Lilith

Lilith (/ˈlɪlɪθ/; Hebrew: לִילִית, romanized: Līlīṯ), also spelled Lilit, Lilitu, or Lilis, is a feminine figure in Mesopotamian and Jewish mythology, theorized to be the first wife of Adam and a primordial she-demon. Lilith is cited as having been "banished" from the Garden of Eden for not complying with and obeying Adam.
The original Hebrew word from which the name Lilith is taken is in the Biblical Hebrew, in the Book of Isaiah, though Lilith herself is not mentioned in any biblical text. In late antiquity in Mandaean and Jewish sources from 500 AD onward, Lilith appears in historiolas (incantations incorporating a short mythic story) in various concepts and localities that give partial descriptions of her. She is mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud (Eruvin 100b, Niddah 24b, Shabbat 151b, Bava Batra 73a), in the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan as Adam's first wife, and in the Zohar § Leviticus 19a as "a hot fiery female who first cohabited with man". Many rabbinic authorities, including Maimonides and Menachem Meiri, reject the existence of Lilith.
The name Lilith seems related to the masculine Akkadian word lilû and its female variants lilītu and ardat lilî. The lil- root is shared by the Hebrew word lilit appearing in Isaiah 34:14, which is thought to be a night bird by modern scholars such as Judit M. Blair. In Mesopotamian religion according to the cuneiform texts of Sumer, Assyria, and Babylonia, lilû are a class of demonic spirits, consisting of adolescents who died before they could bear children. Many have also connected her to the Mesopotamian demon Lamashtu, who shares similar traits and a similar position in mythology to Lilith.
Lilith continues to serve as source material in today's literature, popular culture, Western culture, occultism, fantasy, horror, and erotica.
In some Jewish folklore, such as the Alphabet of Sirach (c. 700–1000 AD), Lilith appears as Adam's first wife, who was created at the same time and from the same clay as Adam. The legend of Lilith developed extensively during the Middle Ages, in the tradition of Aggadah, the Zohar, and Jewish mysticism. For example, in the 13th-century writings of Isaac ben Jacob ha-Cohen, Lilith left Adam after she refused to become subservient to him and then would not return to the Garden of Eden after she had coupled with the archangel Samael.
Interpretations of Lilith found in later Jewish materials are plentiful, but little information has survived relating to the Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian views of this class of demons. Recent scholarship has disputed the relevance of two sources previously used to connect the Jewish lilith to an Akkadian lilītu – the Gilgamesh appendix and the Arslan Tash amulets (see below for discussion of these two problematic sources).
In contrast, some scholars, such as Lowell K. Handy, hold the view that though Lilith derives from Mesopotamian demonology, evidence of the Hebrew Lilith being present in the sources frequently cited – the Sumerian Gilgamesh fragment and the Sumerian incantation from Arshlan-Tash being two – is scant, if present at all.
In Hebrew-language texts, the term lilith or lilit (translated as "night creatures", "night monster", "night hag", or "screech owl") first occurs in a list of animals in Isaiah 34. The Isaiah 34:14 Lilith reference does not appear in most common Bible translations such as KJV and NIV. Commentators and interpreters often envision the figure of Lilith as a dangerous demon of the night, who is sexually wanton, and who steals babies in the darkness. Currently there is no scholarly consensus, with some adhering to the animalistic interpretation, where as others claim 34:14 is referencing a literal demon or a category of demons falling under the specification of "lilith". Historically, certain prominent Jewish rabbis in Talmudic texts feared the likes of liliths, some to such an extent that they recommended men not sleep in a home alone, as any who do would be "seized by Lilith." Jewish incantation bowls and amulets from Mesopotamia from the first to the eighth centuries identify Lilith as a female demon and provide the first visual depictions of her. The said amulets were often symbolic divorce papers, warding off a given lilith that was thought to be haunting one's house or family.
In the Akkadian language of Assyria and Babylonia, the terms lili and līlītu mean spirits. Some uses of līlītu are listed in the Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD, 1956, L.190), in Wolfram von Soden's Akkadisches Handwörterbuch (AHw, p. 553), and Reallexikon der Assyriologie (RLA, p. 47).
