Transcription
The longevity of the mythological demoness Lilith is among the most impressive in history, emerging in ancient Mesopotamia, flourishing in the Middle Ages, enduring through modernity, and positively flowering in contemporary video games, magic, and feminism. Lilith, in one form or another, predated the Abrahamic mythology itself, and yet only really survives because of it.
In our second episode on Lilith, we'll turn to the most dramatic flowering of the narratives, legends, and speculations about her origins, her nature, and her role in the demonic ecology of the Kabbalah, the mystical school of Judaism most responsible for her mythological endurance in the past thousand or so years. Indeed, we'll see Lilith, originally a relatively lowly demoness made responsible for crib death for refusing the sexual dominance of Adam, grow and explode in mythological stature beyond all expectation. Indeed, she'll become nothing less than the demonic consort to God, his own wife, plunged into mystical exile, truly one of the most shocking elements in the whole of Kabbalah, which is saying something.
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But now, let's continue our exploration of Lilith, the Queen of the Night, one of the most enduring demons in history. I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and welcome to Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion.
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As I mentioned at the start of this episode, this is our second part in the series on Lilith. The first part, which you may want to check out as well, explores the very earliest origins, histories, and development of the Lilith legend. However, this episode does kind of more or less stand alone. All the same, but a little recap might help contextualize things a bit.
The Lilith emerged from Sumerian mythology as a class of spirits, typically with malevolent overtones. And rather than being a singular being, they were a class of beings. It wasn't a Lilith as such yet. Of these Lil beings, some of them, especially R. Ly, becomes associated with succubus-like behavior and eventually becomes associated as well with crib death. As the Lil are compressed and take on features of the Akkadian goddess Lamashtu. Indeed, her name is a kind of false friend, a type of linguistic mistake. The Sumerian Lil associated with the Semitic term in Akkadian, *līlû* for night. There's no linguistic connection between Akkadian and Sumerian, and thus it passes into Hebrew from *līlû* to *lilit*, literally the night s, the night woman.
Lilith is a kind of spirit that wanders in the wilderness, may appear in the Hebrew Bible, but there are debates among specialists. There are some that believe reasonably that these were just references to unclean wild animals, specifically owls, specifically screech owls. However, Lilith in the singular does begin to occur as early as the exorcistic texts in the Scrolls, though the Great Isaiah Scroll still sometimes has the plural noun *lilōt*, oddly enough. And by the rise of her in rabbinical literature, her mythology was increasingly taking shape as the first wife of Adam, the *qereṣah*, the first Eve. At the same time, she begins to appear in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of incantation bowls meant to protect homes by trapping demonic forces as they pass through or attempt to pass through the lintel of the house. Here, as in rabbinical literature, she's most often depicted with unkempt, wild black hair, as opposed to the prevailing Middle Eastern custom of well-modest veiling, and she often has a kind of leering, demonic grin, and again, is associated with producing nocturnal emissions in men. Back to R. and the horrors of crib death, a clear need to cope with ancient infant mortality, which was positively endemic until the contemporary world.
But Lilith's myth would take its most definitive form by around the year 1000, where Lilith is described as the first wife of Adam, who refused a merely passive role during sex, insisting that she too should be allowed to be on top during sex. Adam refused this because of his "vanilla syndrome," sending her into exile, endlessly being pursued by the angels Soo, Sanoi, and Sangala. Thus, in revenge for this outrage, Lilith is set to hunt and kill the children of human beings until she's finally stopped by the eventual coming of the Messiah, still waiting on that one.
Thus, by around the year 1000, two important developments in Lilith mythology were basically accomplished: the fundamental motifs of her origin as a spurned first wife of Adam, her demonic role in the world as a succubus and a killer of children, and her final fate being destroyed in the Messianic epoch, along with her depiction as beautiful, grinning, with unkempt, immodest hair. All of this had basically coalesced by around the year 1000.
