History - Lilith Persuasive essay

Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told
(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,)
That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive,
And her enchanted hair was the first gold.
And still she sits, young while the earth is old,
And, subtly of herself contemplative,
Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave,
Till heart and body and life are in its hold.
The rose and poppy are her flower; for where
Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?
Lo! As that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went
Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent
And round his heart one strangling golden hair.








"Dark is she, but brilliant! Black are her wings, black on black! Her lips are red as rose, kissing all of the Universe! She is Lilith, who leadeth forth the hordes of the Abyss, and leadeth man to liberation! She is the irresistible fulfiller of all lust, seer of desire. First of all women was she - Lilith, not Eve was the first! Her hand brings forth the revolution of the Will and true freedom of the mind! She is KI-SI-KIL-LIL-LA-KE, Queen of the Magic! Look on her in lust and despair!" —Lilith Ritus, from the German by Joseph Max

When we think of modern woman, we no longer think of the subservant traits that Eve, the alleged first woman, represented. Gone are the days where woman were the submissive counterparts of men, living only to bear children and serve their families. It's even hard to believe that modern woman was made from man's rib at all. Unfortunatly, the story of Lilith, a myth that began long before the creation of Eve, is lost behind the patriarcal development of Christian religions. This story, I believe, explains much more concerning womanly traits and desires than the well known story of Adam and Eve we are so fimilar with.
The story of Lilith in Jewish folklore is most comparible to modern Christianity. In the story, God created Adam and Lilith first, as equals, from the same dirt of the earth in the Garden of Eden. The problem was that since Lilith was equal to Adam, she refused to submit to him sexually, refusing to lie below durring intercourse. This caused them to fight constantly until, fed up, Lilith said the 'ineffable name' (the name of God -YHWH) and flew away to the Red Sea (She flew because she had sprouted wings, a power apparently bestowed on those who say the Lord's name outloud). Adam went whining to God that his wife had left him and God sent three angels to fetch her. Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof were those angels, sent to bring Lilth back to Adam. God said 'If she agrees to come back, what is made is good. If not, she must permit one hundred of her children to die every day.' When they found her, however, Lilith refused to go back and the more the angels threatened, the more stubborn she became. Finally, the angels threatened to throw Lilith into the Red Sea and she swore two things, both concerning infants and children. For one, she was cursed to have 100 of her own children die everyday, therefore everyday it is said 100 demons perish. And second, Lilith claimed the health and lives of human infants within 20 days of their birth.
In folklore, things like death are explained in stories such as these in place of the era's lack of science and medical knowledge. The idea of Lilith killing infants covered the devastating occurance of SIDS and other terminal illnesses in babies. It was also a convient story to make women, mothers in particular, turn away from the traits of characterized by Lilith and instead submit to the rule of man.
In other stories of myth told throughout time, Lilith is made out to be a demon. Black horns and black wings made up of a multitude of sins are added to her legendary appearence of long flowing golden hair, pale skin, and red lips. Stories of her depicted as a beautiful blue toned butterfly in Kabbalistic Tree of Life where she is simply the equal opposite to the Sephirah Malkuth gave way to her being a serpant comparible to Satan, a night bird, or a screech owl. As the stories of Lilith evolved along with the rise of a patrarcial society, she became more and more associated with the evils of nightfall, darkness, and sexual promisquity.
Even the evolution of her name alone shows the same change. In Sumeranian, 'lil' means simply air, related to Ninlil the Goddess of the South Wind, otherwise known as 'Lady Air'. In Mesopotamian, the same 'lil' simply means spirit. In both cases, this gives the name of Lilith power and importance. This causes for argument that Lilith was not a demon at all, but was instead a Goddess comparible to Isis or even the Hindu Goddess Kali. 'Ki-sikil' in Mesopotamian and Sumeranian even means "sacred place". The addition of 'la-ke' to 'lil' merely means "air spirit". Therefore, Lilith's name in the earliest of legends known of her, the name Ki-sikil-lil-la-ke, long before the rise of ethical monotheism, was a name of power, strength, and beauty. She was simply Lilith, the sacred Goddess of women, childbirth, children, and sexuality.
It was later with the Hebrew semitic translation of the root of her name 'L-Y-L' or layil which means 'night' that we see the legend of Lilith really change. Even in Sumerian Etymology it was believed that 'lili' had stemmed from the term for "She-demon" but instead had stemmed from 'lilu', the Sumerian term for "evening".
So where did the legend of Lilith begin? I suppose it could be argued that it began with the begining of time, with Lilith either being a Goddess or the first woman. But the legend itself appeared originally in Sumero-Babylonian mythology. Her name was Belili, later evolving into Belet-lili. She was an early Goddess of the underworld, the moon, and love. As her legend matured into that of Belet-lili, she became the Goddess of the womb, given the task to create mankind (Note the ties here to her later being known as the first woman, the creater of humankind to come). She created twelve humans, seven men and seven women but after some 600 years, these people had reproduced to numbers beyond expectations. Belet-lili began to kill the infants being born in attempts to lessen the number of births but Ellil, the lord wind, decided to cleanse the earth with a great flood. This flood story runs almost parrelel to te flood story found in the Christian bible.
