The Dark Maid Lilith

[Earth Walker]

Lilith was known by patriarchal cultures as a winged and
wild-haired she-demon who flew through the night. They
said that her powers were "greatest at the time of the waning
moon when the dogs of night are loosed from their chains to
roam about till morning."
As a Goddess of the Dark Moon, Lilith carries the patriarchy's
shadow projection of the defiant woman as seductress and
child-killer. She has come to embody men's fear of the feminine
as dark and evil.
The ZOHAR'S account of creation tells the following version
of Lilith's origin. God made two great lights, the Sun and Moon,
which shone with equal splendor. At first the Moon wanted to
merge with the Sun and bask in his light, but when a dispute
arose, God took the side of the Sun. He sent the Moon down to follow in the footsteps of humankind as his shadow. When the light of the Moon was diminished, it was said that Holiness
became surrounded by a husk of Evil (qehpah), from which
Lilith was born. She arose out of primal darkness, flaming forth
with all of its assertive power.
We can find accounts of Lilith throughout the lands of the ancient
Near East, and she makes appearances in the Sumerian,
Babylonian, Assyrian, Hebraic, and Arabic mythology. Legends
tell of her as the first wife of Adam in the garden of eden, the
paramour of lascivious spirits in the Red Sea, as the bride of
Samael the Devil, as the Queen of Sheba and Zemargrad, and as the consort of god himself in fifteenth-century Cabbalism
During the last five millenia Lilith, as an aspect of the Dark
Goddess, has been cast out into the desolate wilderness and
banned from the boundaries of community. Denied and rejected,
Lilith was vilified as Torturous Serpent, Blood Sucker, Harlot,
Impure Female, Alien Woman, Witch, Hag, and Enchantress.
Over the ages fragments of her history have surfaced from the dark and unfathomable depths of her exile. But first of all, in the
beginning of her time, Lilith's epithet was "the beautiful maiden."
We will now unravel Lilith's mythical biography from the time she first emerges in ancient Sumaria as a handmaiden to the
Great Goddess Inanna. The threads of her story lead us through the Hebraic mythology where she is the first wife of Adam and
later the consort of god in the Cabbalistic tradition. To the
Romantic poets of the nineteenth century, Lilith came to embody
the image of woman as femme fatale--alluring, irrestible, and
deadly. Now, in the 21st century, Lilith reasserts herself as the
liberated feminine, exalting ecstatic sexuality, upholding integrity,
and refusing submission.
LILITH IN SUMERIA AND BABYLONIA
Lilith is preeminently an emanation of the great winged Bird
Goddess. She is a wind spirit, and her earliest associations are with the Sumerian Goddess of the Grain, Ninlil, Lady of the Air,
who birthed the moon in the darkness of the netherworld and
bestowed the divine right to rule.
Lilith's recorded story begins with Innana, granddaughter of
Ninlil, who was the "Queen of Heaven" in early Sumeria. The
legend of Innana and Enki told of the sacred sexual customs that
were one of Innana's gifts to civilize the people of Erech. Here,
the holy women of the temple were known as the NU-GIG, the
pure and spotless virgin priestesses. They took as their lovers the members of the community who came to the temple to
worship the Goddess and to receive a healing. At this time Lilith's
name is recorded as a young maiden, the "hand of Innana,"
who gathers the men from the street and brings them to the
temple at Erech for the holy rites.
Between 3000 BCE and 2500 BCE the ancient Sumerian culture
began to interface with the coming of the patriarchy.
As the patriarchy moved to overtake the reign of the Goddess,
they first needed to sever the people from the Goddess's vast
power, which was centered in Her inner temple of sacred sexual
love. In order to accomplish this task the patriarchy rejected
and suppressed the sexual rites of the Goddess religion. Like the
denied shadow when projected, women's sexual power became demonized as a force of evil. Over the centuries the young maid
Lilith, who first approached the men to take them to Innana's
holy temple, became in patriarchial culture the embodiment of
everything that was evil and dangerous in the sexual realm.
She espaecially catalyzed men's worst fears concerning the sexual
power of the feminine.
By 2400 BCE Lilith, Spirit of the Air, was distorted into a demon
of the night who personified natural disasters such as storms and winds. She was imaged as beautiful maiden who would not
release her lovers or ever give them real satisfaction. There existed four classes of demons: the Lillu demons, who were
vampires; the Lilitu or she-demons; the Ardat Lili and the Irdu
Lili, who were female and male counterparts, dwelling in waste places, preying upon men and women by night and conceiving ghostly children. These demons haunted desolate places in stormy weather and were dangerous to pregnant women and
children.
(This will be a long posting, so I will do it in installments).

