Origins & Evolution of Lilith into a Feminist Icon
From the Second Wave Feminism of the 1960s to the Lilith of the popular Netflix series "Chilling Adventures of Sabrina," Lilith has become a symbol of feminine power and of resistance to patriarchal oppression. As a figure of Jewish folklore, she has been the focus of Jewish feminist scholarship as early as the 1960s. Thanks to roughly 4000 years of cultural evolution, what was once a sperm-stealing, baby-eating she-demon is now a role model for equality, agency and consent.
Lilith, a woodcut on paper by Ernst Barlach, c. 1922.Los Angeles County Museum of Art, (The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies;83.1.34.2o), www.lacma.org
The best and most simple definition of evolution that I have learned, is that it is the change in the distribution of genetic alleles in a given population over time. Culture evolves in similar ways, except instead of genetic alleles it is made up of stories, art, beliefs, knowledge, methods of making things etc. Culture has such a strong effect on identity; it adds countless filters to the lens through which we see the world. As populations grow, move and take over others this material (much of it intangible due to oral traditions) becomes woven together in countless ways. As people we prioritize this cultural stimuli based on the desires and needs of the context in which we live. Symbols are constantly appropriated and assigned new meanings. (Consider how the swastika - the Sanskrit symbol for "well-being" - ended up on the Nazi flag) Remnants of the old ways are always found within what is new.
Making culture is such a complicated process that it's seemingly impossible to completely track down the origins, diffusion and evolution of one piece of it. With this in mind, let's look at the historical origins, religious functions, and cultural interpretations of Lilith.
Stories and Origins of Lilith
Earliest Known Origins
Lilith is known most widely as a figure of Jewish folklore. She appears to be Adam’s first wife in Genesis One. They are created at the same time and both are created from the earth. Adam insists that Lilith should lie beneath him but she refuses insisting that she should lie next to him instead as they are equals. In Genesis II, God then creates Eve from Adam’s rib to make a helper suitable to him. Where did this story come from? In the Genesis of the Hebrew Bible, there are two separate mentions of the creation of the first female that some ancient Jewish scholars interpreted literally as the creation of two separate females, the first unnamed, the second being Eve.
"And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God Blessed them and God sad to them, "Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth." (Genesis 1:27-28 JBS Translation)
"The LORD God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden, to till it and tend it...The LORD God said, 'It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him.' And the LORD God formed out of the the earth all the wild beasts...but for Adam no fitting helper was found. So the LORD God cast a deep sleep upon the man; and, while he slept, He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that spot. And the LORD God fashioned the rib that He had taken from the man into a woman; and He brought her back to the man." (From Genesis 2:15-22) JBS Translation)
Through Midrash the unnamed female in Genesis I, would become known as Lilith.
Demonic Origins of Lilith (3000s BCE)
The earliest origins of Lilith can be traced back to ancient Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia is a historical region located in what is now known as the Middle East and was the home to the world's earliest known civilizations; namely the Sumerians, Akkadians, and Babylonians.
Image by biblestudy.org via
https://www.biblestudy.org/maps/ancient-near-east-empires.html
Lilu Demons and the Sumerian King List (circa 2400 BCE)
One of the earliest known mentions of a category of demons known as "lilu" can be found in the Sumerian King List. In this list it is said that Gilgamesh's father (King Lugalbanda) was a "lilu-demon", often translated to "phantom". I have found both versions of translation.
"The Lillu was one of four demons belonging to a vampire or incubi-succubae class. The other three were Lilitu (Lilith), a she-demon; Ardat Lili (or Lilith's handmaid), who visited men by night and bore them ghostly children; and Irdu Lili, who must have been her male counterpart and used to visit women and beget children by them. Originally these were storm-demons, but, because of mistaken etymology, they came to be regarded as night-demons." (Patai) In this tradition, Lilith was the "beautiful maiden" but also a vampire harlot, who would claim a lover and refuse to let them go, without ever giving them satisfaction.
“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.' Another, related demoness was Lamashtu, who threatened new-born babies and 'had a disagreeable taste for human flesh and blood.' The figures of Lamashtu and the lilû and lilitu demons eventually converged to form one type of evil figure that seduced men and women and attacked children (Hutter)." (Lesess n.d.)
