgate)/Isaias propheta”. Wikisource (Latin). Retrieved 2007-09-24.
^ “Parallel Latin Vulgate Bible and Douay-Rheims Bible and King James Bible; The Complete Sayings of Jesus Christ”. Latin Vulgate. Retrieved 28 May 2020.
^ Davis, Michael T.; Strawn, Brent A. (2007) Qumran studies: new approaches, new questions. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 9780802860804. p. 47: “two manuscripts that date to the Herodian period, with 4Q510 slightly earlier”.
^ Chilton, Bruce; Bock, Darrell and Gurtner, Daniel M. (2010) A Comparative Handbook to the Gospel of Mark. Brill. p. 84. ISBN 9789004179738
^ “Lilith”. Biblical Archaeology Society. 2019-10-31. Retrieved 2020-05-30.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Baumgarten, J. M. (1991). “On the Nature of the Seductress in 4Q184”. Revue de Qumran. 15 (1/2 (57/58)): 133–143. JSTOR 24608925.
^ Baumgarten, J. M. (2001). “The seductress of Qumran”. Bible Review. 17 (5): 21–23, 42.
^ Collins, J. J. (1997) Jewish wisdom in the Hellenistic age. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 9780664221096
^ Tractate Niddah in the Mishnah is the only tractate from the Order of Tohorot which has Talmud on it. The Jerusalem Talmud is incomplete here, but the Babylonian Talmud on Tractate Niddah (2a–76b) is complete.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Kosior, Wojciech (2018). “A Tale of Two Sisters: The Image of Eve in Early Rabbinic Literature and Its Influence on the Portrayal of Lilith in the Alphabet of Ben Sira”. Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues (32): 112–130. doi:10.2979/nashim.32.1.10. S2CID 166142604.
^ Aish (18 August 2011). “Lillith”. Retrieved 29 May 2020.
^ Numbers Rabbah, in: Judaic Classics Library, Davka Corporation, 1999. (CD-ROM).
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c Shaked, Shaul (2013). Aramaic bowl spells : Jewish Babylonian Aramaic bowls. Volume one. Ford, James Nathan; Bhayro, Siam; Morgenstern, Matthew; Vilozny, Naama. Leiden. ISBN 9789004229372. OCLC 854568886.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Lesses, Rebecca (2001). “Exe(o)rcising Power: Women as Sorceresses, Exorcists, and Demonesses in Babylonian Jewish Society of Late Antiquity”. Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 69 (2): 343–375. doi:10.1093/jaarel/69.2.343. JSTOR 1465786. PMID 20681106.
^ Descenders to the chariot: the people behind the Hekhalot literature, p. 277 James R. Davila – 2001: “that they be used by anyone and everyone. The whole community could become the equals of the sages. Perhaps this is why nearly every house excavated in the Jewish settlement in Nippur had one or more incantation bowl buried in it.”
^ Yamauchi, Edwin M. (October–December 1965). “Aramaic Magic Bowls”. Journal of the American Oriental Society. 85 (4): 511–523. doi:10.2307/596720. JSTOR 596720.
^ Isbell, Charles D. (March 1978). “The Story of the Aramaic Magical Incantation Bowls”. The Biblical Archaeologist. 41 (1): 5–16. doi:10.2307/3209471. JSTOR 3209471. S2CID 194977929.
^ Montgomery, James Alan (2011). Aramaic Incantation Texts from Nippur. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 156. ISBN 978-0-511-79285-4.
^ The attribution to the sage Ben Sira is considered false, with the true author unknown.
^ “BEN SIRA, ALPHABET OF – JewishEncyclopedia.com”. www.jewishencyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2022-06-23.
^ Alphabet of Ben Sirah, Question #5 (23a–b).
^ Humm, Alan. Lilith in the Alphabet of Ben Sira
^ Segal, Eliezer. Looking for Lilith
^ Schwartz, p. 7.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d Schwartz, p. 8.
^ Patai, pp. 229–230.
^ Patai, p. 230.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Patai, p. 231.