Anyway, as cultures shifted and wars raged and religious beliefes and ideas transcended political boundaries to the Egyptians and Hittites. In early egyptian mythology, Lilith was a winged spirit similar to a Seref, meant to guard the temples of the Gods. The descriptions of the Seref explains the first ideas of Lilith with wings and taloned bird-like feet. The Seref also originated from the Babylonian 'Seraph' which were serpant like creatures that possibly also explain Lilith's serpant form. Later she became known as a demon, her lower half morphing into the body of a serpant.
Some Egyptian scholars believe that Lilith is a thinly disguised portion of the Goddess Isis. The aspects of being the original mother, friend of slaves and sinners, and Goddess of fertility nd children point her in the same direction as the original Belet-lili. Also, In Egypt is was believed that the name of a God holds even more power than the God itself. Therefore, the Gods and Goddess as well as the demons were known by many names although their original names were never spoken or written.
The earliest known mention of Lilith in writing appears in the Gilgamesh epic poem from around 2000 B.C.E. In the story, the great ruler Gilgamesh rushes to help the Goddess Inanna (Sumerian Goddess of sexual love, fertility, and war). Inanna had been trying to make her bed in a willow tree but a Zu bird had nested in it's branches, a serpant had nested in the bottom of the trunk, and Lilith, depicted most comparibly as an owl, had made it's home in the middle of the trunk. Gilgamesh kills the serpant which makes the Zu bird fly away and Lilith run off to the desert.
It wasn't until the Middle Ages did the legend of Lilith take a sharp turn towards evil with the Alphabet of Ben Sira. This is where the story in Jewish folklore originates, the story most comparible with modern Christianity. Occording to the story, it is believed that Lilith is the first woman created alongside Adam based on a minor discripancy in Genisis. In the begining of the bible, everything appears in order based on 'days'. On the sixth 'day', "Male and female He created them" (Genesis 1:27). This particular scripture makes it seem as though man and woman are created at the same time but later, in the second chapter of Genesis, Adam is created first and later, after other things had been created, "no fitting helper was found" (Genesis 2:20) and God put Adam into a deep sleep and created Eve from his rib. But this original woman is looked upon as destructive and evil because heaven forbid a woman excersices autonomy and leaves her mate.
In some legends related to the jewish version of this story, it wasn't Satan who enticed Eve and Adam to sin but was instead Lilith herself. It is believed she convinces the snake, one of her many lovers, to loan her his serpant form. She then uses this to convinced Eve and then eventually Adam to eat the forbidden fruit. This version of the story shows why there are so many midieval works of art showing a female serpant tempting Eve.
When Adam and Eve are cast out of the Garden of Eden, Adam goes off by himself away from Eve. Durring his time in solitude, Lilith comes after him once again, this time provoking him sexually. From this unholy union, the Shedu (winged bulls), Cain, the plagues, and many other demons and spirits are born. She also births impotence and disasters with Asmodeus, Empusae and Baphomet with Samuel/Lucifer, and The Lilim with her own son Cain. Also, it is believed that she approached Adam and had her way with him in his sleep. It is also said that she does this to all men, accounting for men having 'wet dreams'. In the Talmud, the Jewish record of laws, ethics, philosphy, and history; it is believed that if someone sleeps alone, Lilith will come and kill them. It also talks about a period of 130 years begining right after Cain killed Abel where Lilith came back to Adam, bearing him "ghosts and male demons and female night demons" (Erubin 18b).
In the Zohar, also known as the Kabbalah - another work of Jewish literature, The relationship between Lilith and Samuel, another term for what who we commonly refer to as Satan, is explained. A character called 'The Blind Dragon' bring Lilith and Samuel together and serves as their mediator. This union is inevitable in the story of Lilith. What better way to make what was a former Goddess out to be a vile demoness than to marry her to the devil himself. In the legend, God became afraid of evil overtaking the earth from the demons born between Lilith and Samuel so he castrated Samuel. Because of this, Lilith traveled out to fornicate with multitudes of men and demons, continuing to create more wicked and evil spirits. A 15th century Kabbalah text then added that because of this, God "cooled" Lilith, making her infertile.
Jacob and Isaac Hacohen, two brothers who wrote an ancient text a few decades before the Zohar, explained that in the begining Samuel and Lilith were born as an adrogynistic being with two faces at the same time that Adam and Eve were created. According to this, Adam and Eve were created as an adrogynistic being as well and seperated from the ribs, explaining the idea of Eve being created from Adam's rib. Therefore, Samuel and Lilith were the evil half of the balance of good versus evil, with Adam and Eve being the holy embodiment of 'good'. Both androgynous couples looked almost identical and were said to be the visible embodiment of God, who is apparently also androgynous.
Through the evolution of the myth of Lilith it is easy to see the rise of a patriarcal society, another way for male dominated religions to convince the religious followers of old to shun the ideals of their Goddess based beliefs by transforming these Goddesses into horrid and terrifying demonesses. We see Lilith go from being the great mother of all humanity, who ate children to protect the human race from a vengful and angry God become a nasty and spiteful wife of the devil. She has been diminshed to a single mere mention in the bible, cited in Isaiah 34:14 were she is simply banished to the desert. This simple text has her name translated in various ways including "the night hag" and "the screech owl" which are both representations of Lilith. Either way, the symbolism is clear. Lilith is finally exiled from the fruitful, colorful modern world of patriarchal societies by a holy man to a barren, desolate wasteland; cursed to roam forever alone where any life barely survives.