The second development by this period, with a slight exception in some Mandaean scriptures, which we need to come back to those at some point, is the syncretizing magical texts that have Lilith-like characters, for instance, Abut, that we see in the Testament of Solomon, but that's more of an element of Lilith syncretization more than anything else. But it's in that path that the Lilith myth has basically passed exclusively into Jewish mythology at this point. Thus, whatever her origins, Lilith, from roughly the year 1000 of the Common Era, although likely earlier, is primarily, even exclusively, the subject of Jewish mythological, mystical, magical speculation, innovation, and of course, dread. Let's not forget the dread.
Though it's worth really emphasizing that this transition is still rather extraordinary. While some rabbinic legends or midrashim mention Lilith here and there, and the half-millennium or so between the completion of the Talmud around 500 of the Common Era and the rise of the Kabbalah in the 13th century of the Common Era, it's going to be nearly 600 years between the period of rabbinic literature and the incantation bowls, and over 4,000 kilometers or 2,600 miles between the Canaanite empire and Christian Spain, where the Lilith mythology will truly flower. That means that this mythological unit traveled in some form for 600 years and 2,600 miles in virtual literary silence until exploding on the scene of one of the most important spiritual and philosophical developments in all of Jewish history: the rise of the Kabbalah.
To simplify, the Kabbalah is a tradition, the word literally means "reception," thus a tradition of mystical and theosophical speculation centering on the origins, development, and the final redemption of the world, focusing specifically on the 10 inner dimensions of the Godhead, or the 10 emanations of the Godhead known as the *Sefirot*. Primarily developed in the literature known as the *Sefer Zohar*, or the Book of Radiance. This text was, or really texts, was composed by a circle of mystics in the latter half of the 13th century in Spain. Of course, it's much more complex than that, and you can check out my dozen-plus hour history of the Kabbalah if you really want to dive into all of that amazing history.
But it would be in this environment, this mystical environment of the 13th-century Spain, that Lilith would come to not only reappear but really come to play a central role in both the origin and the finale of the cosmos itself. Among the earliest texts to feature Lilith at length are some of the most obscure and difficult, unfortunately. In fact, they never really even become canonical texts in Kabbalistic history. However, they may preserve a very ancient idea. Recall that back in the previous period, back when Lilith, before Lilith was fused into a singular being with various Lilith spirits abounding, including even *Melilline* at that time. Well, here that tradition seems to persist, at least in some form, at least at this early period in the development of Kabbalah.
Among the Cohen brothers, not those Coen brothers, in the mid-13th century, about a generation prior to the composition of the *Sefer Zohar*, there emerged a truly strange, bizarre text that scholars now know as the Treatise on the Emanations of the Left Side, a positively baroque speculation on the origins of evil. One of the perennially interesting topics in the Kabbalah, they never tire of talking about the origin of evil. And if you're curious, I've done a whole episode on the Treatise on the Emanations of the Left-Hand Side if you want to, I don't know, become just as confused as I am by that text, but check it out if you're interested.
Though here, in this text, Lilith and her demonic partner, Samael, we'll talk more about him in just a minute, are said to have emanated from the Divine Throne itself as a kind of androgynous being, stuck back to back, just as Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, *mista*. According to Jewish lore, this notion of evil as emanating from the Divine, while perhaps shocking to some ears, becomes the ethical Kabbalistic position, though with many, many, many variations. However, this primordial Lilith becomes known as Lilith the Elder, and shockingly enough, is actually described as "a ladder upon which one can ascend to the rungs of prophecy." Thus, in this early text, there is a notion that this Lilith the Elder, because of her origins in the Divine Throne itself, still bears some connection to Divine knowledge, which can be accessed, probably perhaps through magical means, practical Kabbalah, though this is never, ever spelled out in the text. It's probably too esoteric for us normies out there.
However, with Lilith the Elder, we should expect a Lilith the Younger, and sure enough, we get one. The maiden Lilith, who emerges from another completely mysterious couple of beings, Qetoni and Mehel, perhaps two angelic beings. Qetoni seems to come from the Hebrew word for "north," and it's described in the text as the Prince and King of Heaven. Maybe he's akin to the *Sar Torah*, the Prince of the Torah, or maybe even Metatron. No one really knows. And their daughter, the maiden Lilith, is sometimes herself called *Sefon*, the Northern S. Northern S. Lilith the Younger is said to eventually mate with Ashmedai, King of the Demons, giving birth to a son, Qadash or Qadash, who rules over some 880,000 demons himself.
