The
belief in Lilith -- the first woman,
the first Eve, Adam's first wife --
has persisted throughout many
cultures in one form or another for
at least 5000 years. Lilith's
mythology was expressed through art,
iconography, and oral and written
traditions; she was regarded
alternately as goddess, protective
deity and evil spirit, depending on
which source one consults or chooses
to believe. There are incantations
mentioning Lilith as demon which
date as far back as 1894 BCE
(Scurlock, 1991) and possibly
earlier; interestingly, although the
Western world has changed
drastically since that time,
protective amulets warding off
Lilith or comparable 'evil' female
spirits are still given to pregnant
women, placed near the bed of a
woman about to give birth or hung in
or near the crib of newborn babies
in Israel today. They are also used
in other Middle Eastern and North
African countries, including
Morocco, Kurdistan and Yemen.
Lilith
still reigns as a symbol of
independent, life-loving,
justice-seeking women who have been
depicted in art, history and
literature as sexual predators,
demons, evil spirits and harlots.
She may have been considered both
warrior and seductress; I view
neither of these as negatives. If
she is shown as one who tricked men,
I believe it was to teach them
lessons; if she was blamed for
inciting their lust, so have all
women taken the blame for male
desire in a world where sexuality is
held sinful.
If
we are to believe she kills mortals,
can we not view her as we do the
male god, as one who 'giveth and
taketh away', who ends human life as
He, divine ruler, deems necessary,
or simply to maintain the balance of
the Universe? Why do the qualities
we admire in a male god make so
little sense to us when embodied by
a female deity that we demonize her?
Why are they so
threatening?
In
discussing Lilith's demonization and
what I believe to be a false or
incomplete portrayal of a
fascinating woman and archetype, I
hope to be able to guide women to
find their erotic voices -- to know
what excites and stimulates them
intellectually, emotionally and
physically, and to pursue those
things, especially their sexuality,
without shame or fear of reprisal.
To
rediscover this innate wild voice,
we need to know history, if for no
other reason than to prevent past
travesties like the European and
American witch hunts from ever being
repeated. We can readily see the
connection between the dogma of
today's religious fundamentalists
and Medieval attitudes connecting
women's mysteries with the devil,
when "to denounce women became the
means to protect oneself from the
devil…if a religious man
…dreamed of a woman, that woman
had to be a demon" (Van Vuuren,
1973).
The
myth of Lilith, while perhaps
created by men, was doubtless kept
very alive by women as well, a way
that women who miscarried or were
infertile, or who were jealous or
uncomfortable with their own
sexuality, could scapegoat women who
were more free. I also think it
highly likely that she was invoked
by women who chose to self-abort --
because they had been raped or did
not want children -- for courage, as
a means of absolving themselves to
themselves or to have someone to
blame if their act was discovered.
Fearing retribution from the
husbands, fathers, clergy or legal
authorities who ruled their lives,
women could turn to Lilith as
comfort or
co-conspirator.
I
hope Lilith's story will prompt both
male and female readers to think
critically about the history they
have been taught, and to read
newspapers, magazines, books and ads
with an open, questioning mind. I
also hope to help women create,
re-vision and self-validate their
own personal concepts of the sacred
and the erotic, to locate their
sources of creative juice, and to
decide for themselves where divinity
lives. In the process of finding
these answers, I believe women learn
how much control they have over
their own lives.
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Who
was Lilith?
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The
Stalker, by Lilian
Broca
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Lilith's
name is etymologically related to
the Sumerian word lil (wind; it is
also translated as wind-storm and
screech owl.) Among her many names:
Astarte, Lamashtu, Labartu, Lillake,
Lilit, Lilitu, Lilithu, Mahalat,
Abyzu, Ailo, Ardat Lili, Broxa,
Gelou, Lalla, Ptrotk, Ostara or
Eostre (the Goddess of Easter
lilies), Belit-Ili, Belili and
Baalat ("Divine Lady" to the
Canaanites).
Though
some also confuse her with Lilu, the
lilu-demons were actually male
(Scurlock, 1991). Though Lilith is
frequently accused of being a
child-killer, it was the lilu, not
the lilitu demon which preyed on
children! "Men who had died young
became lilu-demons: '[Young
man] who always sits, silent and
[al]one, [in] the
street; [young] man who
cries bitterly in the grip of his
death-demon; young man to whose fate
silence was attached; young man to
whom his mother, crying, gave birth
in the street; young man whose body
grief has burnt; young man whose god
has evil[ly] [b]ound
him; young man whose goddess has cut
him off; young man who never married
a wife, never raised a child; young
man who never experienced sexual
pleasure in his wife's
lap1; young man who never
removed a garment in his wife's lap;
young man who was driven out of the
house of his father in law'…it
was presumably because he longed for
fulfillment as a father that the
lilu-demon preyed on suckling
children" (Scurlock,
1991).