Lillake in the Epic of Gilgamesh
The Epic of Gilgamesh (written 2400-1400 BCE) is the earliest and one of history's greatest literary works as well as the second oldest great religious text (second to the Pyramid texts). The fullest version of the poem is on 12 incomplete Akkadian-language tablets dated to the 7th century. The gaps that occur in this Akkadian version have been partly filled by various fragments found elsewhere in Mesopotamia and Anatolia. In addition, five short poems in the Sumerian language are known from tablets that were written during the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE, meaning the story's origins date closer to this time. The story of Gilgamesh and the Huluppu Tree is found on Tablet XII of the Epic of Gilgamesh, which was the last tablet of the work, a near copy to an earlier Sumerian poem and has been argued by scholars as inconsistent with the rest of the work. It was added as a prequel to the epic, and has been entitled "Gilgamesh and the Netherworld", "Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Netherworld" or some variant. In Gilgamesh and the Huluppu (or Willow) Tree, Lillake builds her house in the willow tree that is on the Euphrates river. "A dragon set up its nest at the base of the tree, and the Zu-bird placed his young in its crown. Gilgamesh slays the dragon with his huge bronze axe, whereupon the Zu-bird flees with his young to the mountain, and Lilith [Lillke], terror-stricken, tears down her house and escapes the desert." (Patai)
A Babylonian Terracotta Relief (circa 1800 BCE)
The Burney Relief, aka "Queen of the Night, has been much debated, but many believe that the figure depicted on this mysterious artifact was Lilith as she would be imagined in that time. "[It] shows in what form Lilith was believed to appear to human eyes. She is slender, well shaped, beautiful, and nude, with wings and owl-feet. She stands erect on two reclining lions which are turned away from each other and are flanked by owls. On her head she wears a cap embellished by several pairs of horns. In her hand she holds a ring-and-rod combination. Evidently, this is no longer a lowly she-demon, but a goddess who tames wild beasts and, as shown by the owls on the reliefs, rules by night." (Patai)
Aramaic Incantation Bowls
"The liliths are known particularly from the Aramaic incantation bowls from Sassanian and early Islamic Iraq and Iran (roughly 400–800 C.E.). These are ordinary earthenware bowls that ritual specialists or laypeople from the Jewish, Mandaean, Christian and pagan communities, who lived in close proximity in the cities of Babylonia, inscribed with incantations in their own dialects of Aramaic. A drawing of a bound lilith or other demon often appears in the center of the bowl. The bowls’ purpose was usually to exorcise demons from the house or from the body of the clients named on the bowls, or to turn back malevolent magic that others had practiced against the clients.
Incantation Bowl Showing Lilith from https://jewishstudies.washington.edu/jewish-history-and-thought/yannai-sotah-poem-piyyut-magic-demonic-women-lilith/
The liliths appear in lists of evil spirits that often refer to the 'male and female liliths,' reflecting the ancient conception that these evil demons could appear in either male or female form. The bowl-texts accuse the liliths of haunting people in dreams at night or visions of the day. One text describes the liliths 'who appear to human beings, to men in the likeness of women and to women in the likeness of men, and they lie with all human beings at night and during the day' (Montgomery 117). Thus one prominent characteristic of the liliths is that they attack people in the sexual and reproductive realm of life... The liliths also attack children. One of the bowls accuses 'Hablas the lilith, granddaughter of Zarni the lilith' of 'striking boys and girls' (Montgomery, 168). Another text says that this lilith 'destroys and kills and tears and strangles and eats boys and girls' (Montgomery, 193)." (Lesess n.d)
Here is one example of an inscription from one of the bowls that has been found from this period, "This is the get for a demon and spirits and Satan...and Lilith in order to banish the from...and from the entire house. Yah...cut off the king of demons...the great ruler of the Liliths. I adjure you...whether you are male or female, I adjure you...just as the demons write letters of divorce and give them to their wives and again do not return to them, (so take your letter of divorce, accept your stipulated share [ketubba] and go and leave and depart from the hosue...Amen, Amen, Amen, Selah."(18) (Patai)
Incantation bowl with an Aramaic inscription around
a demon. From Nippur, Mesopotamia 6th–7th ce.
Photographer Marie-Lan Nguyen from here (click link)
When the demon attached themselves to a person it was believed that they acquired "rights of cohabitation." Therefore is was required to give them a get (letter of divorce) to rid themselves of the demon. The Liliths' intense jealousy made them dangerous to men, women and children. They, "constituted special danger for women during many periods of their sexual life cycle, such as before defloration and during menstruation. A mother in the hour of childbirth and her newborn babe were especially vulnerable and had therefore be protected from the Liliths. The home, arches, and thresholds were the favorite haunts where the Liliths lurk, ready to pounce on anybody foolish enough to go unprotected." (Patai) Children were in danger of attack, being drained of their blood and strangled. Liliths were also blamed for barrenness, miscarriages, and complications during birth.