However, Lilith the Younger, beautiful from the navel up, but a flaming fire from the navel down, by the way, that whole idea of Lilith being made of fire is going to be important in just a few moments, so hold on to that, is said to actually arouse the jealousy of Samael, remember the husband of Lilith the Elder, and this leads to a constant state of feuding between the Elder and the Younger Lilith. So, it's like a soap opera up there with the Lilith. Indeed, this feuding is said to take its apex each year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when they meet in the desert and they really go at it like demonic combat. But this is a boon, by the way, for Israel, who's weakest from fasting on Yom Kippur and would be subject to sustained demonic attack because of their purity. But with the powerful demons Lilith, Lilith out there feuding in the desert, Israel is said to be able to achieve repentance without too much demonic interference.
While the Treatise on the Emanations of the Left Hand Side itself would not strictly become Kabbalistic canon, elements of it and variations on this theme of the double feuding Lilith or feuding demonic women generally would continue well into the development of Kabbalah, all the way into the classical Lurianic Kabbalah as well. Well, there, though the feud is between Lilith and another demoness queen, the demoness queen Mahalat. But Abath, where the feud involves them compulsively war-dancing. There's even gematria being used to inform us about how many demons are involved in the feud. There's 480 for Lilith and 478 for Mahalat. Hence Lilith's mother, Mehel, has to intervene to help her daughter in this dance-war thing.
Among the demonic beings in Lilith's war party is another being called Abizoth, which is a clear callback to the ancient magical text, The Testament of Solomon, which I've done a whole episode about if you want to check it out. I remember I mentioned Abut earlier, and she's one of the Lilith-like demonesses that feature in that text as Abut, which again, is probably a syncretizing with a wide range of beings. Again, an impressive endurance of the Lilith myth into Kabbalah through the centuries.
In the Lurianic Kabbalah, however, this tale of the double Lilith becomes the shell or the *qippah* of Eve. However, this shell has an even more outer shell, more evil than the inner shell, and that *qippah* is Lilith, the primordial wife of Samael. So the dual Lilith narrative becomes incorporated into this Kabbalistic notion of the *qelipot* or the husks. They become the *qelipot* of Eve, the detritus left over in the process of creation that operates as the demonic evil in Kabbalistic metaphysics, at least Lurianic metaphysics. Again, showing how Kabbalah is at pains to work her into the system at various stages of its historical development.
As I mentioned a moment ago, the Kabbalah takes extreme delight in care and speculation about the origins of the cosmos, especially the origins of evil. Thus, given that Lilith seems to be a core part of this narrative, you'll be unsurprised to learn that numerous narratives and legends and speculations about the origins of Lilith exist within the *Sefer Zohar*. In fact, there's about a half-dozen at least distinct legends.
And one narrative, she's created on the fifth day of creation, is in fact the living creature swarming in the primordial waters mentioned in Genesis. Others have her created alongside Adam, although not out of the pure earth as he was, but out of some kind of primeval abyssal muck, thus dooming her to an impure existence from the very start. Yet another has Adam and Lilith being created together, physically created together, but Lilith's soul had been plunged into the depths of the abyss, and thus Adam was brought to life with demonic beings being threatening him all around. He's even described as sort of pallid green, with his pure soul eventually enlivening him. In fact, God *solves* the impure Lilith from his back in a kind of amputation, sending her to dwell among the cities of the sea. Where those cities come from isn't really clear. The deep sea, probably. Indeed, she's often depicted as ruling over underwater cities and an ancient representation of chaos. In the Zohar, kind of, kind of get Cthulhu vibes from that stuff.