Like
the Sumerian wind demon found in the
Sumerian king list dating around
2400 BCE (Patai, 1967) and its later
Babylonian counterpart, Lilith was
regarded as a succubus, or female
version of the incubus. In ancient
times demons could be either good or
bad -- those who practiced
Babylonian oil magic, for example,
used oil to inquire of the gods or
the demons what the future would
bring, or to ask them to fulfill a
certain wish (Daiches, 1913). Yet
Lilith, often said to be another
powerful demon, is never referred to
as good or benevolent! This may
imply that the Babylonians
understood Pazuzu's warrior nature
to be advantageous because they
could invoke him for protection,
while in most female figures such
power is interpreted only as
threatening.
In
post-biblical Jewish literature,
Lilith was named as Adam's first
wife, created out of earth in the
same way as he had created the first
man. The pair immediately began to
quarrel because Lilith refused to
lie beneath Adam sexually; she saw
no reason to since they had both
been created from the same earth or
dirt (Long, 1991; Matthews, 1992;
Gottlieb, 1993). When Adam refused
to compromise Lilith fled to the Red
Sea to 'consort' with demons,
according to most accounts, though
this might be understood as the
choice to live an independent life
in which she could enjoy autonomy.
Demetra George writes that she
refused subjugation, and, as a wind
spirit, flew away and resumed her
ancient sexual practices by living
at the Red Sea, or as many would
interpret it, dwelling in a womb of
power, of menstrual blood (George,
1992).
When
Adam complained to God that she had
left him, the story goes, God sent
three angels,Senoy, Sansenoy and
Semangelof 2to bring her
back to the Garden of Eden. She
refused. When the angels then
threatened to drown her, she swore
that she had been sent by God and
that although her 'function' was to
kill babies, she would spare any
child protected by an amulet or
plaque with her name on it if they
let her go. The angels meted out
drastic punishment. There are three
versions of this punishment in the
literature: 100 of her babies would
die each night; she would be doomed
to giving birth to children who were
demons; or God would make her
barren. All three options are
equally frightening; this part of
the legend was clearly constructed
to illustrate the horrible fate
which awaited women who did not obey
their husbands.3 No doubt
this extended to one's father or
priest -- to any male who wanted to
claim 'dominion' over the woman or
women in his arena of
control.
According
to Moses Gaster, the Lilith who is
written about in the 10th Century is
profoundly different from the one we
have been talking about. She has
either gained or lost power,
depending on one's viewpoint. "The
names by which the Evil Spirit is
prevented from doing any harm to the
newborn child are no longer her own
names, but the more powerful names
of the angels who subdue the Evil
Spirit" (Gaster, 1928).
In
my reading of the legends about
Lilith, she represents female
beauty, sexual pride and freedom,
independence, free thought, mobility
of body, mind and spirit, the
freedom to dream. The fact that she
was also often written about as a
'wind-storm' is a positive for me,
not a negative. Wind indicates
movement, and might have simply
represented her as a force to be
reckoned with; today, it might
symbolize someone who is 'a mover
and a shaker'. In fact, 'Ruach', the
Hebrew word for 'wind' also means
spirit, which could mean the breath
of life itself. Clearly the
difference in our perception of
Lilith and of ourselves as women is
shaped by textual analysis and
interpretation. It is easy to see
how differently we might view women
if women had been regarded for
millennia as the very breath of life
rather than as the instigators of
sin, or as 'filth and sediment' as
the medieval Kabbalists
taught.
If
women are to take a pro-active role
in creating such a new cultural
scenario, it is vital that we
continue to create new stories about
Lilith, new Creation myths, new
religious and historical legends,
new vocabulary, new liturgy. We have
only begun to birth the new Tree of
Life.
1
Shuttle and Redgrove interpret the
word "lap" to mean a woman's vulva
(see pp. 20-21, The Wise Wound
(1978) for further discussion of
term.
2
These angels' names are spelled in
many ways; I have decided to go with
the spelling provided by Raphael
Patai (The Hebrew Goddess, 1967), in
part because he was one of my
earliest and most constant
sources.
3
My thanks to Dr. Martin Schwartz at
the University of California --
Berkeley for his thoughts on this
point, and for giving me a new
perspective on the three
angels.
This essay is a selection from the
forthcoming book, Lilith's Fire:
Reclaiming Our Sacred Lifeforce,
which will be available mid-July and
can be ordered through uPUBLISH.com
or one's local independent
bookseller.
Deborah
Grenn-Scott, M.A., Women's
Spirituality, is founder and
director of The Lilith Institute, A
Center for the Study of Sacred Text,
Myth and Ritual. A corporate
communications executive in New York
City for 15 years, she returned to
the San Francisco Bay Area in 1993
and now designs rites of passage and
gives private classes and workshops.
Visit her website at
http://www.lilithinstitute.com
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