[Earth Walker]

Lilith's flower was the lilu, or lily, or "lotus" of her genital magic, which represented the virgin aspect of the Triple Goddess.
A Sumerian king list dating from this time states that Lugalbanda,
father of the great hero Gilgamesh, was a Lillu-demon. This
statement can also be read as a veiled reference pointing to
Gilgamesh, who was reputed to be two-thirds divine and one-
third human, to have the sacred blood lineage descending from the sexual rites of the Goddess.
A Babylonian terracotta plaque from 2300 BCE depicts Lilith as a
Bird Woman and Lady of the Beasts. She is beautiful, with a
slender nude body, wings that fall behind her like an open veil,
and powerfully clawed owl feet. Her head is adorned with a crown
of multiple horns worn by all great deities, and she holds the
ring and rod symbols of power. Surrounded by lions as her
protectors, and owls depicting her nocturnal wisdom, she is the
animal soul of the world, who is associated with every living creature that creepeth and all the beasts of the field. The
literal meaning of Lilith's name is "screech." She was associated
with the screech owl of the night, and later as a demon of
screeching.
The story of how Lilith was cast out of the Sumerian cosmology
was told in the epic tale of GILGAMESH and the NETHERWORLD
(dating ca. 2000 BCE). Innana saved a sacred huluppu tree on
the banks of the Euphrates that had been uprooted by a great windstorm. She then planted this willow in her holy garden,
planning to use its wood for her throne and bed. As the years
passed the tree matured, but it bore no branches or leaves for
three reasons: the snake who could not be charmed made its
nest in the roots of the tree; the fierce Anzu bird set its young
in the crown; and, in the middle, the dark maid Lilith built her
home. And so Innana, who loved to laugh, wept because the snake, bird, and Lilith would not leave her tree. She turned to
Gilgamesh for help. He slayed the serpent. His men cut down the
tree and presented it to Innana for her throne and bed. The
Anzu bird escaped with its young to the mountains, and Lilith smashed her home and flew to the wild and uninhabitated places.
Innana rewarded Gilgamesh with a drum and drumstick from the
base and crown of the tree, which enabled him to talk with the gods and to descend to the netherworld.
From a feminist perspective, this story raises several disturbing questions. Why would Innana weep at the presence of her
handmaid Lilith in her tree? Why did she wish for the symbols of
the ancient Bird and Snake Goddess to be gone from her life?
And why did Innana reward Gilgamesh for destroying the sacred serpent and banishing Lilith and the Anzu bird?
The EPIC of GILGAMESH, as inscribed upon the clay tablets
dating from 2000 BCE, was the later Babylonian version of an
earlier Sumerian tale that had occurred over the preceding one
thousand years. It is known only in fragmants today. From the
patriarchal perspective Innana must sacrifice her virginity, that is,
her new moon maiden nature as a goddess who is free and
autonomous. She must also submit to the new solar gods and
allow Gilgamesh to destroy the key symbols of her power: the
bird, the snake, and the tree.
It now becomes clear why Innana wept at the continued
presence of Lilith, the serpent,and the Anzu bird,who all resided
in her sacred tree.The ancient Bird and the Snake Goddess who
made her home at the crown and base of the tree of life united
heaven and earth. This image contained the power and knowledge inherent in the eagle-winged, lion-faced bird and the
wisdom of sexual renewal embodied by the serpent. Innana had
to give up these symbols of her power if the new patriarchy was
to grant her throne and bed, hre new symbols signifying co-
rulership in the new reign. If she could not let go of them
voluntarily, they would be taken away from her in any case by
the coming patriarchal onslaught. The home of her handmaiden
Lilith was destroyed, and Lilith had to flee to the desolate
wilderness.
Lilith's banishment continued into the following centuries as the
Babylonian, Hittite, and Semitic civilizations superseded the
Sumerian culture in the ancient Near East. The wild, free, and virgin (belonging to no man) aspect of feminine sexuality that
Lilith symbolized became distorted into the irresistible, lascivious,
insatiable, unmarried she-demons who seduced men in their
sleep against their will and excited their nightly emission. An
ancient Babylonian cylinder seal shows a man copulating with a
vampire whose head had been cut off in order to keep away the
nocturnal visits of Lilith and her sisters.
Another charm has the reference,