The more canonical account has her emerging along with her male counterpart, the demon Samael, the closest thing that Judaism ever really develops to a Satan or devil-like character. As you may know, in the Zohar, God is thought to emerge as a series of 10 emanations known as *Sefirot*, which are basically elements of the Divine Essence. The innermost Divine void of Keter transmits first Divine wisdom, or *Hokhmah*, which in turn grasps itself as understanding, or *Bina*. This self-understanding then takes the form of *Hesed*, or loving-kindness, or infinite mercy, which has to have its opposite too, and that's where things go highwire in that opposition. Because each *Sefirah* must contain both as itself, as an inheritance from above, and it must also be the part of the lower emanations as well, and flow to the lower ones. It also has to exist as itself, purely as itself. But the pure, unchecked opposite of mercy is pure, strictest judgment, *Gevurah*. This absolute judgment spills out of itself to the left, and this hyper-unchecked by any mercy whatsoever is the Kabbalistic source of the *Sitra Ahra*, the Other Side, the realm of the demonic, the divine inversion, and the horrifyingly impure.
And just as Adam and Eve emerged from the divine body of the *Sefirot*, so too does an inverse couple emerge from the undivine body of the *Sitra Ahra*, the Demonic Other Side, as Lilith and Samael. Of course, I'll need to make at least one episode on Samael, the poison of God. But here, he functions as the first husband to Lilith, though Lilith will prove to be just one of his wives, along with the other *qelipot*, the inverse, again, of the pure *Sefirot*. Here we have Na'amah, Agrat, who we've already met, and her daughter, Machalat. Though sometimes also with the Mashchit, or the destroying angel, the angel of death, Malakat. Each demoness here also represents a video in themselves at some point, and these episodes really just give birth to other episodes, as you can probably tell. But each are said to control the powers of destruction and evil for the various *tikkunim*, the seasonal shifts in the year. The mythology of these four demonesses is incredibly rich, and I'll have to come back to it at some point, especially Agrat and Machalat. She doesn't get any attention, despite the fact she's clean of the demons.
But focusing back on Lilith and Samael, this primordial pair who are said to have been married, by the way, by another primordial evil being called *Tenin* or the Blind Dragon, who's already kind of in the *Sitra Ahra*. At any rate, they're faced with a kind of existential dilemma. The *Sitra Ahra* is a parasitic realm of non-creation, even anti-creation. Thus, Samael is generated with a non-functioning penis, and he's also castrated in the process of his creation, thus making him completely incapable of reproduction, though he will be able to transform into a phallus-like snake to eventually seduce Eve. So he crawls inside of her, literally, because of his impotence, he has to turn into a snake. Similarly, Lilith is generated as a sexually powerful and beautiful but eternally barren female. Hence the impotent raging of Samael. He's kind of a primordial primordial incel. So not metal anymore, is he? Edge bros?
But also the two roles of Lilith: the seduction of human men as a kind of succubus, but also the equally rageful killing of babies and jealous wrath of her own barrenness. Indeed, this clinging to babies begins at the very beginning of Lilith's existence. We're told in the Zohar that as soon as she was separated from Samael, the same way Adam and Eve were separated, she realized his impotence and her own barren state. So she soared up to the highest regions of the heavens to cling to the small faces, like those of children. This is the *kavim*, the cherubim. Indeed, she's said to have pressed herself into them, existentially clinging to them and feeding on them for their holy power.
This motif will continue. However, this mixture of the pure and the impure could not be allowed to stand. And as creation was reaching its final completion with the providing of Adam and Eve with life, Lilith was removed from the small faces of the cherubim, descending and thinking that she would become the helpmate of Adam. She's horrified to find that Eve is both fun and beautiful, shining with the light of purity and goodness. Remember, this is all before the fall. In desperation, she attempts to fly back to be among the small faces of the cherubim, only to find her way eternally barred. She can never return, and the angels there cast her into the sea, into the murky depths of this watery darkness.
But not for long. Adam and Eve definitely do some sinning. Samael, in the form of the snake, would eventually seduce and mate with Eve, producing Cain and all of his descendants. Lilith would eventually seduce Adam, using his wasted seed for the production of a whole army of demonic beings, although they all will die. Though note that the Ben Sira story of Lilith as the first wife who refused to be on bottom, the most famous tale in all the Lilith literature, it doesn't so much feature in the Kabbalah really at all. But we are told that Lilith was the last being to leave the Garden of Eden after everyone else is she'd out, bypassing the flaming sword that guards the way in and guards the way out. She peers at the flaming sword, the flaming sword of pure justice, pure judgment, and she realized that she was made of the exact same fire, the fire of *Gevurah* from the very spot that produced both her and Samael. So she's the same fire as the flaming sword.