^ Geoffrey W. Dennis, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism: Second Edition.
^ “Jewish Encyclopedia demonology”.
^ Patai, p. 244.
^ Humm, Alan. Lilith, Samael, & Blind Dragon
^ Patai, p. 246.
^ R. Isaac b. Jacob Ha-Kohen. (1986) “Lilith in Jewish Mysticism: Treatise on the Left Emanation” in Joseph Dan, ed. The Early Kabbalah, New York: Pauilist Press, pp. 172-182. ISBN 0809127695
^ Patai, p. 233.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Patai, p. 232 “But Lilith, whose name is Pizna, – or according to the Zohar, two female spirits, Lilith and Naamah – found him, desired his beauty which was like that of the sun disk, and lay with him. The issue of these unions were demons and spirits”
^ Scholem, Gershom (1941) Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. p. 174.
^ “Printed sheet, late 17th century or early 18th century, 185×130 mm.
^ “Lilith Amulet-J.R. Ritman Library”. Archived from the original on 2010-02-12.
^ Humm, Alan. Kabbalah: Lilith’s origins
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Richardson, Charles (1845). “Lexicon: Lull, Lullaby”. In Smedley, Edward; Rose, Hugh James; Rose, Edward John (eds.). Encyclopædia Metropolitana. Vol. XXI. London: B. Fellowes; etc., etc. pp. 597–598. Retrieved 18 June 2020.
^ “lullaby”. Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 18 June 2020.; “lullaby”. American Heritage Dictionary (5th ed.). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Retrieved 18 June 2020.; Simpson, John A., ed. (1989). “lullaby”. The Oxford English dictionary. Vol. IX (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 93. ISBN 978-0-19-861221-6. Retrieved 18 June 2020 – via Internet Archive.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Lubrich, Naomi, ed. (2022). Birth Culture. Jewish Testimonies from Rural Switzerland and Environs (in German and English). Basel. pp. 9–35. ISBN 978-3796546075.
^ Calmet, Augustine (1751). Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants: of Hungary, Moravia, et al. The Complete Volumes I & II. 2016. p. 353. ISBN 978-1-5331-4568-0.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c Hurwitz, p. 43.
^ Hurwitz, p. 78.
^ Gelbert, Carlos (2011). Ginza Rba. Sydney: Living Water Books. ISBN 9780958034630.
^ Hurwitz, p. 160
^ Lebling, Robert (2010). Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar. New York City, New York and London, England: I. B. Tauris. p. 37. ISBN 978-0-85773-063-3.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Amy Scerba. “Changing Literary Representations of Lilith and the Evolution of a Mythical Heroine”. Archived from the original on 2011-12-21. Retrieved 2011-12-09.
^ Schwartz
^ Seidel, Kathryn Lee. The Lilith Figure in Toni Morrison’s Sula and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple
^ The Lion, the Witch, and Wardrobe, Collier Books (paperback, Macmillan subsidiary), 1970, pg. 77.
^ Vladimir Nabokov “Collected Poems” edited and introduced by Thomas Karshan, Penguin Books, c2012.
^ Grimassi, Raven.Stregheria: La Vecchia Religione
^ Leland, Charles.Aradia, Gospel of the Witches-Appendix
^ “Lilith-The First Eve”. Imbolc. 2002.
^ Grenn, Deborah J.History of Lilith Institute
^ Hurwitz, Siegmund. “Excerpts from Lilith-The first Eve”.
^ “Lilith”. Goddess. Archived from the original on 2018-05-04. Retrieved 2018-11-30.
^ Raymond Buckland, The Witch Book, Visible Ink Press, November 1, 2001.
^ Bailobiginki, Margi. “Lilith and the modern Western world”. Theistic Satanism. Retrieved 29 May 2020.
^ Moffat, Charles. “The Sumerian legend of Lilith”. Retrieved 29 May 2020.
^ Aun Weor, Samael (June 2005). Pistis Sophia Unveiled. p. 339. ISBN 9780974591681.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Fortune, Dion (1963). Psychic Self-Defence. pp. 126–128. ISBN 9781609254643.

