Lilith

LILITH

In Hebrew folklore, Lilith is a female demon in the form of a beautiful woman with long, streaming hair. She is the personification of feminine lust. She is the enemy of young children and works mischief at night; she is referred to as a 'night owl' in Isaiah 34:14. She was adopted into medieval Judeo-Christian demonology as a sort of Lamia.

She mated with Adam before Eve, but some say she seduced him. Others claim she conceived from his nocturnal emissions spilt during his sleep. Her origin lies in a Babylonian (or Assyrian) myth, but references can also be found in later myths. Her name means "she of the night".

Source; Boulet, Susan Seddon. The Goddess Paintings. Petaluma. CA: Pomegranate Publications, 1991

------ Lilith the strong, the goddess who holds the power to create life out of death, figures prominently in many mythologies of the ancient world. To the Sumerians, she was the woman-essence who brought the gift of grain to the earth and gave birth to the moon. Judaic lore transformed Lilith into the mythic "first Eve," created of the dust by God, as Adam was. But Lilith refused to be subordinate to Adam and lie beneath him; She left and was replaced by the more compliant Eve. Thereafter Lilith was regarded as a demon-woman---a temptress who was said to visit men in their dreams.
------ Lilith represents the ability to choose between oppression and freedom. Her symbol is the lily---the shape of the female.

Source; Conway, DJ. The Ancient & Shining Ones. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications

Lilith/Lilithu---Hebrew, Babylonia, Sumeria. Moon Goddess; patroness of Witches; female principle of the universe; Demon Goddess to the Jews and Christians. Her sacred bird was the owl. Protector of all pregnant women, mothers, and children. Wisdom, regeneration, enticing soccer, feminine allure, erotic dreams, forbidden delights, the dangerous seductive qualities of the Moon.

Stone, Merlin When God Was A Woman. New York Barnes & Noble Books. 1993 158-159

EVEN IN THE HEBREW LAND OF JUDAH

Yet despite the contemporary portrayals of the sexual customs, archeologists have found accounts of the sacred women in the earliest records of Sumer. The legend of Inanna and Enki listed the sacred sexual customs as another of the great gifts that Inanna brought to civilize the people of Erech. the Queen of Heaven was most reverently esteemed by the sacred women, who in turn were especially protected by Her. At Erech the women of the temple were known as nu-gig, the pure or the spotless. One interesting Sumerian fragment recorded Lilith, described as a young maiden, as the �hand of Inanna.� We read on this ancient tablet that Lilith was sent by Inanna to gather men from the street, to bring them to the temple. This same name, Lilith, later appeared in Hebrew mythology as the first wife of Adam, who refused to be sexually submissive to him; and later as the name of the demon who hovered about, waiting to find spilled sperm, of which to make her �illegitimate demon children.� Both of these tales may well have developed in reaction to the original Lilith, so closely associated with the sexual customs of the worship of the Goddess.

Stone, Merlin When God Was A Woman. New York Barnes & Noble Books. 1993 195-196

------ As late as the sixteenth century AD, Hebrew scholars compiled a text known as the Kabbalah. The name of Lilith, once described in a Sumerian tablet as �the hand of Inanna� who brought men to the temple, a name also found in some Hebrew literature as the first wife of Adam who refused to lie beneath him and to obey his commands, appeared once again. in the Hebrew Kabbalah, Lilith was presented as the symbol of evil, the female devil. G. Scholem wrote that in the Zohar, a part of the Kabbalah, it was stated that �Lilith, Queen of the demons , or the demons of her retinue, do their best to provoke men to the sexual acts without benefit of a woman, their aim being to make themselves bodies from the seed.�
------ It gave the warning that Lilith hovered about, just waiting for available sperm from which she created demons and illegitimate children. The Kabbalah cautioned that, with the help of Lilith, the illegitimate children come. Was this remote reference to the ancient qadishtu, their image now embodied in the wicked demon Lilith? The major factor in avoiding the dangerous Lilith was once again a matter of inheritance. this is apparent in the description of the actions of the illegitimate children, once their father died.
------ Scholem tells us that

Wishing along with the other children to have a part in the deceased as their father, they tug and pluck at him, so that he feels the pain, and God himself when he sees this noxious offspring by the corpse, is reminded of the dead man�s sins . . .All the illegitimate children that a man has begotten with demons in the course of his life appear after his death to take part in the mourning for him and in his funeral. . ..the demons claim their inheritance along with other sons of the deceased and try to harm the legitimate children.

Stone, Merlin Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood. Boston Beacon Press. 1990 127-128

LILITH
The name of :Lilith appears in several Sumerian tablets in one test as �the hand of Inanna�; in another as a female figure forced to flee from her home in a tree on the bank of a river. The Sumerian accounts may be linked to the Goddess as She was known in the Sumerian city of Nippur - as Ninlil. Later Babylonian references describe a Lilitu, as a demon of the night air, again suggesting a link with Ninlil, whose name literally means lady of the Air. The Lilitu texts occur at about the same period as the Emuma Elish, the account of the murder of the Goddess as Tiamat, and may be another manifestation of the suppression of the Goddess worship. Accounts of Lilith, as the first wife of Adam, appear in the Talmud and the Kabbalah, but may well be based upon the Babylonian Lilitu - and in turn, a distorted version of the Goddess Ninlil.

