She Devil: The Origins of Lilith

Lilith is a modern feminist icon to many wiccans and occultists, departed from her muddy origins and claw footed imagery.

Her influence over religious texts and even in pop culture is immense; the 1940s Fruit of Knowledge by C. L. Moore introduces her as a jaded woman, envious of Adam and Eve. C.S Lewis uses Lilith to inspire Jadis, The White Witch. Art, poetry, and folklore have been pieced together in order to understand her enigmatic past, purpose and origin. Yet one thing all these have in common is the surety of Lilith’s lethality. She is not just a scorned woman but a demon, a bird hybrid, and a witch.

One thing that needs to be made clear about her is the two very different origins of Lilith: her as an individual and then as a demon race. While many people know her as a demon or have understanding to her links to Christianity her beginning is not well known or documented. Most people are unaware of the associations to ancient Babylonian folklore.

Lilith as a concept was first ‘officially’ documented in the Hebrew bible, with only one mention in Isaiah 34:14 in a prophecy about the lands of Edom on the day of vengeance.

"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. 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."

Eberhard Schrader (1875) and Moritz Abraham Levy (1855) suggest that this text was referencing a demon of the night, and advised Babylon mythology and demonology, proposing that this ‘Lilith’ dated beyond 600 BCE and into older stories and night-time terrors.

Different Greek and Latin translations of this same text offer different interpretations, including a precarious connection to the Greek Lamia, a serpentine woman that feasted on children in the night. Google searches present Lilith as a figure in Jewish lore who was a lover to Adam, the first man. Yet this first mention is more likely a reference to the lilitu, an ancient Babylonian myth; the male lilis and the female liliths. J. A. Scurlock writes,

“The lilû-demons and their female counterparts the lilitu or ardat lilî-demons were hungry for victims because they had once been human; they were the spirits of young men and women who had themselves died young.” These demons “slipped through windows into people’s houses looking for victims to take the place of husbands and wives whom they themselves never had.”

The lilu demons can be found in ancient Jewish occult incantation bowls along with the Bagdana, king of the lilits. The bowls were made to ward off their spirits from a household as they were believed to take the wife’s form, conceive a child and the become violent and murderous towards the father and the children. This would expose unfaithful parents, killing the children for their sins.

In Roman times many believed that mental illness and, what was then, unexplainable bodily functions were caused by demons. It is not too far-fetched to believe this is also a fear and anxiety that manifested in lilitu demons. Miscarriage and post-natal depression were scary and unexplainable, we still don’t have a full understanding of how the body and brain works despite being far more advanced than the Babylonians in 600 BCE.

Lilith is mentioned a bit more in Rabbinic literature dating in 500 CE, described as having long hair and wings and representing the danger a woman’s sexuality and otherness holds over a man. They claimed that a man could not sleep alone, lest he be preyed upon by a Lilith. Lilith became the demonstration of what made women different, what wasn’t known about women, and in turn what made them anxious about her, moving on from a woman’s body to her sexuality.

"[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)

"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)

Much like contemporary horror films, these anxieties are concentrated and featured into one person who is so ‘other’ that they are no longer human. This anxiety that women can give and bring life to the world was fragile and exploited in Lilith’s image. This is where Lilith starts becoming her own individual, birthed from these murderous creatures, and reincarnated in The Alphabet of Ben Sira.

Written between 700 and 1000 CE, The Alphabet of Ben Sira offers a fully realised story of Lilith as Adam first wife. Many scholars claim the story is satirical, and the oft misogynist prose were debated as anti-Jewish satire. Despite this, it was accepted by medieval German Jewish mystics, and the direction of its assault Is unclear as there is such variety of subject matter available. The first seeds of Lilith being a victim to sexism and a feminist icon comes into play here. Lilith and Adam were created of the same sand, and as equals she refused 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."

Many only believed it was satire because it criticised Adam and God, weak and ineffective in their arguments with Lilith. It lauds her stubborn brazenness and celebrates her as a winner.

The Alphabet is the earliest publication of Lilith being Eve’s predecessor, a theory that has since been adopted by the German scholar Johannes Bedor in the 17th century. We were introduced to Lilith in the middle ages as a female demon, wed to Asmodeous, the king of hell, or even the fallen angel Samuel, marrying the mythology of the lilitu and the first wife of Adam. The lilitu were then introduced as her children, able to birth hundreds of succubus and incubi at once, Lilith continued spreading fear and chaos.

Her influence can be seen in Western literature in the late 18th century, her origin story painting her as the femme fatale that seduces and enchants men with her hair. Called The Pretty Witch in Goethes 1808 work Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy she boasts of apples growing in her garden, much like the ones that seduced Adam and Eve.

"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

After this she was features several times in European and British literature, departed from her demonic past and presented as a seductress and a witch. Lilith is almost vampiric, beautiful, and narcissistic even once drinking one’s blood for sustenance. Fruit of Knowledge, released in 1940 introduces the narrative of a love triangle between Lilith, Eve and Adam. Lilith is the one to manipulate Eve to eat the apple in desperation and jealousy over Adam’s affections.

Modern depictions don’t quite know how to represent Lilith to an audience, the TV show Supernatural giving us a child, the virgin demon, as though her children weren’t known for being the biblical equivalent to succubus and incubi. Narnia gave us Jadis, a witch of ice and snow so cold she never smiled and had skin bleached white by a forbidden fruit. Her beauty and stature tall yet her power defeatable and arrogance overwhelmed. As a villain she is ‘beyond’, full of power and hate and lusting for more.

Bought to life from the same sand as Adam, Lilith stands tall in history. The modern understanding of Lilith is a hybrid of different folklore, myth and reimagination. Depictions flip between Lilith as a reincarnation of lust, or Lilith being a child killing demon. Like two sides of one coin, she is both the mother and the maiden.

References

Rabbi Menachem Levine. “Lilith: The Real story.” Aish.com (Viewed on May 19, 2021) https://www.aish.com/ci/w/Lilith-The-Real-Story.html

Petruzello, M., 2021. Lilith | Definition & Mythology. [online] Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: <https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lilith-Jewish-folklore> [Accessed 19 May 2021].

Trover, F., 2021. Kali and Lilith: The Lilin and the Matrkas. [online] Reli350.vassar.edu. Available at: <http://reli350.vassar.edu/trover/matrkas.html> [Accessed 19 May 2021].

1970. New American Bible. New York: American Bible Society.

Lesses, Rebecca. “Lilith.” Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. 20 March 2009. Jewish Women’s Archive. (Viewed on May 19, 2021) <https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lilith>.

Rodkinson, M., 2010. The Talmud. [online] Sacred-texts.com. Available at: <https://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/talmud.htm> [Accessed 19 May 2021].

Alan Humm ed., “Lilith Bibliography.”Jewish and Christian Literature. (Viewed on May 19, 2021) <http://jewishchristianlit.com//Topics/Lilith/>

Goethe, J. and Greenberg, M., 2014. Faust. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.