Lilith

[Aeon_Atratus]

It is common knowledge that God created Adam and Eve as the first people to inhabit this earth. It is a story taught for many years in Sunday school and in church. What is not known is that the story goes much deeper than that. In this paper I will discuss a woman not known to many people and whose existence is shrouded in mystery; her name is Lilith, the first wife of Adam.

Genesis I:27 reads: “"And Elohim created Adam in His Image, in the Image of God He created him; male and female He created them."

Genesis II:22 reads: “And Yahweh fashioned the rib that He had taken from the man into a woman; and He brought her to the man."

As you can see, these are two separate creation stories. Genesis II comes from a Sumerian story and Genesis I is a creation of the Hebrew Priesthood. So who is this first woman introduced in Genesis I? This woman’s name is Lilith. God created her the same as he did Adam, out of the dust of the earth (Yalqut Reubeni ad. Gen. II. 21; IV. 8.).

Another reference to Lilith is in the Kabala, it reads: In the beginning the Holy One, blessed be He, created Eve[Lilith], and she was not flesh but the scum of the earth and its impure sediments, and she was a harmful spirit [i.e., Lilith]. And the Holy One, blessed be He, took her away from Adam and gave him another in her stead. (Yalqut Reubeni, B'reshit 34b Patai81:453). It is believed that God created many Eve’s before the one of Genesis II, and Lilith was the first of the many “first Eve’s”. Reference of “first Eve’s” comes from the Genesis Rabbah which states: “At first He created her for him and he saw her full of discharge and blood; thereupon He removed her from him and recreated her a second time.” (Genesis Rabbah 18.4)

The Alphabet of Ben Sira is the earliest form we know of the Lilith legend familiar to most people. Scholars tend to date the Alphabet between the 8th and 10th centuries, CE. It is here that we find Lilith as Adam's first mate:

Adam and Lilith never found peace together as each would never submit to being submissive to the other. Adam spoke” I am your master; it is your duty to obey me”. “Why must I lie beneath you?” demanded Lilith. “I was created from the dust of the earth the same as you, I am your equal”. They began to quarrel and when Lilith saw that none would give in she uttered the ineffable name of God and rose up into the air. Adam then complained and prayed to God, “I have been deserted by my helpmeet”.

God then sent three angels Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof to fetch Lilith back. They found her by the Red Sea in her cave where she made her home taking for lovers all the demons that lived there and giving birth to many at the rate of 100 per day. They told her to return to Adam without delay or they would drown her. Lilith asked: `How can I return to Adam and live like an honest housewife, after my stay beside the Red Sea? The angels replied, “It will be the death of you if you do not”. She replied, “"Know ye not that I have been created for the purpose of weakening and punishing little children, infants and babes? I have power over them from the day they are born until they are eight days old if they are boys, and until the twentieth day if they are girls." And when the three angels heard her this they wished to drown her by force, but she begged them to let her live, and they gave in. She swore to them in the name of the living God that whenever she came and saw the names or images or faces of the three angels upon an amulet in the room where there was an infant, she would not touch it. But because she did not return to Adam God ordered that every day one hundred of her own children or spirits and demons die and if she failed to take any children she must spitefully turn against her own.

In Gaster's article "Two Thousand Years of a Charm Against the Child-Stealing Witch," there is reference to an amulet from the "Book of Raziel," (circa 1100 CE) which Gaster claims is actually "a compilation made in the tenth century from much older materials". A passage taken from this work, quoted in Gaster's article, incorporates both the myth of Lilith as a "primitive Eve" and Lilith as child-slayer. It reads:

“I conjure thee, primitive Eve, by the name of the one who created thee, and by the names of the three angels which the Lord sent after thee, and who found thee in the islands of the sea, to whom thou didst swear, that wherever thou salt find their names neither thou nor thine host shall do any harm, also not to those who carry those names with them. I therefore conjure thee by their names and by their seals, which are written down here, that thou do no harm, neither thou, nor thy host, nor thy servants, to this woman or to the young babe to which she has given birth; neither during day-time nor during the night; neither in their food nor in their drink; neither in their head nor in their heart; nor in their 208 members, nor in their 305 veins. I conjure thee, thy hosts and thy servants, with the power of these names and these seals. (Gaster 153)”

Qabalistically speaking there is another account of the creation of man and woman. As we know, Adam was created to perfection. He was created in the perfect image of "Elohim." Of course, God is not seen as being either male or female, but as both at once. Even the Name Elohim is a feminine word (Eloah—Goddess) with a masculine plural suffix. Thus, if God is male and female, the mother and the father, then Adam (which translates as "Mankind") must also have originally been male and female in one. To be otherwise would have been to be unbalanced, and thus imperfect.