The Lilu, the Lilit, the night Lili,
Enchantments, disasters, spells,
Illnesses, evil charms,
In the name of heaven
And in the name of earth
Let them be exorcised.

In a seventh-century BCE Syrian tablet Lilith was portrayed as winged sphinx with the following inscription, part of an
incantation used to help women in childbirth:

O, Flyer in a dark chamber,
Go away at once, O Lili.

Lilith was feared as a female demon who endangered women in
childbirth and strangled infants. This terror may be linked to her
attempt to defend Ninlil's right to bestow rulership by preventing
the survival of the conquering tribes' heirs. Many of these incantation texts warding Lilith off have been found in Ninlil's city
of Nippur in Babylonia.

LILITH IN HEBRAIC TRADITION

The next layer of Lilith's imagery as a demoness comes from the
Hebrews, where she was assigned a central place in Jewish
demonology. In the early part of the first millenium BCE the
Hebrews invaded Canaan and later went into exile in Babylonia,
where they had to assimilate the local mythology and customs.
In Lilith's Canaanite queendom the priests could not dissuade
their females from praying to the Fertility Goddess, Anath, whose
worshippers were permitted prenuptial promiscuity.
The prophets denounced the Israelite women for following these
practices, and defamed Lilith as an evil and unnatural spirit in an
attempt to suppress their women's demands for sexual freedom.
Most of the Hebrew legends about Lilith were developed after
the Babylonian exile (586 BCE) and the Roman deportation of the
Jews into captivity (70 CE). They brought back from Babylonia the
names of various demons, among them that of Lilith. The only
appearance of Lilith in the bible is in the old testament when
Isiah, describing Yahweh's day of vengeance when the land will
be turned into a desolate wilderness, says, "The wild beasts shall
meet with the jackals and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; and
Lilith shall repose there and find her a place of rest." (Isa.34:14).
Exile was a threat to Jewish survival; and in their powerless
condition Hebrew men needed to ensure their manhood. It was
therefore necessary that their women be programmed to be
submissive and to enable the intererts of men, family, and
society, not their own.
Proving one's maleness was also defined as the ability to father
children, which in Exile was essential to the continuity of the race;
so any threat to a man's potency or his offspring was tantamount
to extinction. The concept that Lilith signified, that of a sexually
independent female who had control over pregnancy and infancy,
was antithetical to the survival of the race. It needed to be
addressed.
In establishing their genealogy the Jewish patriarchs had to
contend with the two different versions in Genesis concerning
the creation of man and woman. Genesis 1, which embodies the
earlier belief that the universe was created from the union of the
Father Sky and Mother Earth, relates that god created the first
man and woman at thesame time. The later version, Genesis 2, states that woman was an afterthought and appendage of man.
The new monotheistic religion, which worshipped only one god,
the father, had to remove the vestiges of the female deities and repress the Goddess traditions. Lilith is that part of the Great
Goddess that has been rejected and cast out in postbiblical times.
Female worship went underground and survived only in the distorted projections of men's worst fears concerning their
manhood and potency.
(Next, Lilith and Adam)

For those who love, time is eternity....