The Sumerian female demons lili have no etymological relation to Akkadian lilu, "evening".
Archibald Sayce (1882) considered that the Hebrew and the earlier Akkadian names are derived from Proto-Semitic. Charles Fossey (1902) has this literally translating to "female night being/demon", although cuneiform inscriptions from Mesopotamia exist where Līlīt and Līlītu refers to disease-bearing wind spirits.
Samuel Noah Kramer (1932, published 1938) translated ki-sikil-lil-la-ke as "Lilith" in Tablet XII of the Epic of Gilgamesh dated c. 600 BC. Tablet XII is not part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, but is a later Assyrian Akkadian translation of the latter part of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. The ki-sikil-lil-la-ke is associated with a serpent and a zu bird. In Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld, a huluppu tree grows in Inanna's garden in Uruk, whose wood she plans to use to build a new throne. After ten years of growth, she comes to harvest it and finds a serpent living at its base, a Zu bird raising young in its crown, and that a ki-sikil-lil-la-ke made a house in its trunk. Gilgamesh is said to have killed the snake, and then the zu bird flew away to the mountains with its young, while the ki-sikil-lil-la-ke fearfully destroys its house and runs for the forest.
Identification of the ki-sikil-lil-la-ke as Lilith is stated in the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (1999). Suggested translations for the Tablet XII spirit in the tree include ki-sikil as "sacred place", lil as "spirit", and lil-la-ke as "water spirit", but also simply "owl", given that the lil is building a home in the trunk of the tree. A connection between the Gilgamesh ki-sikil-lil-la-ke and the Jewish Lilith was rejected on textual grounds by Sergio Ribichini (1978).
Kramer's translation of the Gilgamesh fragment was used by Henri Frankfort (1937) and Emil Kraeling (1937) to support identification of a woman with wings and bird-feet in the disputed Burney Relief as related to Lilith. Frankfort and Kraeling identified the figure in the relief with Lilith. Today, the identification of the Burney Relief with Lilith is questioned. Modern research has identified the figure as one of the main goddesses of the Mesopotamian pantheons, most probably Ereshkigal. But the figure is more generally identified as the goddess of love and war: Thorkild Jacobsen identified the figure as Inanna in an analysis based on the existence of symbols and attributes commonly recognized to the goddess and on textual evidence.
The Arslan Tash amulets are limestone plaques discovered in 1933 at Arslan Tash, the authenticity of which is disputed. William F. Albright, Theodor H. Gaster, and others, accepted the amulets as a pre-Jewish source which shows that the name Lilith already existed in the 7th century BC but Torczyner (1947) identified the amulets as a later Jewish source.
Many have alternatively drawn connections between Lilith and the Mesopotamian demon Lamashtu, due to their similar position and traits in both mythologies.
The word lilit (or lilith) only appears once in the Hebrew Bible, in a prophecy regarding the fate of Edom. Most other nouns in the list appear more than once and thus are better documented, with the exception of another hapax legomenon: the word qippoz. The reading of scholars and translators is often guided by a decision about the complete list of eight creatures as a whole. Quoting from Isaiah 34 (NAB):
In the Masoretic Text:
In the Dead Sea Scrolls, among the 19 fragments of Isaiah found at Qumran, the Great Isaiah Scroll (1Q1Isa) in 34:14 renders the creature as plural liliyyot (or liliyyoth).
Eberhard Schrader (1875) and Moritz Abraham Levy (1855) suggest that Lilith was a demon of the night, known also by the Jewish exiles in Babylon. Schrader's and Levy's view is therefore partly dependent on a later dating of Deutero-Isaiah to the 6th century BC and the presence of Jews in Baghdad in the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which would coincide with the possible references to the Lilītu in Babylonian demonology. However, this view is challenged by Judit M. Blair, who argues that the context indicates unclean animals.
