Lilith-
Her myth evolves from ancient goddess to daemon praying on infants, to feminist icon of empowerment.
* This essay is written based on my lived experience as woman in a woman's body. But when I talk about the feminine I also include the feminine as an energetic pole, that exists equally in men and women.
So where do we start? Maybe from the beginning.
In Jewish mythology and folklore, Lilith is a raven-haired demon who preys on helpless newborn infants and seduces unsuspecting men, using their "wasted seed" to spawn hordes of demon babies. Although her name only appears once in the Hebrew Bible, over the centuries Lilith has been cast as Adam's rebellious first wife, the soul mate of Samael the demon king, and more recently as a feminist icon.
Long before Judaism claimed her, Lilith-like demons were haunting the nightmares of ancient Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians. Male and female demons called lilu and lilitu respectively appeared in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Mesopotamian goddess Lamashtu was a winged demon that tormented women during childbirth, caused miscarriages and stole breastfeeding infants.
( below is an excerpt from another article, if you wish you can read the full story here)
Lilith is a feminine figure in Mesopotamian and Jewish mythology. She was considered Adam's first companion. The one that God also made from dust, so she was equal to Adam. It appears that the biggest conflict that surrounded Adam and Lilith’s relationship was the matter of sexual intimacy. Lilith was offended by Adam’s insistence that she lay beneath him to copulate and had no problem informing Adam of her issue. Lilith quickly began to argue with Adam about the issue and would not relent.
Adam was not about to lay below Lilith. In frustration, Adam attempted to make Lilith obey him by using force. This turned out to be a terrible mistake. The enraged Lilith utters the unspeakable (the magical name of Jehovah) and flies away into the skies.
(Later the story goes on about Lilith engaging in sexual realtionships with demons, birthing thousands of demonic babies and having fun seducing earthly men).
My goal here is not to argue with the script, but to look at how this plot has affected and still affects us, women, considering that for the last 4,000 years it was men who wrote HIStory.
For thausands of years, people have worshipped the Goddess, the Great Mother.
Hundreds of miniatures and goddess-shaped figurines were unearthed around burial states, caves and around hearths. In the ancient civilizations of Crete, Egypt, all around Europe, Turkey and Middle East tribes have venerated the Goddess, who was guiding them through the seasons of Life/Death/Rebirth. Our ancesters have concidered Nature and all her living beings as sacred- trees, plants, animals and humans were experienced as equal in the eyes of the Great Mother. She didn't have a face, but her hips were wide, her bosom generous and she was adorned and celebrated with garlands of flowers (often roses). Inana, Isis, Gaia are some of the names the Goddess have been given in the ancient wolrd. Often she'd appear as a snake or half woman- half snake or a female torso with wings and claws instead of feet.
And then she was overthrown.
As the first monetheistic religions started taking shape, a shift of consciousness happened and male deities became the center of religious worldview. The Great Mother with her cyclical nature was sent in exile, never to appear again as a sovereign figure with her own right of existence, but at best as a supportive character. In the myths and stories ever since she is either a fallen woman (eg Mary Magdalene and Lilith) or her role is to be a physical vessel for a male deity to come through and shine upon the world (eg. Virgin Mary, Buddah's mother Maya etc). In Greek mythology (which co-shaped Roman pantheon and spread across Europe and the Middle East) we see the male deity Zeus usurping Gaia and his father Kronos and alongside with the other male gods, took superiority and subjugated, raped and kidnapped goddesses and mortal women in countless myths and legends. In the developing patriarchal culture and worldview, violence and extraction from the feminine became the norm.
(very inspirational reading is the book The Great Cosmic Mother by Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor ).
The collective conscious and unconscious was set that Nature- with her storms, rains, floods, wildfires, is uncontrolable and unpredictable and needs to be tamed. Just like women.
I think we can clearly recognise the parallel with the myth of Lilith's fall and her following exile and daemonisation.
And ever since the the feminine on this planet has been put in chains. For millennia female sexuality and sensuality (which is a feminine treat, existing both in male and female bodies) was covered with shame and guilt, female pleasure in any form- forbidden, oppressed and punished. Women's blood became unpure and demonic, something to be afraid of instead of being seen as the blessing of our fertility. There was no space for a raging tornado or an orgasmic eruption anymore. For bigness, for curiosity, play or self-exploration. The (hu)man has decided that he is at the centre of creation and the world around needs to be measured as per his satisfaction with it. Including women.
Women are the Earth- fertile, soft, nourishing, receptive, giving birth, wild, but also unapologetic and fierce and furious. The way women and their bodies are treated, is the way the Earth herself is treated.
The (hu)man, Adam made an attempt to subjugate Lilith, to exercise his power over Nature, to whom he was created equal.