[Mairwen]

I specifically asked that this not be posted to the Gods and Goddess Forum. I do not desire to have another fiasco such as what occured last week, so I moved this back here, to Just Talk.

[Earth Walker]

This then is the background for the development of Lilith's
next phase as the first wife of Adam, before he mated with
Eve. Lilith left him and then became transformed into an evil
seductress, a mother of demons and a killer of children in the
Hebrew mythology. This story was developed in the Babylonian
Talmud, the ZOHAR, and the ALPHABET OF BEN SIRA, all of which
were written or compiled outside of Eretz Israel, presumably
after 70 CE, although they draw upon earlier oral and written
tales.
The earliest biblical account of creation relates that god
created the first man and woman at the same time. "And god
created the human species in his own image...male and female
created he them" (Gen. 1:27). Jewish legend tells us that this
woman was Lilith. The Alphabet of Ben Sira, an early Jewish
commentary on the bible written around 1000 CE, weaves together the various earlier versions of creation and the
subversive concept of woman's equality.
After the holy one created the first human being, Adam, he said:
"It is not good for Adam to be alone." He created a woman, also
from the earth, and called her Lilith. They quarreled immediately.
She said: :I will not lie below you." He said, "I will not lie below
you, but above you. For you are fit to be below me and I above
you." She responded: "We are both equal because we both
come from the earth." Neither listened to the other. When Lilith
realized what was happening, she pronounced the Ineffable
name of god and flew off into the air.
Adam rose in prayer before the creator, saying, "The woman you
gave me has fled from me." Immediately the holy one sent
three angels after her.
The holy one said to Adam: "If she wants to return, all the better.
If not, she will have to accept that one hundred of her children
will die every day." The angels went after her, finally locating her
in the sea, in the powerful waters in which the Egyptians were
destined to perish. They told her what god said, and she did not want to return....
Originally he and she, Adam and Lilith, were created equal and together and set in the garden of eden to give things their
names and thereby bring the world into manifestation. They had
a very difficult time because Lilith insisted upon full equality,
which Adam refused, and they could not agree upon anything.
Adam would have sex with Lilith only if he was on the top and
she was on the bottom because he was superior, having been
created from the pure dust, and she was inferior, having come
from filth and sediment. After some time Lilith realized that Adam
was never going to accept as valid and worthwhile anything she
had to offer, so she uttered the secret name of god, flew off,
and vanished into the air.
Adam complained to god that the wife he had been given had
deserted him, so god then sent three angels, Senoy, Sansenoy,
and Semangelof, to capture Lilith. They found her beside the
Red Sea, a place of ill repute abounding in lascivious demons,
with whom Lilith engaged in unbridled promiscuity and bore
scores of demonic children. The angels relayed god's warning
that if she did not return she would have to see the death of
one hundred of her children every day. When she refused to go
they threatened to drown her in the sea. She protested, claiming
that she was expressly created to harm newborn infants: boys
until their eighth day of life (after circumcision) and girls until
their twentieth day. However, she swore an oath that whenever
she saw the image of those angels in an amulet she would lose
her power over the infant. And if she could not destroy a human
infant because of the amulet, she would have to kill her own.
Lilith did not return to Adam. She chose a lifetime of exile in a desert cave on the shores of the Red Sea rather than one of
subjugation and domination to Adam's will. Lilith went through a great period of grief. Not only had she voluntarily removed her-
self as the feminine aspect of wisdom from the process of a new
creation of the world, but daily one hundred of her children were
dying for her defiance. After her mourning was done she made love with the water elementals, and many beings arose from this union -- namely the sea of the unconscious, from which the
feminine aspect of our wisdom arises from the depths of our
psyche.
Meanwhile, in the garden of eden, god took a rib from Adam's
side and turned it into Eve, Adam's second wife and helpmate.
Adam was pleased to be rid of Lilith, who only gave him trouble,
and to now have Eve, who was submissive and dutiful in all
ways. However, the fact that he never gave up resenting
Lilith for having made the choice to leave him addresses man's
(or the man within each woman's) primal anger toward any woman who has ever left or rejected him, even though he may
be very happy that she is out of his life.
The legend concerning the wife of Adam who preceded the
creation of Eve merged with the earlier legend of Lilith as a demon
who killed infants and endangered women in childbirth. When
the story of creation was being written down, mention of Lilith
was wholly exorcised from scripture, with the one exception of
Isaiah. The biblical patriarchs did not want to give the world a
model of a wife who demanded equality and defied and left her
husband; instead they extolled the virtues of Eve, who had no
such ideas but instead would be subservient, enabling her husband in all ways.
Lilith was punished for her defiance by being exiled from
legitimate society and cast out into the wilderness. What remained of Lilith's story was then distorted, and the image of
her that abounded in the Hebraic literature and folklore of the
next several millennia was one of feminine evil. She was known as the harlot, the wicked, the false, and the black. The first
woman on earth who was equal to man and a free spirit was
condemned to survive for eternity as a she-devil, mating with
demons and devils and bearing monsters instead of human
children. This image was to serve as a threat and warning to
any woman who might consider leaving her husband or defying
male authority.
During the next period in Lilith's mythical biography society
perceived her as a crazed madwoman who was obsessed with
wanton, perverted sexual desire. She spent her time seducing
men, breeding demons, and murdering small babies.
(Next: Lilith as a Seductress)