The Septuagint translates both the reference to Lilith and the word for jackals or "wild beasts of the island" within the same verse into Greek as onokentauros, apparently assuming them to refer to the same creatures and omitting "wildcats/wild beasts of the desert." Under this reading, instead of the wildcats or desert beasts meeting with the jackals or island beasts, the goat or "satyr" crying "to his fellow" and lilith or "screech owl" resting "there", it is the goat or "satyr", translated as daimonia "demons", and the jackals or island beasts "onocentaurs" meeting with each other and crying "one to the other" and the latter resting there.
The early 5th-century Vulgate translated the same word as lamia.
The translation is, "And demons shall meet with monsters, and one hairy one shall cry out to another; there the lamia has lain down and found rest for herself".
Wycliffe's Bible (1395) preserves the Latin rendering lamia:
The Bishops' Bible of Matthew Parker (1568) from the Latin:
Douay–Rheims Bible (1582/1610) also preserves the Latin rendering lamia:
The Geneva Bible of William Whittingham (1587) from the Hebrew:
Then the King James Version (1611):
The "screech owl" translation of the King James Version is, together with the "owl" (yanšup, probably a water bird) in 34:11 and the "great owl" (qippoz, translated in other versions as a snake) of 34:15, an attempt to render the passage by choosing suitable animals for difficult to translate Hebrew words.
Later translations include:
Major sources in Jewish tradition regarding Lilith in chronological order include:
The Dead Sea Scrolls contain one indisputable reference to Lilith in Songs of the Sage (4Q510–511) fragment 1:
As with the Massoretic text of Isaiah 34:14, and therefore unlike the plural liliyyot (or liliyyoth) in the Isaiah scroll 34:14, lilit in 4Q510 is singular, this liturgical text both cautions against the presence of supernatural malevolence and assumes familiarity with Lilith; distinct from the biblical text, however, this passage does not function under any socio-political agenda, but instead serves in the same capacity as An Exorcism (4Q560) and Songs to Disperse Demons (11Q11). The text is thus, to a community "deeply involved in the realm of demonology", an exorcism hymn.
Joseph M. Baumgarten (1991) identified the unnamed woman of The Seductress (4Q184) as related to the female demon. However, John J. Collins regards this identification as "intriguing" but that it is "safe to say" that (4Q184) is based on the strange woman of Proverbs 2, 5, 7, 9:
Lilith does not occur in the Mishnah. The Jerusalem Talmud contains one mention in the 1523 Bomberg edition (Shabbat 6:9), which is not supported by any manuscript. The word "lilit" appears five times in the Babylonian Talmud:
The above statement by Hanina may be related to the belief that nocturnal emissions engendered the birth of demons:
The Midrash Rabbah collection contains two references to Lilith. The first one is present in Genesis Rabbah 22:7 and 18:4: according to Rabbi Yehuda beRabbi, God proceeded to create a second Eve for Adam, after Lilith had to return to dust. However, to be exact the said passages do not employ the Hebrew word lilith itself and instead speak of "the first Eve" (Hebrew: חַוָּה הָרִאשׁוֹנָה, romanized: ḥawwā hārīšōnā, analogical to Adam ha-Rishon "the first Adam"). Although in the medieval Hebrew literature and folklore, especially that reflected on the protective amulets of various kinds, "The First Eve" was identified with Lilith, one should remain careful in transposing this equation to the Late Antiquity.
The second mention of Lilith, this time explicit, is present in Numbers Rabbah 16:25. The midrash develops the story of Moses's plea after God expresses anger at the bad report of the spies. Moses responds to a threat by God that He will destroy the Israelite people. Moses pleads before God, that God should not be like Lilith who kills her own children. Moses said:
An individual Lilith, along with Bagdana "king of the lilits", is one of the demons to feature prominently in protective spells in the eighty surviving Jewish occult incantation bowls from Sassanid Empire Babylon (4th–6th century AD) with influence from Iranian culture. These bowls were buried upside down below the structure of the house or on the land of the house, in order to trap the demon or demoness. Almost every house was found to have such protective bowls against demons and demonesses.
The centre of the inside of the bowl depicts Lilith, or the male form, Lilit. Surrounding the image is writing in spiral form; the writing often begins at the centre and works its way to the edge. The writing is most commonly scripture or references to the Talmud. The incantation bowls which have been analysed, are inscribed in the following languages, Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, Syriac, Mandaic, Middle Persian, and Arabic. Some bowls are written in a false script which has no meaning.