Rabbinic Literature
Lilith got her start in Mesopotamian demonolgy but it was Jewish midrash that perpetuated her as a mythological character. The Babylonian Talmud, Kabbalism (most notably the Alphabet of Ben Sira and the Zohar) and midrashic texts produced several variations and interpretations to Lilith's story.
Babylonian Talmud (c. 500): Basis for all Rabbinic Law
Image by biblestudy.org via
https://www.biblestudy.org/maps/ancient-near-east-empires.html
Kabbalah is the name given to Jewish mystical knowledge, originally transmitted by word of mouth.
The Alphabet of Ben Sira (c. 700-1000)
The Zohar
One of the most famous kabbalistic works, complied in the late 13th century but is set (and has been accepted by some Jewish scholars to have been at least partially written) in the 2nd century.
Birth
The birth of Lilith is described in several alternative versions. In one version which ties to the earlier (Talmudic) Lilith, God created Adam from clean earth and then turned to create Lilith out of "filth and impure sediments from the earth" (Patai). Others described Lilith as a separate divine entity that arose from the "Great Supernatural Abyss" or "out of the Gevura or Din, the 'Power' of God, chiefly manifested as the power of stern judgement and punishment, one of the ten Sefiroth or mystical attributes of God. This stern, punitive aspect of God has, at its lowest manifestation, some affinity with the realm of evil which is referred to as 'the dregs of the wine,' and it is out of this that Lilith emerged together with Samael." (Patai)
Another version depicts Lilith and Samael (Satan) born together as androgynous beings and suggested an androgynous God; "In the mystical writings of the two brothers Jacob and Isaac Hacohen of Segovia, Castile, which antedate the Zohar by a few decades, Lilith and Samael are said to have been born by an emanation from beneath the Throne of Glory, in the shape of an androgynous, double-faced being, corresponding, in the spiritual realm, to the birth of Adam and Eve, who too were born androgynously. The androgynous twin-couples not only resembled each other, but both 'were like the image of what is Above,' that is, resembled and reproduced a visible form the image of the androgynous deity." (Patai) In this version Lilith and Samael are born of the "dregs of wine" of the punitive power of God. Another Kabbalistic variation makes her Samael's wife (the first of four). In a variation of the same theme Samael's wives become the rulers of four kingdoms. Lilith, his first wife, rules the kingdom of Damascus. God, fearing this union, castrated Samael. Once he was castrated, Lilith satisfied her desires by fornicating with men who experienced nocturnal emissions (wet dreams).
Stories of the Life of Lilith
The story of Lilith and Adam that has become subject of Jewish feminist scholarship can be found in the Alphabet of Ben Sira, where Lilith denies Adam's dominance and her image as a dangerous demon is perpetuated. Here is a translation of the Hebrew text of the Alphabet of Ben Sira: (source here).
When God created the first man Adam alone, God said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” [So] God created a woman for him, from the earth like him, and called her Lilith. They [Adam and Lilith] promptly began to argue with each other: She said, “I will not lie below,” and he said, “I will not lie below, but above, since you are fit for being below and I for being above.” She said to him, “The two of us are equal, since we are both from the earth.” And they would not listen to each other. Since Lilith saw [how it was], she uttered God's ineffable name and flew away into the air. Adam stood in prayer before his Maker and said, “Master of the Universe, the woman you gave me fled from me!”
The Holy Blessed one immediately dispatched the three angels Sanoy, Sansenoy, and Samangelof after her, to bring her back. God said, “If she wants to return, well and good. And if not, she must accept that a hundred of her children will die every day.” The angels pursued her and overtook her in the sea, in raging waters, (the same waters in which the Egyptians would one day drown), and told her God's orders. And yet she did not want to return. They told her they would drown her in the sea, and she replied. “Leave me alone! I was only created in order to sicken babies: if they are boys, from birth to day eight I will have power over them; if they are girls, from birth to day twenty.” When they heard her reply, they pleaded with her to come back. She swore to them in the name of the living God that whenever she would see them or their names or their images on an amulet, she would not overpower that baby, and she accepted that a hundred of her children would die every day. Therefore, a hundred of the demons die every day, and therefore, we write the names [of the three angels] on amulets of young children. When Lilith sees them, she remembers her oath and the child is [protected and] healed.
In the Zohar, Lilith had several spirit and demon children with Cain and then went to Adam again and forced herself upon him.
Lilith spends the next period of her life seducing men and killing children. "And she [Lilith] goes and 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." (Patai) She is able to seduce men when they are awake as well, as she tried to do with Jacob to no avail. She was also present when husband and wife engaged in "lawful" sexual intercourse, in order to steal spilled semen, but a man could be protected from this by saying an incantation and covering his head and his wife for an hour.