[Earth Walker]

....can we have a discussion/opinions on the obvious
discrepancies/lies perpetrated by the Jewish patriarchy?

Firsy, they say that Lilith and Adam were created at the same
time. Then we read that god made Adam first, then Lilith.
Adam was "superior" because he was made from Pure Dust,
but Lilith was made from filth and sediment?
Genesis 1 & Genesis 2....it seems that patriarchy cannot write
their "bible" without contradictions/lies(from Genesis to Revelation).
Since Lilith had no sex with Adam, how then did she have
children; much less having over 100, since she had to watch
100 of her children die every day. :confused:
(When would she have had time to eat or sleep? :eek:)
Are there any other contradictions you would like to discuss?

[Earth Walker]

LILITH AS A SEDUCTRESS

Adam's idyll with Eve did not last long. Legends tell that it was
Lilith, crowned and winged with a serpent's tail entwined around
the Tree of Knowledge (reminiscent of the ancient Bird and
Snake Goddess), who persuaded Eve to offer the forbidden
apple to Adam and initiate him into the sexual mysteries of the
coiled KUNDALINI serpent. The Zohar myth relates that Lilith was
"the Serpent, the Woman of Harlotry who incited and induced
Eve...causing Eve to seduce Adam while she was in her menstrual
impurity."
After Adam's fall and expulsion from the garden of eden he
repented by fasting, mortifying his flesh, and taking a vow of
celibacy:rolleyes: for one hundred and thirty years. :eek:
Lilith took her revenge by visiting him at night and tempting him
with erotic dreams. She mounted him and captured his nocturnal
emissions, from which she bore demon babies. At the same time
similiar male spirits impregnated Eve, and from these unions originated the plagues of humankind.
Lilith's seduction of Adam served as the mythical prototype to
validate men's fears of the sexual power of women as succubi.
Rabbinical literature warns that "Lilith is a Harlot who fornicates
with men....who sleep below in the impurity of spontaneous
emission and from them are born demons and spirits and Lilin."
"She is the Alien Woman...the sweetness of sin and the evil
tongue. And from the lips of the Alien Woman honey flows."
"Lilith is the Torturous Serpent who seduces men to go in
torturous ways." "She is the Impure Female."
Lilith was the secret fear of men who slept alone; she would
attack their bodies in lascivious ways. A passage in the Zohar
states, She[Lilith] 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.
She lurks under doorways, in wells, and in latrines,where she
continues to lead men astray until the last judgement. The
offspring of Lilith's nocturnal rapes are the demons that plague
the world.
Once her daughters, the lilin, attached themselves to a human,
they acquired the rights of cohabitation, and had to be given a
GET, a letter of divorce, in order to be expelled. It was said that
if a pious man had a wet dream, Lilith laughed. Her enchanting,
unearthly beauty was especially dangerous to young men who
lusted after her; once visited, they could never be aroused by a
mortal woman.
The lilin haunted men for thousands of years, and generations
of celibate monks clutched their crucifixes and malas over their
genitals at night to protect themselves from the evil Lilith.
(Next: Lilith as a Child-Killer)