Bibliography

Freedman, David Noel, ed., Anchor Bible Dictionary, (New York: Doubleday) 1997, 1992.
Michael C. Astour Hellenosemitica: an ethnic and cultural study in west Semitic impact on Mycenaean. Greece 1965 Brill p138
Kramer, S. N. Gilgamesh and the Huluppu-Tree: A Reconstructed Sumerian Text. Assyriological Studies 10. Chicago. 1938
George, A. The epic of Gilgamesh: the Babylonian epic poem and other texts in Akkadian 2003 p100 Tablet XII. Appendix The last Tablet in the 'Series of Gilgamesh'
Roberta Sterman Sabbath Sacred tropes: Tanakh, New Testament, and Qur'an as literature and culture 2009
Lesses, Rebecca Exe(o)rcising Power: Women as Sorceresses, Exorcists, and Demonesses in Babylonian Jewish Society of Late Antiquity 2001 JAAR Journal of The American Academy of Religion Abstact p.343-375
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Black, Jeremy and Anthony Green. Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press 2003. p. 118
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Lilith's Cave," Lilith's Cave: Jewish tales of the supernatural, edited by Howard Schwartz (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988)
Talmudic References: b. Erubin 18b; b. Erubin 100b; b. Nidda 24b; b. Shab. 151b; b. Baba Bathra 73a-b
Kabbalist References: Zohar 3:76b-77a; Zohar Sitrei Torah 1:147b-148b; Zohar 2:267b; Bacharach,'Emeq haMelekh, 19c; Zohar 3:19a; Bacharach,'Emeq haMelekh, 102d-103a; Zohar 1:54b-55a
Lilith Bibliography, Jewish and Christian Literature, Alan Humm ed., 4 November 2010
http://www.touregypt.net/gods1.htm