The correctly worded incantation bowl was capable of warding off Lilith or Lilit from the household. Lilith had the power to transform into a woman's physical features, seduce her husband, and conceive a child. However, Lilith would become hateful toward the children born of the husband and wife and would seek to kill them. Similarly, Lilit would transform into the physical features of the husband, seduce the wife, she would give birth to a child. It would become evident that the child was not fathered by the husband, and the child would be looked down on. Lilit would seek revenge on the family by killing the children born to the husband and wife.
Key features of the depiction of Lilith or Lilit include the following. The figure is often depicted with arms and legs chained, indicating the control of the family over the demon(ess). The demon(ess) is depicted in a frontal position with the whole face showing. The eyes are very large, as well as the hands (if depicted). The demon(ess) is entirely static.
One bowl contains the following inscription commissioned from a Jewish occultist to protect a woman called Rashnoi and her husband from Lilith:
The pseudepigraphical 8th–10th centuries Alphabet of Ben Sira is considered to be the oldest form of the story of Lilith as Adam's first wife. Whether this particular tradition is older is not known. Scholars tend to date the Alphabet between the 8th and 10th centuries AD. The work has been characterized by some scholars as satirical, but Ginzberg concluded it was meant seriously.
In the text, an amulet is inscribed with the names of three angels (Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof) and placed around the neck of newborn boys in order to protect them from the lilin until their circumcision. The amulets used against Lilith that were thought to derive from this tradition are, in fact, dated as being much older. The concept of Eve having a predecessor is not exclusive to the Alphabet, and is not a new concept, as it can be found in Genesis Rabbah. However, the idea that Lilith was the predecessor may be exclusive to the Alphabet.
The idea in the text that Adam had a wife prior to Eve may have developed from an interpretation of the Book of Genesis and its dual creation accounts; while Genesis 2:22 describes God's creation of Eve from Adam's rib, an earlier passage, 1:27, already indicates that a woman had been made: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." The Alphabet text places Lilith's creation after God's words in Genesis 2:18 that "it is not good for man to be alone"; in this text God forms Lilith out of the clay from which he made Adam but she and Adam bicker. Lilith claims that since she and Adam were created in the same way they were equal and she refuses to submit to him:
The background and purpose of The Alphabet of Ben-Sira is unclear. It is a collection of stories about heroes of the Bible and Talmud, it may have been a collection of folk-tales, a refutation of Christian, Karaite, or other separatist movements; its content seems so offensive to contemporary Jews that it was even suggested that it could be an anti-Jewish satire, although, in any case, the text was accepted by the Jewish mystics of medieval Germany.
The Alphabet of Ben-Sira is the earliest surviving source of the story, and the conception that Lilith was Adam's first wife became only widely known with the 17th century Lexicon Talmudicum of German scholar Johannes Buxtorf.
In this folk tradition that arose in the early Middle Ages, Lilith, a dominant female demon, became identified with Asmodeus, King of Demons, as his queen. Asmodeus was already well known by this time because of the legends about him in the Talmud. Thus, the merging of Lilith and Asmodeus was inevitable. The second myth of Lilith grew to include legends about another world and by some accounts this other world existed side by side with this one, Yenne Velt is Yiddish for this described "Other World". In this case Asmodeus and Lilith were believed to procreate demonic offspring endlessly and spread chaos at every turn.
Two primary characteristics are seen in these legends about Lilith: Lilith as the incarnation of lust, causing men to be led astray, and Lilith as a child-killing witch, who strangles helpless neonates. These two aspects of the Lilith legend seemed to have evolved separately; there is hardly a tale where she encompasses both roles. But the aspect of the witch-like role that Lilith plays broadens her archetype of the destructive side of witchcraft. Such stories are commonly found among Jewish folklore.
Although the image of Lilith of the Alphabet of Ben Sira is unprecedented, some elements in her portrayal can be traced back to the talmudic and midrashic traditions that arose around Eve.