[Fawn]

No wonder the poor thing is a Dark goddes especially if she is made from "filth and sediment" ;)
Actually I loved your post about her --I found it very well writtten and informative.
Like all you do.

Good job--I can't wait for more.

[Celtic_Angel]

Mystique,

First of all, I think it is great that you have provided such a vast amount of knowledge on Lilith. I would like to know from what resources you get your information though so I may compare it with other sources. This would be an attemp to further my own knowledge, because the Jewish community has argued the existence of Lilith from the beginning and still does.

Out of respect for those on this site that are not of a pagan path, I do not feel that calling anything in the Holy Bible "lies" is appropriate though. With as open minded as this site appears to built and meant to be, I don't think either side of the spectrum should be claiming the texts of others to contain lies. It is offensive and will probably garner a few fights. I know that this is not your intent and you only wish to open certain aspects of the Bible for further analysis and for that I commend you. I only think you should be more careful in your wording when discussing Christianity if you wish to see positive results to this endeavor.

Brightest Blessings! :sunny:

C_A

[Earth Walker]

Mostly from material that is downloaded from the 'Net
and from the book by Demetra George:

Mysteries Of The Dark Moon 1992 -- HarperSanFrancisco

Also by Demetra George:

Astrology For Yourself (with Douglas Bloch)

Asteroid Goddesses (with Douglas Bloch)

[Earth Walker]

Originally posted by Mystique
Mostly from material that is downloaded from the 'Net
and from the book by Demetra George:

Mysteries Of The Dark Moon 1992 -- HarperSanFrancisco

Also by Demetra George:

Astrology For Yourself (with Douglas Bloch)

Asteroid Goddesses (with Douglas Bloch)


And my own observations/comments too. :)

[BrightStar]

Hi all!
There's a similar interpretation of Lilith in,The Witches' Goddess by Janet and Stewart Farrar,published in 1987
Peace and love
Brightstar

[Earth Walker]

LILITH AS A CHILD-KILLER

Lilith's exploits as a child-killer are documented in the
incantation texts inscribed on bowls and amulets found
throughout the Near East from the fifth to seventeenth
centuries. It was believed that Lilith's power could be trapped
under an inverted bowl on which magical formulas had been
written. As a personification of the destructive life force Lilith
was a threat to pregnant woman, causing miscarriage and
birth complications. Favoring the children born out of wedlock,
the lilin hated those born of ordinary human marriage and
would attack them, plague them, suck their blood, and strangle
them. To protect a newborn child from Lilith, especially males
until they were safeguarded by circumcision, a ring was drawn
with charcoal on the wall of the birth room and inside it was
written, "Adam and Eve. Out, Lilith!" The names Senoy, Sansenoy,
and Semangelof -- the three angels with whom Lilith bargained
at the Red Sea -- were written over the doorway of houses and
on amulets hung around a child's neck to ward off Lilith's
vengeance.
Many amulets include the story of the prophet Elijah meeting
Lilith on her way to the house of a woman in childbirth "to give
her the sleep of death, to take her son, and drink her blood, to
suck the marrow of his bones, and to eat his flesh." Elijah
excommunicated her, whereupon she undertook not to harm
women in childbirth whenever she saw or heard her name.
If a male child smiled in his sleep, people said that Lilith was
fondling him. To avert danger one should strike the child's lips
with one finger three times and cry out, "Away Lilith, you have
no place here."
The Greeks adopted the lilin and called them the Lamiae. They
tell the story of an African queen, Lamia, who lived only for her
beauty. She incurred the jealousy of Hera, who killed her
children by Zeus. Lamia was driven mad, became ugly, and sought
to destroy other women's children. She was also supposed to be able to change her shape. Lamia later became the "nursery bogey" who stole children, seduced sleeping men, and sucked their blood. They were also known as the Empusae ("forcers-in,"
MORMOLYCEIA), frightening wolves, and children of Hekate.