Cited sources

Blair, Judit M. (2009). De-demonising the Old Testament : an investigation of Azazel, Lilith, Deber, Qeteb and Reshef in the Hebrew Bible. Mohr Siebeck. ISBN 978-3-16-150131-9.
Hurwitz, Siegmund (1980). Lilith, die erste Eva: eine Studie über dunkle Aspekte des Weiblichen [Lilith, the First Eve: Historical and Psychological Aspects of the Dark Feminine]. Zürich: Daimon Verlag. ISBN 3-85630-545-9.

Patai, Raphael (1990) [1967]. “Lilith”. The Hebrew Goddess. Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology (3rd Enlarged ed.). Detroit: Wayne State University Press. pp. 221–251. ISBN 9780814322710.
Schwartz, Howard (1988). Lilith’s Cave: Jewish tales of the supernatural. San Francisco: Harper & Row. ISBN 0062507796.

Bibliography

Talmudic References: b. Erubin 18b; b. Erubin 100b; b. Nidda 24b; b. Shab. 151b; b. Baba Bathra 73a–b
Kabbalist References: Zohar 3:76b–77a; Zohar Sitrei Torah 1:147b–148b; Zohar 2:267b; Bacharach,’Emeq haMelekh, 19c; Zohar 3:19a; Bacharach,’Emeq haMelekh, 102d–103a; Zohar 1:54b–55a
Dead Sea Scroll References: 4QSongs of the Sage/4QShir; 4Q510 frag.11.4–6a//frag.10.1f; 11QPsAp
Lilith: The Real Story Rabbi Menachem Levine, Aish.com
Lilith Bibliography, Jewish and Christian Literature, Alan Humm ed., 9 December 2022.
Siegmund Hurwitz, Lilith Switzerland: Daminon Press, 1992. Jerusalem Bible. New York: Doubleday, 1966.
Raphael Patai, Adam ve-Adama, tr. as Man and Earth; Jerusalem: The Hebrew Press Association, 1941–1942.
R. Campbell Thompson, Semitic Magic, its Origin and Development, London: 1908.
Isaiah, chapter 34 Archived 2011-07-07 at the Wayback Machine. New American Bible
Augustin Calmet, (1751) Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants of Hungary, Moravia, et al. The Complete Volumes I & II. 2016. ISBN 978-1-5331-4568-0
Jeffers, Jen (2017) “Finding Lilith: The Most Powerful Hag In History”. The Raven Report.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Lilith.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lilith.

Jewish Encyclopedia: Lilith
Collection of Lilith information and links by Alan Humm
International standard Bible Encyclopedia: Night-Monster