How the many reflections of Lilith flicker upon the layered mirrors of time. Her name was once known as the hand of the Goddess Inanna, the one who brought men of the fields into the Inanna�s holy temple at Erech. yet they say there was a Lilith who lived within the huluppu tree, around which a serpent did entwine, until Gilamish cut down its mighty trunk, from the bank of a river where Inanna had planted it.
------ Was the woman essence, that we�ve come to know as Lilith, taken from the ancient holy Ninlil, Goddess who gave the gift of grain, keeper of the divine Dukug grain chamber of the heavens. She who birthed the moon, in the darkness of the Netherworld. She who chose the lad at the holy Tummal shrine in sacred Nippur. Ninlil alone appointing him as shepherd?
------ Still they give the name Lilith as the first wife of Adam, saying that she had been made of the dust of the earth, as Adam had been made, but that she left to live a life of her own, when Adam insisted that she lie beneath him - for she refused to be regarded as one inferior to any other. Angered by her indepentlent ways, they then spoke of Lilith in her long absence, deriding her decisive woman strength, her insistence that she would have love only with mutual respect, or would not have love at all, by then saying that it was Lilith who came as a demon of the night, encouraging men to spill their sperm, defying their ideas of the legitimacy of each child who was born. So into the Kabbalah it was written, that Lilith encouraged children to be born outside of marriage contract, to tug upon the father after he was dead, demanding an inheritance. And though they said that it was the father of such a child who was to bear the pain, they said it was Lilith that was to blame.
------ Looking deep into the layers of the Lilith Mirrors, I see an ancient Goddess. She who brought the gift of agriculture, transformed into a demon, the image of woman as strong and independent degraded for her strength - thus distorted into a temptress of men - even as they admitted that she had chosen well between oppression and freedom.

Davidson, Gustav A Dictionary of Angels including the fallen angels. New York The Free Press. 1971 174-175

Lilith - in Jewish tradition, where she originated, Lilith is a female demon, enemy of infants, bride of the evil angel Sammael (Satan). She predated Eve, had marital relations with Adam, and must be regarded as our first parent�s first wife. According to Rabbi Eliezer (The Book of Adam and Eve), Lilith bore Adam every day 100 children. The Zohar (Leviticus 19a) describes Lilith as �a hot fiery female who at first cohabited with man� but, when Eve was created, �flew to the cities of the sea coast,� where she is �still trying to ensnare mankind.� She has been identified (incorrectly) with the screech owl in Isiah 34:14. In the cabala she is the demon of Friday and is represented as a naked woman whose body terminates in a serpent�s tail. While commonly regarded as the creation of the rabbis of the early Middle Ages (the first traceable mention of Lilith occurs in a 10th-century folktale called the Alphabet of Ben Sira), Lilith is in fact drawn from the lili, female demonic spirits in Mesopotamic demonology, and known as ardat lili. The rabbis read Lilith into scripture as the 1st temptress, as Adam�s demon wife, and as the mother of Cain. [Rf. Thompson, ; Christian, The History and Practice of Magic.] In Talmudic lore, as also in the cabala (The Zohar), most demons are mortal, but Lilith and two other notorious female spirits of evil (Naamah and Agrat bat Mahlat) will �continue to exist and to plague man until the Messianic day, when God will finally extirpate uncleanliness and evil from the face of the earth.� In Scholem�s article on one of the medieval writers in the magazine Mada�e ha Yahadut (II, 164ff.), Lilith and Sammael are said have �emanated from beneath the throne of Divine Glory, the legs of which were somewhat shaken by their [joint] activity.� It is known of course, that Sammael (Satan) was once a familiar figure in Heaven, but not that Lilith was up there also, assisting him. Lilith went by a score of names, 17 of which she revealed to Elijah when she was forced to do so by the Old Testament prophet. For a list of Lilith�s names, see Appendix.

Davidson, Gustav A Dictionary of Angels including the fallen angels. New York The Free Press. 1971 351-352

Appendix

The prophet Elijah, according to legend , encountering Lilith, forced her to reveal to him the names she used in her various disguises when she worked evil among mortals. She confessed to 17 names, and they are according to M. Gaster, Studies and Texts in Folklore, p. 1025:

01. Abeko 02. Abito 03. Amizo 04. Batna 05. Eilo 06. Ita 07. Izorpo
08. Kali 09. Kea 10. Kokos 11. Lilith 12. Odam 13. Partasah 14. Patrota
15. Podo 16. Satrina 17. Talto

In J. E. Hanauer, Folk-Lore of the Holy Land, a list of the other names of Lilith is given:

01. Abro* 02. Abyzu 03. Ailo 04. Alu 05. Amiz* 06. Amizu* 07. Ardad Lili
08. Avitu* 09. Bituah* 10. Gallu 11. Gelou 12. Gilou 13. �Ik* 14. �Ils*
15. Kalee* 16. Kakash* 17. Kema* 18. Lamassu 19. Lilith* 20. Partashah* 21. Petrota*
22. Pods* 23. Raphi* 24. Satrina(h)* 25. Thiltho* 26. Zahriel 27. Zefonith

Those names followed by an asterisk (*) are from Hanauer�s book. The others are from sundry sources.

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