First and foremost, the very introduction of Lilith to the creation story rests on the rabbinic myth, prompted by the two separate creation accounts in Genesis 1:1–2:25, that there were two original women. A way of resolving the apparent discrepancy between these two accounts was to assume that there must have been some other first woman, apart from the one later identified with Eve. The Rabbis, noting Adam's exclamation, "this time (zot hapa‘am) [this is] bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh" (Genesis 2:23), took it as an intimation that there must already have been a "first time". According to Genesis rabbah 18:4, Adam was disgusted upon seeing the first woman full of "discharge and blood", and God had to provide him with another one. The subsequent creation is performed with adequate precautions: Adam is made to sleep, so as not to witness the process itself (Sanhedrin 39a), and Eve is adorned with fine jewellery (Genesis rabbah 18:1) and brought to Adam by the angels Gabriel and Michael (ibid. 18:3). However, nowhere do the rabbis specify what happened to the first woman, leaving the matter open for further speculation. This is the gap into which the later tradition of Lilith could fit.
Second, this new woman is still met with harsh rabbinic allegations. Again playing on the Hebrew phrase zot hapa‘am, Adam, according to the same midrash, declares: "it is she [zot] who is destined to strike the bell [zog] and to speak [in strife] against me, as you read, 'a golden bell [pa‘amon] and a pomegranate' [Exodus 28:34] ... it is she who will trouble me [mefa‘amtani] all night" (Genesis Rabbah 18:4). The first woman also becomes the object of accusations ascribed to Rabbi Joshua of Siknin, according to whom Eve, despite the divine efforts, turned out to be "swelled-headed, coquette, eavesdropper, gossip, prone to jealousy, light-fingered and gadabout" (Genesis Rabbah 18:2). A similar set of charges appears in Genesis Rabbah 17:8, according to which Eve's creation from Adam's rib rather than from the earth makes her inferior to Adam and never satisfied with anything.
Third, and despite the terseness of the biblical text in this regard, the erotic iniquities attributed to Eve constitute a separate category of her shortcomings. Told in Genesis 3:16 that "your desire shall be for your husband", she is accused by the Rabbis of having an overdeveloped sexual drive (Genesis Rabbah 20:7) and constantly enticing Adam (Genesis Rabbah 23:5). However, in terms of textual popularity and dissemination, the motif of Eve copulating with the primeval serpent takes priority over her other sexual transgressions. Despite the rather unsettling picturesqueness of this account, it is conveyed in numerous places: Genesis Rabbah 18:6, and BT Sotah 9b, Shabbat 145b–146a and 156a, Yevamot 103b and Avodah Zarah 22b.
Kabbalistic mysticism attempted to establish a more exact relationship between Lilith and God. With her major characteristics having been well developed by the end of the Talmudic period, after six centuries had elapsed between the Aramaic incantation texts that mention Lilith and the early Spanish Kabbalistic writings in the 13th century, she reappears, and her life history becomes known in greater mythological detail. Her creation is described in many alternative versions.
One mentions her creation as being before Adam's, on the fifth day, because the "living creatures" with whose swarms God filled the waters included Lilith. A similar version, related to the earlier Talmudic passages, recounts how Lilith was fashioned with the same substance as Adam was, shortly before. A third alternative version states that God originally created Adam and Lilith in a manner that the female creature was contained in the male. Lilith's soul was lodged in the depths of the Great Abyss. When God called her, she joined Adam. After Adam's body was created a thousand souls from the Left (evil) side attempted to attach themselves to him. However, God drove them off. Adam was left lying as a body without a soul. Then a cloud descended and God commanded the earth to produce a living soul. This God breathed into Adam, who began to spring to life and his female was attached to his side. God separated the female from Adam's side. The female side was Lilith, whereupon she flew to the Cities of the Sea and attacked humankind.
Yet another version claims that Lilith emerged as a divine entity that was born spontaneously, either out of the Great Supernal Abyss or out of the power of an aspect of God (the Gevurah of Din). This aspect of God was negative and punitive, as well as one of his ten attributes (Sefirot), at its lowest manifestation has an affinity with the realm of evil and it is out of this that Lilith merged with Samael.