Zohar 1:34b reads: “When the letters of the name of Adam, descended below, together in their completeness, the male and the female were found together, and the female was attached to his side, until God cast a deep slumber upon him and he fell asleep. And he lay in the place of the Temple below. And the Holy One, blessed be He, sawed her off him, and adorned her as they adorn a bride, and brought her to him.”

Zohar 3:19 reads: “Come and see: There is a female, a spirit of all spirits, and her name is Lilith, and she was at first with Adam. And in the hour when Adam was created and his body became completed, a thousand spirits from the left [evil] side clung to that body until the Holy One, blessed be He, shouted at them and drove them away. And Adam was lying, a body without a spirit, and his appearance was green, and all those spirits surrounded him. In that hour a cloud descended an pushed away all those spirits. And when Adam stood up, his female was attached to his side. And that holy spirit which was in him spread out to this side and that side, and grew here and there, and thus became complete. Thereafter the Holy One, blessed be He, sawed Adam into two, and made the female. And He brought her to Adam in her perfection like a bride to the canopy. When Lilith saw this, she fled. And she is in the cities of the sea, and she is still trying to harm the sons of the world.”

Side by side, such a conjunction is not conducive to procreation and thus the two halves were divided. Adam could see Lilith not only front to front but also in the round (and she him); but now he must make an effort to unite with him. And here he made a mistake; instead of accepting her as an equal, he attempted to dominate. In psychological terms, he identified with his own ego, and not with his full self; confronted with his Shadow/Deeper Self, he rejected it, or at least tried to subject it to the demands of his ego. Lilith's response was to fly away: she literally rose above Adam (now shrunk to the confines of his own ego, not his full, Lilith inclusive self) with the power of the Name. The Ineffable Name is the core of Being, and the generative power of the Cosmos: this indicates how strong the energy must be which allows the liberation of the Deeper Self from the ego, and how potentially catastrophic.

There is also belief that Adam and Lilith were created back to back. In this position Lilith automatically becomes Adam's Shadow, and just as automatically something which Adam had to deal with, even though he could never actually see her, always there and always out of sight, and always to be cooperated with. The same is of course true of Adam as viewed from Lilith's perspective. This legend also explains man and woman’s search for each other because they were once united physically as well as spiritually.

In contrast to Lilith first being the wife of Adam, she is believed to be the wife of Samael (Satan) since the beginning. Both of them were born at the same hour in the image of Adam and Eve, intertwined in each other. The following excerpts seem to have no awareness of the legend of Lilith being Adams first mate.

Moses b. Solomon of Burgos
“Lilith is called the Northerner, because Out of the north the evil breaks forth (Jer. 1:14). Both Samael, king of the demons, and Lilith were born in a spiritual birth androgynously. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is an epithet for both Samael and Grandmother Lilith (e.g. the Northerner). As a result of Adam's sin, both of them came and confused the whole world, both the Upper one and the Nether one.”

R. Ya'aqov and R. Yitzhaq
“Samael resembles the form of Adam, and Lilith the form of Eve. Both were born in an androgynous form, corresponding to the form of Adam and Eve: below and above, two twin forms. And Samael and Grandmother Eve [i.e., Lilith], who is the Northerner, are emanations from beneath the Throne of Glory. And the sin [of Adam] caused this evil.”

It is also said that Samael and Lilith are the cause for Adam’s fall from grace. The serpent that tempted Adam and Eve at the Tree of Life is said to be Lilith & Samael; Lilith provided the body, Samael the voice. In description of Lilith she is beautiful from the waist up, but form the waist down she is burning fire.

While the Alphabet of Ben Sira may have been the first account of the legend of Lilith, the first known reference to her is in the Epic of Gilgamesh. This work is actually an epic poem covering twelve tablets in its latest version. The poem, whose written stages span a period of at least 1,500 years, has been dated at 2400 BCE, placing it in the Third Early Dynastic period of Mesopotamian chronology (Tigay 2).