If a child is conceived in an "unholy" act of procreation its' life and soul are at risk of being taken by Lilith. This excerpt from R. Naphtali describes some forms of unholy intercourse: "'Lilith, God preserve us, has dominion over children who issue from him who couples with his wife in candlelight, or with his wife naked, or at a time when he is forbidden to have intercourse with her. All the children who issue from such unions, Lilith can kill any time she wishes, because they are delivered into her hands. And this is the secret of the children's smiling when they are small - because of Lilith who plays with them.' The myth of Lilith the child-killer remained a potent factor in the lives of tradition-bound Jews down to the nineteenth century. "(Patai) It was also thought that Lilith was present if a child laughed when it was asleep or when it was alone.
Amulets for Protection Against Liliths
In the Alphabet of Ben Sira, when Lilith rejected Adam and flew away, God sent the three angels Sanoy, Sansenoy, and Samangelof to retrieve her and bring her back to him. When she refused to go back, even after their intimidation led way to pleading for her return, she swore that she would not harm a child when she saw the angels or their names or images. Amulets were made inscribed with the angels' names and were displayed in the areas where Lilith was known to lurk in the home in the time surrounding childbirth. Further, children were at risk after their birth, especially for boys the first 8 days after birth (the days prior to circumcision) and for girls the first 20 days after their birth. The seal of Solomon (preferably one that was pure silver) was also used to deter Lilith, as his dominance over her became an important part of Medieval Jewish and Muslim Arab demonology and was used in Middle Eastern Jewish exorcisms into the early twentieth century.
"In the Zohar Lilith’s demonic sexuality comes especially to the fore. She attempts to seduce men and use their seed to create bodies for her demonic children. The Zohar recommends the performance of a special ritual before sexual intercourse between husband and wife, in which the husband should turn his mind to God and say, 'Veiled in velvet, are you here?/Loosened, loosened (be your spell)!/Go not in and go not out!/Let there be none of you and nothing of your part!' (Scholem 1965: 157). She is the seductive harlot who leads men astray, but when they turn to her, she transforms into the angel of death and kills them (Tishby)." (Lesess n.d) Rabbi Óanina explained that a man who sleeps alone in a house is also at risk of being seized by Lilith.
In summary, is your baby smiling? Lilith. Is your kid laughing to themselves? Lilith. Wet dreams? Lilith. Harlot? Lilith.
In the Treatise of the Left Emanation, written in the first half of the 13th century, the "Great Demon" from the Alphabet of Ben Sira (that Lilith had borne hundreds of demon children to upon leaving Adam) is given the name Samael. Lilith, "became a figure of cosmic evil in medieval Kabbalah...she became the female consort of Samael...According to earlier midrashim he had seduced the serpent to evil in the Garden of Eden and he was long identified as the angel of death and the guardian angel of Rome. In the “Treatise on the Left Emanation,” Samael and Lilith emanated together from beneath the Throne of Glory as a result of the sin of the first humans in the Garden of Eden. Their mythological characteristics were further developed in the Zohar." (Tishby; Scholem 1974)
Thirteenth century Kabbalists split Lilith into two - Elder and Younger Lilith. The who's who of this split is a little confusing now as it apparently was then. The wife of Samael is Lilith the Elder. Lilith the Younger was the daughter of a figure introduced in this mythology Qafsefoni, the Prince and King of Heaven and his wife Mehetabel. Lilith the Younger became the wife of Ashmodai, King of the demons. Samael desired her as well causing jealousy from Ashmodai and fighting with Lilith the Elder. This illustrates a mythological motif of hostililty between Lilith and her fellow demonesses that is present in many stories regarding Lilith.
Hayyim Vital (1543-1620) provided a different form of the two Liliths, "a Safed Kabbalist and chief disciple of Isaac Luria. He explains that the original 'Lilith the stiff-necked' was the 'garb,' that is the husk, the outer and evil part, of Eve, the wife of Adam. But, he goes on to say, 'there is an even more external (i.e., more evil) Lilith, who is the wife of Samael.' In the sequel it is not clear whether Vital speaks of the first or the second Lilith when he says that 'there was an angel who was expelled from heaven and he was called the flame of the revolving sword,' and at times he is an angel and at times a demon called Lilith. And since the female rules at night, and the demons rule at night, she is called Lilith (i.e, 'Nocturnal')."