An alternative story links Lilith with the creation of luminaries. The "first light", which is the light of Mercy (one of the Sefirot), appeared on the first day of creation when God said "Let there be light". This light became hidden and the Holiness became surrounded by a husk of evil. "A husk (klippa) was created around the brain" and this husk spread and brought out another husk, which was Lilith.
The first medieval source to depict Adam and Lilith in full was the Midrash A.B.K.I.R. (c. 10th century), which was followed by the Zohar and other Kabbalistic writings. Adam is said to be perfect until he recognises either his sin or Cain's fratricide that is the cause of bringing death into the world. He then separates from holy Eve, sleeps alone, and fasts for 130 years. During this time "Pizna", either an alternate name for Lilith or a daughter of hers, desires his beauty and seduces him against his will. She gives birth to multitudes of djinns and demons, the first of them being named Agrimas. However, they are defeated by Methuselah, who slays thousands of them with a holy sword and forces Agrimas to give him the names of the rest, after which he casts them away to the sea and the mountains.
The mystical writing of two brothers Jacob and Isaac Hacohen, Treatise on the Left Emanation, which predates the Zohar by a few decades, states that Samael and Lilith are in the shape of an androgynous being, double-faced, born out of the emanation of the Throne of Glory and corresponding in the spiritual realm to Adam and Eve, who were likewise born as a hermaphrodite. The two twin androgynous couples resembled each other and both "were like the image of Above"; that is, that they are reproduced in a visible form of an androgynous deity.
Another version that was also current among Kabbalistic circles in the Middle Ages establishes Lilith as the first of Samael's four wives: Lilith, Naamah, Eisheth, and Agrat bat Mahlat. Each of them are mothers of demons and have their own hosts and unclean spirits in no number. The marriage of archangel Samael and Lilith was arranged by Tanin'iver ("Blind Dragon"), who is the counterpart of "the dragon that is in the sea". Blind Dragon acts as an intermediary between Lilith and Samael:
The marriage of Samael and Lilith is known as the "Angel Satan" or the "Other God", but it was not allowed to last. To prevent Lilith and Samael's demonic children Lilin from filling the world, God castrated Samael. In many 17th century Kabbalistic books, this seems to be a reinterpretation of an old Talmudic myth where God castrated the male Leviathan and slew the female Leviathan in order to prevent them from mating and thereby destroying the Earth with their offspring. With Lilith being unable to fornicate with Samael anymore, she sought to couple with men who experience nocturnal emissions. A 15th or 16th century Kabbalah text states that God has "cooled" the female Leviathan, meaning that he has made Lilith infertile and she is a mere fornication.
The Treatise on the Left Emanation also says that there are two Liliths, the lesser being married to the great demon Asmodeus.
Another passage charges Lilith as being a tempting serpent of Eve.
References to Lilith in the Zohar include the following:
This passage may be related to the mention of Lilith in Talmud Shabbath 151b (see above), and also to Talmud Eruvin 18b where nocturnal emissions are connected with the begettal of demons.
According to Rapahel Patai, older sources state clearly that after Lilith's Red Sea sojourn (mentioned also in Louis Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews), she returned to Adam and begat children from him by forcing herself upon him. Before doing so, she attaches herself to Cain and bears him numerous spirits and demons. In the Zohar, however, Lilith is said to have succeeded in begetting offspring from Adam even during their short-lived sexual experience. Lilith leaves Adam in Eden, as she is not a suitable helpmate for him. Gershom Scholem proposes that the author of the Zohar, Rabbi Moses de Leon, was aware of both the folk tradition of Lilith and another conflicting version, possibly older.
The Zohar adds further that two female spirits instead of one, Lilith and Naamah, desired Adam and seduced him. The issue of these unions were demons and spirits called "the plagues of humankind", and the usual added explanation was that it was through Adam's own sin that Lilith overcame him against his will.
A copy of Jean de Pauly's translation of the Zohar in the Ritman Library contains an inserted late 17th century printed Hebrew sheet for use in magical amulets where the prophet Elijah confronts Lilith.