hide v t e Adam and Eve
Source	Genesis creation narrative in the Book of Genesis Adam Eve
Offspring	Cain and Abel Cain Abel Aclima LuluwaSeth Awan Azura
Related theology	Fall of man Original sin Garden of Eden Tree of the knowledge of good and evil Serpents in the Bible Forbidden fruit Apple Fig leaf Figs in the Bible Adam’s ale Adamic language Camael Protevangelium Rosh Hashanah Seed of the woman Shamsiel Lilith Tree of life Allegorical interpretations of Genesis
Other cultures	Adam–God doctrine Adam and Eve in Mormonism Adam in Islam Adam in rabbinic literature Al-A’raf Book of Moses Endowment Manu (Hinduism)Mashya and Mashyana Serpent seed Tree of Jiva and Atman Tree of life (Quran)Our Lady of Endor Coven
Television	“Probe 7, Over and Out” (1963)“Adam & Eve” (1992)
Film	Mama’s Affair (1921)Good Morning, Eve! (1934)The Broken Jug (1937)The Original Sin (1948)The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (1960)El pecado de Adán y Eva (1969)La Biblia en pasta (1984)The Annunciation (1984)Adipapam (1988)Adam (1992)Babs (2000)The Last Eve (2005)Year One (2009)The Tragedy of Man (2011)Adam and Dog (2011)Tropico (2013)
Plays	Le Jeu d’Adam (12th century)The Broken Jug (1808)The Tragedy of Man (1861)The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972)
Musicals	The Apple Tree (1966)Dude (1972)Up from Paradise (1973)Children of Eden (1991)
Compositions	The Creation (1798) structureLa mort d’Adam (1809)Ève (1875)Genesis Suite (1945)Lilith (2001)
Literature	Apocalypse of Adam Book of Moses Book of Abraham Books of AdamBook of the Penitence of AdamCave of Treasures“El y Ella“Genesis A and Genesis BHarrowing of HellLife of Adam and EveTestament of Adam Testimony of Truth (3rd century)Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan (6th century)”Old Saxon Genesis” (9th century)”Adam lay ybounden” (15th century)Paradise Lost (1667)Le Dernier Homme (1805)Extracts from Adam’s Diary (1904)Eve’s Diary (1905)The Book of Genesis (2009)The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve (2017)
Art	Bernward Doors (1015)Tapestry of Creation (11th century)Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (1425)Vienna Diptych (15th century)The Last Judgment (1482)The Garden of Earthly Delights (1504)Adam and Eve (1507)Paradise and Hell (1510)The Creation of Adam (1512)The Haywain Triptych (1516)Eve, the Serpent and Death (1510s or 1520s)Adam and Eve (1528)The Fall of Man (1550)Adam and Eve (c. 1550)The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man (1617)The Fall of Man (1628)The Four Seasons (1660s)The Koren Picture-Bible (1692–1696)Paradise Lost (19th century)Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (1828)The First Mourning (1888)Adam and Eve (1905)Adam and Eve (1909)Eve (1931)Adam and Eve (1932)The Serpent Chooses Adam and Eve (1958)
Songs	“Dese Bones G’wine Rise Again“”Adam-ondi-Ahman” (1835)”Forbidden Fruit” (1915)”The Garden of Eden” (1956)”In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” (1968)”Let’s Give Adam and Eve Another Chance” (1970)”Man Gave Names to All the Animals” (1979)
Albums	The Cainian Chronicle (1996)Visions of Eden (2006)Snakes for the Divine (2010)
Geography	Adam-ondi-Ahman Tomb of Eve
Biology	Mitochondrial Eve Y-chromosomal AdamThe Real Eve
Story within a story	Doraemon: Nobita’s Diary on the Creation of the WorldIsland of LoveThe Visitors
Games	Demon: The Fallen (2002)
Other	Pre-Adamite Generations of Adam Cave of the Patriarchs“In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela“”Simpsons Bible Stories“Second Time LuckyAdam and Eve cylinder seal Genealogies of Genesis Carnal knowledgeLegend of the Rood Ystorya AdafRansom theory of atonement

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Lilith and Eve: The Forgotten Woman

https://anaiyasophia.com/blog/lilith-and-eve-the-forgotten-woman

Here is the domain of the age-old inner power struggle between The Good Girl v The Bad Girl, personified at the beginning of human history by the feminine archetypes of Lilith and Eve. The original story of creation begins with a powerful goddess, known as Lilith (Adam’s first wife) who was strong, independent and highly sexual, free and un-tameable. She loved fiercely – but would not succumb to any form of domination; her feminine power had to be honoured and when it wasn’t she left Adam in the Garden of Creation and went off on her own. The story even ‘warns’ us that she went against God’s wishes, which clearly reveals to us the sheer power of her virtue and unwavering sense of Self-Love.

After Lilith, we are introduced to Eve. In the biblical story we are told that Eve was created from “Adam’s Rib”. So immediately there is a sense of “ownership”, a play between the ‘creator’ and the ‘created’. Eve was the complete opposite of Lilith, soft, gentle, subservient and passive. Her role was to ‘serve’ Adam and create the children of the future. Despite Adam’s near perfect design, still within the sweet and innocent heart of Eve, there was a flicker of Lilith’s spirit that remained, as we are told it was Eve that bit into the apple of the Forbidden Fruit. From there on, Eve gets carries the burden, of the shame and guilt of being “the one” that had them both cast out of the Garden of Eden. But it wasn’t the shame of biting into the apple that she was carrying. It was the shame and pain of being severed from Lilith.

