Lilith 1181
Lilith is a character from Jewish folklore, perhaps based in part on an earlier Babylonian class of night demon known as Lilitu. The text of Genesis is ambiguous on the point of the creation of man, with two distinct myths being presented: an earlier version, where god creates both male and female from the same soil, and a subsequent version which assigns a later creation to Eve, as Adam’s wife. Hebraic mystics and scholars attempted to regularize this anomaly with the story of Lilith, who is essentially Adam’s “first wife”, created at the same time by god.
But Lilith chafes at her enforced submission to Adam, whom she sees as her equal (some versions report that she preferred to be on top, or in charge, during their lovemaking), and the two quarreled incessantly. Eventually Lilith freed herself from Adam and fled to the desert, where she became the consort of a demon, refusing to return even when prompted to do so by three angels. Lilith was cursed by god, transformed into a she-demon, and given dominion over the lives of human children until their third day of life, to kill or spare them. But she promised to leave alone any child who wore an amulet bearing the names of the three angels sent to retrieve her.
By the Middle Ages Lilith had been transformed into the Queen of the Succubus demons, night creatures who visited virile young men in their sleep and through dreams and caresses stimulate nocturnal emissions, or “wet dreams”, stealing their semen.
Astrologically Lilith represents separation and rejection; equality for women; crib death or SIDS; sexual abandon and libertinism; and the use of sex for power or domination.