And Lilith fled, for which she was condemned and ostracized, all portrayed as a wild, fallen woman cursed for her sin of rebelliousness. This curse still follows women around the world- when they dare to say no to an admirer or oppressor, to an employer or a friend, when they're not willing to go to bed with a man-they are slut-shamed and called names.
In Biblical hronology, Eve was created after Lilith. This time to ensure Adam's satisfaction, God created Eve from Adam's rib , not from the dirt, as his equal, like God did with Lilith, but as subordinate. And we all know how her story ended too- she was used to present women as week and as the source of sin for all human kind. (no one in HIStory questioned Adam's brutality, forsing himself on Lilith or the lack of his own discernment biting off that apple).
A woman free in her expresion, her sexuality and sovereignity as a being was somehow "marked"- ostracized from her community, raped as punishment, stoned, rejected, stripped off her dignity, publicly shamed and during the Dark and Middle Ages- burnt at the stake.
As a woman and as a witch I know the struggle and this specific ache of the Witch wound very intimately. It is the vibration of a collective fear and trauma that manifests as a fear of being seen, speaking up or stepping fully into one's magic and power. And It exists on both soul and DNA level.
Lilith's mythological cry for equality and freedom echoes and resonates within women around the world. It was in the 20th century, when the female's liberation movement started spreading accross the globe that Lilith was reclaimed by women- not as a daemon and Adam's fallen, promiscuous wife, but as a symbol.
"Self-sufficient women, inspired by the women's movement, have adopted the Lilith myth as their own," wrote Rivlin in the 1998 book "Which Lilith?" "They have transformed her into a female symbol for autonomy, sexual choice, and control of one's own destiny."
"Fuck off!" I hear them shouting from the top of their lungs. "4,000 years of oppression and exile is enough!"
But as women what is the nature of the equality we are longing for?
The four waves of feminism ( beginning in 19th century- present day) have granted women social wins- to wear pants, to vote, to own property or business, to have a bank account, to go to work, available contraception, *sex before marriage, the choice to marry/not marry, to have children/not have children, to drive a car etc. (*although women's morals are still questioned if they happened to have multiple sexual partners. On women's freedom in sex and its consequences in another essay)
And acknowledging all the benefits those waves brought ashore, I can't stop thinking if this is the kind of equality women needed. Stay with me on this one.
Since the feminist movement started, women are doing their best to be equal to men, but in a world created for men. A patriarchal world. One of hierarchy and power games, of climbing ladders and obsessed with progress, of war and violence. A world that denies death and getting old. A world that does not live according to the cyclical nature of Life/Death/Rebirth. And women, being born and raised in this system, try to be equal to men and get their worth acknowledged in a man's world.
The truth is we women are not linear beings. We are cyclical. Feminists around the world fought hard to give women more economic and social rights and I am so grateful for all of them. yet .. all the achievements are inside the linear, masculine, patriarchal system. And we are beings of the Earth and creatures of the Moon, a living growing criatura as C.P. estes says in her book Women Who Run with Wolves.
We thrive in heterarchy, not hierarchy... We sit in circles, in communities, we tend to the elder and the sick, to children and stories, we do not climb ladders. Now we have the same right to work as men, but it is not in our nature to be equaly productive and provide the same way 4 weeks, every month of the year. We have internal cycles and seasons that we need to honor or we might become sick. Every woman, working a 9-5, 5 days a week can relate to what I'm saying.
Within the banks of my own lived experience and the presence of some magnificent women in my life, I realized that the equality we are really longing for is not external, but internal. I think that what we, as women are looking for, is our own validation and acceptance to be who we are meant to be. Not equal, compared to something else , but equal in our own right to exist and be. Just like water and fire could never be compared or required to have the same qualities. Just like earth and air cannot fullfill the same functions. They are equal amongst each other, because they are the foundational elements of Creation.
I deeply believe that we are seeking to balance the male and female poles within us. To deconstruct, decompose and alchemize the internal systems of comparison and oppression. This is equally valid for men, who have been deeply wounded by the patriarchal way of living as well. (topic for another essay). And from this active balance the freedom of choice comes forth and it needs to ultimately be ours and not given from a person or an institution outside ourselves.
And women will know this in their very bones, when they remember themselves as the Earth. As Nature. When women remember that they are the ones holding the key to stop being exploited, we will hear the sacred NO that reverberates in our entire being. That's the medicine our world needs right now. The No More of women, the No More of Nature (we go through a rapid climate change and varios parts of the world are already sitting with its consequences.) We need men who know when to stop extracting from the feminine.
The mental and spiritual constructs of patriarchy are crumbling as I write this. And a new system is being midwifed to replace it. (read my article On collapsing of the modern world, Spiritual midwifing and the Path of the Rose here ). We are feeling it in our wombs. We are birthing it. A system where we call Lilith back and integrate her in our bodeis and psyche as a wise and assertive guide and not as a threat to our existence.
Thank you for being here
With Gratitude
Hrissi