This polarity still gets played out within the hearts of mortal women here on Earth. One moment we are Lilith – powerful, sexual, forbidden, untameable, creative, wild and free, and in the next moment we become Eve, sweet, caring, gentle, loving, innocent, pure and nice. Men imagine that they do not have to deal so much with this archetypal power play that can at times play itself out on a daily basis with women. But they do. They experience this polarity when in relationship with women as a form of projection. How may times have you been on the receiving end of a man adoring your Lilith nature when you first meet or in the early stages of dating, and then once you become ‘his’, he begins to scorn and hate that part of you? Manipulating and cajoling you into becoming Eve all of the time. Which women usually buy into, silently agreeing to his demands for a multitude of reasons ranging from “he will love me more”, or “I won’t loose him if I become what he wants me to be” and the classic “It is ‘right’ to be a good woman, I must abandon that part of me which is ‘bad”.

Polarized Eve

You would of thought that becoming Eve 24/7 would fix the problem, right? Seems feasible to believe that if you become Eve, you will live happily ever after? Not true, what really happens is that you become shut down and repressed, resulting in the inevitable inner or outer ‘betrayal” by your partner to seek out Lilith again, usually in the arms of another woman, or his mind. Doesn’t really matter which – as it will be felt deeply by the woman as a third person/presence The real betrayal is between both parties. The woman betraying her full self, and the man betraying his innocence as he sides with the dualistic nature of his mind. I feel that a woman can accept her Lilith and Eve aspects relatively easily once we are told about them and embark on some sexual healing to bring them back into balance. I feel at this current time on the planet it’s the masculine that is rigidly holding on what is seen as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and finds it very difficult to see ‘his’ woman bearing both fruits.

The usual ending to this tale is that the man goes out to hunt for Lilith, seeking an illicit affair that seems to bring him back to life, as at first he is enticed and seduced, thrilled by the masterful knowingness of Lilith’s charms. Yet it is a presence that he can not handle for very long, as she too is polarized and knows only one identity. Eventually, just as he feels he is about to become ‘lost’ in her presence, he reverts and runs from her in terror. He is afraid of her power and seduction, fearful that she is claiming his soul that he runs back to Eve begging for her forgiveness.

Eve being a good and nice person accepts him back yet secretly writhes in pain; she has become broken inside, distrust of the masculine sets root as she cries infinite tears in the realization that she has shamefully disconnected from her Lilith. Not only that, but the once true bond between her and Adam has been broken and now only exists as a form of fusion, a connection based on a lie. And that my dear fellow humans, is where we find ourselves now. That is where men get hooked into this particular form of duality. This drama can be easily healed by both people by at first, simply understanding and owning this type of duality.

Ask to see and feel the deeply unconscious energies of attraction and repulsion towards Lilith, which sleep dormant within you until triggered. Once you have the energies to hand, both people will need to begin a course in sexual healing. A woman has to be shown, guided and encouraged how to re-awaken Lilith (its usually Lilith that has been suppressed – although it can be a role-reversal). We will cover that in Part:2 of this article. While a man has to root out his belief systems that he has embedded into his mind, that he wants Eve as a partner/wife and Lilith as a lover at arms’ length.

Once he was done that, he will then have to be re-introduced to a woman who healthily houses both qualities. It will have to become his ‘experience’ that two are actually one. Lilith and Eve can comfortably live within a true woman. And that my dear female friends are where we all have to go. To soulfully reunite with our Lilith and Eve within us. Feeling comfortable with both aspects, releasing all shame and grief from within the archetypes, until there really only is One Woman. As your male partner is only mirroring what is being felt by your inner masculine.

You know this is true. But like most things on the spiritual path – the feminine part of us has to go first and take those first courageous steps, only because the masculine has become so ‘set’, it is only the fluidity of the feminine that can bring about balance. It has been my intention to create the Awakening of the Seven Gates and the Forgotten Woman workshops to address this split and to bring about a rapturous reunion.