The poem itself revolves around the hero Gilgamesh and paints his adventures in "legendary and mythological colors," for he is said to have been two-thirds divine and merely one-third mortal (Tigay 4). The reference to Lilith contained in the Epic of Gilgamesh is actually not contained in the epic itself at all. Rather, the reference to Lilith appears in a Sumerian tale entitled "Gilgamesh and the Huluppu Tree," which contains the key to understanding the twelfth tablet of the Gilgamesh epic, the first twelve lines of which are almost completely broken away. Without the explanation offered by the "Huluppu Tree" tale, the story contained in the twelfth tablet does not make sense, and so many scholars have chosen to include the "Huluppu Tree" tale in the epic, footnoting to indicate its unique origin. The passage reads:

“After heaven and earth had been separated
and mankind had been created,

after An, Enlil and Ereskigal had taken posesssion
of heaven, earth and the underworld;

after Enki had set sail for the underworld
and the sea ebbed and flowed in honor of its lord;

on this day, a huluppu tree
which had been planted on the banks of the Euphrates
and nourished by its waters
was uprooted by the south wind
and carried away by the Euphrates.

A goddess who was wandering among the banks
siezed the swaying tree
And -- at the behest of Anu and Enlil --
brought it to Inanna's garden in Uruk.

Inanna tended the tree carefully and lovingly
she hoped to have a throne and a bed
made for herself from its wood.
After ten years, the tree had matured.
But in the meantime, she found to her dismay
that her hopes could not be fulfilled.
because during that time
a dragon had built its nest at the foot of the tree
the Zu-bird was raising its young in the crown,
and the demon Lilith had built her house in the middle.

(Wolkstein translates this last section as:
“..a serpent who could not be charmed
made its nest in the roots of the tree,
he Anzu bird set his young in the branches of the tree,
And the dark maid Lilith built her home in the trunk.”)

But Gilgamesh, who had heard of Inanna's plight,
came to her rescue.
He took his heavy shield
killed the dragon with his heavy bronze axe,
which weighed seven talents and seven minas.

Then the Zu-bird flew into the mountains
with its young,
while Lilith, petrified with fear,
tore down her house and fled into the wilderness”

There are many references in this story that follow the tales in other stories and legends. First, there is the association of Lilith with the snake, usually equated with evil. Second, there is the bird who flees, presumably through flight, something which Lilith is also said to do. Third, the tree invokes an image of the Tree of Knowledge, in which Lilith is said to dwell in some myths. Similarly, this tree is located in Inanna's "holy garden," again harking back to the image of the Garden of Eden. Finally, it is noteworthy that while Lilith and her bestial companions inspire fear in Inanna, they do not have any fear of her. It is Gilgamesh, the great male Sumerian hero, who kills the snake and frightens the other creatures out of the tree and garden.

To vampyres, Lilith is often seen as our mother. It is belief that she was the first companion of Adam and she was the mother of Cain. After Lilith fled Adam, Eve was created for him and she was the mother of Abel. At the time when Adam was with Lilith, they were the perfect creation of God. God is a being not of our realm of physical, ethereal and astral, but of another. He created man because he wanted to learn from himself through them and all other creation(s). God granted them the ability to hear the choir of angels and divine understanding of the three realms unseen, physical, ethereal and astral. After Lilith fled from Adam and he and Eve were tempted at the tree of life and ate from the fruit, their divine ability was taken from them leaving them mundane. Lilith and her descendants, not having eaten from the tree of life, were able to keep their abilities of extrasensory with a direct connection with the three realms unseen and the divine. This is merely a theory and not a fact that has been proven.

Although Lilith may have originated as a demon, she means many things to modern people: goddess, succubus, role model, archetype, and more. To the average neo-pagan, she is a goddess. To a feminist Jew, she is a role model. To others with more traditional beliefs, such as an orthodox Jew, she still remains a demon. Whatever role she plays in one's belief system, she is still powerful, charismatic, and compelling.

[Jezabel]

Wonderful work Aeon! I had no idea Lillith expanded into so many other cultures and religions besides Judaism and Christianty...well atleast she's one of the few things most folks can agree on,lol.

[redlotus88]

[RavenHarte]

[Jezabel]

[Aeon_Atratus]

Bump for the new people...