"The notion that Lilith rules at night goes back to the Zohar where the Biliblical expression 'dread in the nights' (pahad ba-leloth)(87) is explained as 'Samael and his female,' i.e., Lilith.(88) What is more interesting, however, in Vital's thinking is that he regarded the Lilith and the angel as interchangeable, as appearing once in the shape of one and once in that of the other, as made tangible by the flame of the revolving sword. We shall recall that in the sixth century A.D. Nippur incantation texts the same numen is called once 'Lilith Buznai' and once 'angle Buznai' (89) The same idea underlies a passage contained in the Zoharic literature itself which reads: 'Come and see: The Shekhina is at times called the Mother, at times the Slave-Woman (i.e.,Lilith), and at times the King's Daughter. In other words, circumstances determine whether one and the same feminine divine essence assumes the form of a good or an evil numen. And, since circumstances constantly change, the goddess appears once as good, once as evil." (Patai)
Another Zoharic idea was that "the most terrible outcome of the destruction of the Temple the Exile of Israel was that because of them God was forced to accept Lilith as his consort in place of the Matronit [Shekhina, Israel's mother]..." (Patai) In this story, Lilith also replaces the Matronit as the ruler over the "Holy Land of Below".
Lilith's is a story of exceeding in the workplace. She started as a lowly she-demon associated with impure nocturnal animals and became a goddess in Sumer, and the Queen of Hell and /or the consort of God in Kabbalism.
The Bible and Lilith
Lilith is said by many to have been mentioned once in the Bible in Isaiah 34:14,
"The wild-cat shall meet with the jackals
And the satyr shall cry to his fellow,
Yea, Lilith shall repose there
And finder her a place of rest.(7)" (Patai)
This mention depends, of course, on the translation and interpretation of the text and has therefore been much debated.
Contemporary Feminist Movement
Considering the narrative that was woven for Lilith it is not surprising that Jewish feminists would take issue with the treatment of women in religious texts and, in turn, practice. The first wave of American Jewish Feminism evolved during the Women's Suffrage Movement of the 19th century.
Judith Plaskow (born 1947) is largely recognized as one of the first (if not the first) Jewish female theologians. She was one of the creators of the Journal for Feminist Studies in Religion, and believed that the lack of women's perspectives through Jewish history was detrimental to the religion. Her feminist midrash "The Coming of Lilith", reimagines Lilith, who was historically depicted as demonic and inherently evil, as the first woman to demand equality to man and to have her character dragged through the mud of history because of it. Refusing to be dominated by Adam, she was replaced by Eve who was meant to be Adam's submissive helper as she was created from his own rib. Plaskow also examines the potential dangers to patriarchy if Eve and Lilith were to bond and find themselves on the same side. As one of few female perspectives on the historical treatment of women within religion Plaskow's work has been cited in several feminists works since its publication.
In 1972 the feminist magazine Ms. published an article by Lilly Rivlin, "with the aim of recovering [Lilith] for contemporary women." (Lesess n.d) Check out the original article here.
Inspired by Plaskow's work, "The Jewish feminist magazine Lilith, founded in the fall of 1976, took her name because the editors were inspired by Lilith’s fight for equality with Adam. " (Lesess n.d)
Because of this emergence of female involvement of scholarly religious studies, the treatment of women within religion has been brought the fore, and Lilith has become and will continue to be a feminist icon.
References:
1. Mossanen, D. (2017, December 07). On International Women's Day, A History of Lilith. Was She a Demon or the First Feminist We Know? Retrieved September 04, 2020, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/on-international-womans-d_b_6857224
2. Lesses, R. (n.d.). Lilith. Retrieved September 04, 2020, from https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lilith
3. Chaitanya, S. (2006). Female Subversion: The Spirit of Lilith in Indian Culture. Indian Literature, 50(3 (233)), 179-189. Retrieved September 4, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23341003
4. Patai, R. (1964). Lilith. The Journal of American Folklore, 77(306), 295-314. doi:10.2307/537379
5. Jewish Publication Society Inc. (1985). JPS TANAKH: The Holy Scriptures (blue): The New JPS Translation according to the Traditional Hebrew Text (1st ed.). The Jewish Publication Society.
6. Scurlock, J. A. “Baby-snatching demons, restless souls, and the dangers of childbirth: medico-magical means of dealing with some of the perils of motherhood in ancient Mesopotamia.” Incognita 2 (1991): 137–185.
7. Hutter, M. “Lilith.” In Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, edited by Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, Pieter W. van der Horst. Leiden: 1995.
8. Hebrew text from Alphabet of Ben Sira, "Toldot Ben Sira," Nusach 2 retrieved from https://jwa.org/media/alphabet-of-ben-sira-78-lilith on October 2, 2020.
Comments