The sheet contains two texts within borders, which are amulets, one for a male ('lazakhar'), the other one for a female ('lanekevah'). The invocations mention Adam, Eve and Lilith, 'Chavah Rishonah' (the first Eve, who is identical with Lilith), also devils or angels: Sanoy, Sansinoy, Smangeluf, Shmari'el (the guardian) and Hasdi'el (the merciful). A few lines in Yiddish are followed by the dialogue between the prophet Elijah and Lilith when he met her with her host of demons to kill the mother and take her new-born child ('to drink her blood, suck her bones and eat her flesh'). She tells Elijah that she will lose her power if someone uses her secret names, which she reveals at the end: lilith, abitu, abizu, hakash, avers hikpodu, ayalu, matrota ...
In other amulets, probably informed by The Alphabet of Ben-Sira, she is Adam's first wife. (Yalqut Reubeni, Zohar 1:34b, 3:19)
Charles Richardson's dictionary portion of the Encyclopædia Metropolitana appends to his etymological discussion of lullaby "a [manuscript] note written in a copy of Skinner" [i.e. Stephen Skinner's 1671 Etymologicon Linguæ Anglicanæ], which asserts that the word lullaby originates from Lillu abi abi, a Hebrew incantation meaning "Lilith begone" recited by Jewish mothers over an infant's cradle. Richardson did not endorse the theory and modern lexicographers consider it a false etymology.
Not so much an amulet as a ritual object for protection, the "Krasmesser" (or "Kreismesser", circle knife) played a role in Jewish birth rituals in the area of Alsace, Switzerland and Southern Germany between the 16th and 20th century. The Krasmesser would be used by a midwife or by the husband to draw a magic circle around the pregnant or birthing woman to protect her from Lilith and the evil eye, which were considered to represent the greatest danger for children and pregnant women.
Rabbi Naphtali Hirsch ben Elieser Treves described this custom as early as 1560, and later references to a knife or sword by the birthing bed by both Paul Christian Kirchner and Johann Christian Georg Bodenschatz indicate its continuance. A publication about birth customs by the Jewish Museum of Switzerland also includes oral accounts from 20th century Baden-Württemberg which likewise mention circling movements with a knife in order to protect a woman in childbirth.
In the Latin Vulgate Book of Isaiah 34:14, Lilith is translated lamia.
According to Augustine Calmet, Lilith has connections with early views on vampires and sorcery:
According to Siegmund Hurwitz the Talmudic Lilith is connected with the Greek Lamia, who, according to Hurwitz, likewise governed a class of child stealing lamia-demons. Lamia bore the title "child killer" and was feared for her malevolence, like Lilith. She has different conflicting origins and is described as having a human upper body from the waist up and a serpentine body from the waist down. One source states simply that she is a daughter of the goddess Hecate, another, that Lamia was subsequently cursed by the goddess Hera to have stillborn children because of her association with Zeus; alternatively, Hera slew all of Lamia's children (except Scylla) in anger that Lamia slept with her husband, Zeus. The grief caused Lamia to turn into a monster that took revenge on mothers by stealing their children and devouring them. Lamia had a vicious sexual appetite that matched her cannibalistic appetite for children. She was notorious for being a vampiric spirit and loved sucking men's blood. Her gift was the "mark of a Sibyl", a gift of second sight. Zeus was said to have given her the gift of sight. However, she was "cursed" to never be able to shut her eyes so that she would forever obsess over her dead children. Taking pity on Lamia, Zeus gave her the ability to remove and replace her eyes from their sockets.
In Mandaean scriptures such as the Ginza Rabba and Qulasta, liliths (Classical Mandaic: ࡋࡉࡋࡉࡕ) are mentioned as inhabitants of the World of Darkness.