With these narratives complete, Lilith spends the rest of this eon unique among other demons in that she cannot be killed and she cannot die, but she can't also reproduce of her own. But in her sorrowful rage, she spends her time among two distinct vocations: the seduction of men to produce demonic offspring, and the murder of human babies and children.
In the first case, as a succubus, the Zohar actually gives us one of the most detailed depictions of Lilith so far in any literature about her. We learn that she "dresses in finery like an abominable harlot and stands at the corners of streets and highways in order to attract men. When an idiot approaches her, she embraces and kisses him and mixes her wine leaves with snake poison for him. Once he's drunk this, he turns aside after her. When she sees that he's turned aside after the way of truth, she takes off all the finery that she's put on for the sake of this idiot, and this is the finery that she uses to seduce mankind. Her hair is long, red like a lily, her face is white and pink, six pendants hang at her ears, her bed is made of Egyptian linen, all the ornaments of the East encircle her neck, her mouth is shaped like a tiny door and beautified with cosmetics, her tongue is like a sharp sword, and her words smooth as oil. Her lips, beautiful red as a lily, sweeten with all the sweetness of the world. She is dressed in purple and attired in 39 items of finery."
Of course, once she's seduced this simp, she flies to heaven. She rightly ascends to the heavenly court and accuses him of fornication because he just fornicated with her. Then she returns in all of her horrible glory to carry out the punishment. She takes off the finery, turns into a fierce warrior, facing him in a garment of flaming fire, flaming fire, recall a vision of dread, terrifying both body and soul, full of horrific eyes, a sharpened sword in her hand with drops of poison suspended from it and dripping down. She kills the fool that she seduced, and he fornicated with her, and throws him into *Gehenna*.
Indeed, any sexual union is said to attract Lilith, who waits to obtain wasted seminal fluid or "sparks," as the Zohar has it, even in non-fornication fun times, such that entire incantations were uttered after sexual ejaculation to bar the way to Lilith getting access to the semen to make demons. Even especially lustful, legitimate sexual acts empower Lilith, like seeing a naked wife by candlelight or engaging in non-procreative sex. Yeah, it's "Freddy Vanilla." In fact, it's precisely children born from overly lustful sex that are said to be especially vulnerable to Lilith.
Though there are many narratives and magical techniques for protecting men from Lilith, including divorce. At least one deranged Kabbalist actually sought her out. In around 1470, this Spanish Kabbalist, Joseph del la Reyna, attempted to transform himself into the Messiah by using magical incantations, employing the Divine Name of God, and then, well, tried to slay Samael and redeem all of reality. Yeah, that didn't, that didn't work out. And so he did the next best thing. Using his magical Kabbalistic powers, he used them for evil. Specifically, he used his Kabbalistic magic to secure the first btgg in the historical record: Lilith. He used his powers to get Lilith. He had a romp for a while. He summoned more demons for various things, before eventually falling in love with the beautiful Queen of Greece. Not sure how much Lilith liked that. But he used his magical powers, he would actually have sex with the Queen of Greece while she was sleeping because this dude's just gross. The king would use his own counter-magic and realize that this was demons helping Joseph. And then Joseph's demons actually ratted him out. So don't trust demons. The King of Greece had the local King of Sidon actually issue an arrest warrant for Joseph for using demons to assault his wife, and Joseph did the only rational thing and threw himself into the sea and died. So don't do any of that. Don't do any of the stuff that Rabbi Joseph del la Reyna did. Don't do that. But someone do make a movie about him because that would be an amazing movie with Joseph del la Reyna and Lilith, and yeah.
Well, along with seducing basic bros and sending them to *Gehenna* after turning their semen into demons, yep, that's the kind of sentences that I read out loud here on this channel. Lilith is mostly well known for, well, killing the children of human beings out of jealous rage because of her own barrenness, of course. Infant mortality was rampant in the pre-modern world, and it makes sense that this most horrible event of child death would be associated with demonic forces. Further, it's completely unsurprising that an enormous amount of magical technology has grown up around protecting children from Lilith.