LILITH AND HER CONSORTS

During Lilith's stay in the desert by the Red Sea, a fiery, furious,
seductive energy emerged from her. Cabbalistic tradition says
that the Blind Dragon arranged the marriage between Lilith the
Elder and Samael, King of the Demons, and she reigned as queen
in the realm of the forces of evil. Lilith the Younger became the
bride of Ashmosai, also a King of Demons. The Zohar says that
from her union with Samael and Ashmodai, Lilith bore alien and
evil cohorts who were destroyers of the world of Above and
Below. There was jealousy between the two kings, and Lilith
commanded legions of demons to arouse war and all kinds of
destruction. It was also said that Lilith was the Queen of
Zemargad, who travelled with her army of demons for three years from her home in the desert to attack the sons of Job.
The double nature of Lilith appears again in her association with
a sister demoness called Naamah. Naamah means "the charmer,"
whose extraordinary, irresistible beauty and sweet cymbal music
seduced both angels and men. Some writings identify Lilith and
Naamah as the two harlots who tested King Solomon's wisdom
in asking for his judgment in their quarrel over the surviving
child. Barbara Koltuv feels that Lilith the Younger is Naamah as
maiden and seductress, while Lilith the Elder or Ancient One is
the child-killer, hag and snatcher. This corresponds to the new
and dark phases of the Triple Moon Goddess as virgin and crone.
In Arabic lore there exists a widespread identification of Lilith
with the Queen of Sheba. A Jewish and Arab myth from the third
century told that the Queen of Sheba was a JINN -- half woman
and half demon. She had cloven feet and hairy legs, a kind of
sphinx who posed riddles. It was said that King Solomon had
dominion over demons, spirits, and lilin and knew the language
of each. Preparing for the visit of the Queen of Sheba, he ordered
the Djinns to build a throne room with a floor of glass.
When the Queen of Sheba entered, she thought that his throne
sat upon water and she lifted her garments in order to cross the
water and approach him. Thus her hairy legs, showing her natural
bestial origin, were revealed.
The evidence that she was Lilith was that the riddles the Queen
of Sheba posed to King Solomon are a repetition of the words of
seduction that Lilith spoke to Adam. "What is water that is
neither in the air nor in the river nor in the ocean nor in the rain?"
The answer to this is supposed to be "the sweat of a horse in
its mane," but it is also a double riddle for "woman's love" or the
wetness between the thighs Of the Queen of Sheba's animal
pubic mane. Solomon accepted her instinctual feminine sexuality
and they had a child, from whom the Abyssinian rulers claim
lineage descent.
During the fifteenth-century Kabbalistic age, Lilith rose to triumph
as the queenly consort at god's side. When the Temple of
Jerusalem was destroyed, the Matronit, mother of the house of
Israel, had to leave her husband and go with her children into
exile until the time of their redemption, god, Isreal's father, took
the slave woman (that is, Lilith) in the Matronit's place and she
became the Mistress of his house. From this union Lilith became
the mother of the unholy folk who constituted the "mixed multitude."
This sinful connubium between god and Lilith will continue until
the coming of the messiah, who will put an end to it by casting
Lilith out and restoring the Matronit to her rightful place beside
god. The messianic days will also mark the end of Lilith's
existence. For while she has existed since the sixth or even fifth day of creation, she is not immortal. In the Days to Come, when
Israel will take revenge on Edom, both she and the Blind Dragon,
who arranged the match between her and Samael, will be killed.
(Next, Lilith in the 19th century.)