The first line of defense, as I mentioned just a moment ago, was, you know, just don't have kids from overly fun sex because that seems to attract her for whatever reason. The second is carefully watching children, making sure that their behaviors, specifically that when they're playing alone, especially smiling and laughing to themselves while playing alone, don't let them do that. They're just playing with Lilith, and she's going to take them to their doom, often by drowning them, interestingly enough. Remember, she's associated with the sea. Also, babies that smile or laugh when they're sleeping are said to be playing with Lilith, so you have to wake them up immediately. All the while, while she's playing with them, allegedly, she's pressing her soul into theirs, stealing it away forever. Remember, she pressed her soul into the cherubim. Children taken away by Lilith are worse than just dead. They're thought to not even be able to ascend into the heavenly *heikhal*, the heavenly academy for children, given that Lilith has pressed her impurity into their very soul. She thus nourishes herself on the purity of the souls of children until nothing's left of them but a husk, a truly horrid fate for children and parents alike.
Predictably, an entire amulet and incantation literature against Lilith has developed over the centuries, mostly focusing in on the very short incantation: "Adam and Eve, go away, Lilith," along with the talismanic angel names of the angels that originally pursued her, Soo, Sanoi, and Sangala, who you may recall again from the first episode. Those were the angels alleged to have caught her after the whole not being on bottom and throwing her into the ocean. Among the most famous and ubiquitous are those amulets found in the famed book of magic, *Sefer Raziel haMalakh*, the Book of the Angel Raziel, whose name means "Secrets of God." Raziel is such a boss name. These amulets and others have been used by the Jewish community for centuries and continue to be used down to this very day, testifying to her enduring power to terrify.
The ultimate fate of Lilith is also tied up with her greatest act of seduction: the seduction of God, according to the Zohar. With the destruction of the Temple by the Romans and the exile of the Jewish people, the immanent divine feminine, the consort of the Divine, the *Shekhinah*, was exiled from her intimacy with God to go into exile with the people of Israel to comfort them. With the Queen, the Matron in Exile, the King is said to have become attached to the *Sitra Ahra*, to the power of the Other Side, and is thus coupled with that inverse Queen, the Queen of Impurity. God is thus bound and seduced by Lilith herself. This absolutely shocking idea was accepted, accepted and developed by famed Kabbalists like Shlomo Alkabetz, composer of the wonderful, beautiful song for Shabbat, *Lecha Dodi*, a song precisely extolling the joy of Israel's being united with the *Shekhinah* as the Sabbath bride.
Lilith will endure as the divine consort until the coming of the Messiah. Israel will then come out of exile, the true Divine Queen will be restored, and Lilith, Samael, the Blind Dragon, and all the forces of the *Sitra Ahra*, the *qelipot*, and the Other Side will be either eradicated completely or somehow mystically redeemed. In some narratives, they're mercilessly slaughtered. Though in more subtle narratives, more true, I think, to the logic of Kabbalah, at least to my mind, even the forces of *Sitra Ahra* will find their own form of restoration and redemption. And perhaps Lilith and Samael will achieve a final salvation, I really long and unfairly denied them. They didn't choose to be what they are, and hopefully, one can imagine that in their own unchosen origins in the primordial fires of *Gevurah*, they too will find some peace in the end.
By the rise of the Kabbalah in medieval Europe, Lilith was already ancient, stretching back in some sense to the world of ancient Mesopotamia. But it will be in this outlandish and profound crucible of the Kabbalah that the mythology of Lilith will truly flower into a being as captivating as she is fearsome, as dread-inducing and alluring as she is darkly beautiful, and as enduring as the mythology around her is utterly rich and complex.
The best collection of narratives around Lilith in the Zohar can actually be found in the second volume of Isaiah Tish's *Wisdom of the Zohar*, if you want to go check them out there, although not all of them are collected there, of course. This series probably needs at least one more episode about the modern and contemporary inheritance of Lilith and her mythology, her proliferation well beyond Jewish literature and the Romantic period, and her valorization in the contemporary period from both religious devotees of her as a symbol of divine feminine power to resistance on the part of women to patriarchy. So I hope you'll join me for that once in a future episode.
But until then, I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and thank you for watching Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion. And