Lilith is mentioned in a Mandaean magic incantation inscribed in Mandaic on a c. 7th-century Late Antiquity lead amulet designated "BM 135794 II", where she is mentioned together with other demons, in plural form. The first of the charm's text consists of a banning formula that calls for the binding, subduing and destruction of various demons, mentioned by name in plural form, and also talks of the demons of time walking about and harming "the children of Adam and all offspring of Hawa (=Eve)". The lines of this formula are repeated near-identically about three times, with Lilith's name, in plural, appearing in the formula on lines 27, 46 and 55, in the same near-identical line "Sahras, Dews, Rhuas, Humartas and Lilits." At lines 70-100, the banning formula of the charm ends and is taken over by a Mandaic magic story that tells of a gnostic tree made up of different demon groups and of a "Dew" demon dwelling in the tree being cast out of it and expelled from the tree by the archangel Gabriel. In this part of the charm, Lilith is mentioned as a part of this gnostic tree, again rendered in plural. The tree's trunk is said to be made up of "Dews" (or 'dewis' or 'daeva') on lines 76-77, the tree's foliage to be made up of "Latabas" ('devils') on line 77, and its branches to be made up of "Lilits" on lines 77-78. The charm associates the demons with time, using units of time such as "season", "month", "day", "hour", "minute" and so on, and so the charm has been interpreted to be a magical protection against "demons of time" or against time as threatening and harmful elements.
The amulet is part of a set of lead, silver and gold amulets attributed to the family archive of Mah-Adhur Gushnasp, who served as prime minister of the Sasanian Empire during Ardashir III's reign, and was discovered by Lietuenant Colonel H.S. Alexander in a lead jar under the foundations of a private house in a mound near el-Qurnah at the confluence of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates in southern Iraq during a private dig between 1910 and 1920, which was then passed on to the British Library and is today housed in the Department of the Ancient Near East in the British Museum. The text was translated by scholar Christa Müller-Kessler and published in 2002 in Cornelia Wunsch and C. B. F. Walker's Mining The Archives.
The occult writer Ahmad al-Buni (d. 1225), in his Sun of the Great Knowledge (Arabic: شمس المعارف الكبرى), mentions a demon called "the mother of children" (ام الصبيان), a term also used "in one place". Folkloric traditions recorded around 1953 tell about a jinn called Qarinah, who was rejected by Adam and mated with Iblis instead. She gave birth to a host of demons and became known as their mother. To take revenge on Adam, she pursues human children. As such, she would kill a pregnant mother's baby in the womb, causes impotence to men or attacks little children with illnesses. According to occult practises, she would be subject to the demon-king Murrah al-Abyad, which appears to be another name for Iblis used in magical writings. Stories about Qarinah and Lilith merged in early Islam.
Lilith's earliest appearance in the literature of the Romantic period (1789–1832) was in Goethe's 1808 work Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy.
After Mephistopheles offers this warning to Faust, he then, quite ironically, encourages Faust to dance with "the Pretty Witch". Lilith and Faust engage in a short dialogue, where Lilith recounts the days spent in Eden.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which developed around 1848, were greatly influenced by Goethe's work on the theme of Lilith. In 1863, Dante Gabriel Rossetti of the Brotherhood began painting what would later be his first rendition of Lady Lilith, a painting he expected to be his "best picture hitherto". Symbols appearing in the painting allude to the "femme fatale" reputation of the Romantic Lilith: poppies (death and cold) and white roses (sterile passion). Accompanying his Lady Lilith painting from 1866, Rossetti wrote a sonnet entitled Lilith, which was first published in Swinburne's pamphlet-review (1868), Notes on the Royal Academy Exhibition.
The poem and the picture appeared together alongside Rossetti's painting Sibylla Palmifera and the sonnet Soul's Beauty. In 1881, the Lilith sonnet was renamed "Body's Beauty" in order to contrast it and Soul's Beauty. The two were placed sequentially in The House of Life collection (sonnets number 77 and 78).
Rossetti wrote in 1870:
This is in accordance with Jewish folk tradition, which associates Lilith both with long hair (a symbol of dangerous feminine seductive power in Jewish culture), and with possessing women by entering them through mirrors.
The Victorian poet Robert Browning re-envisioned Lilith in his poem "Adam, Lilith, and Eve". First published in 1883, the poem uses the traditional myths surrounding the triad of Adam, Eve, and Lilith. Browning depicts Lilith and Eve as being friendly and complicitous with each other, as they sit together on either side of Adam. Under the threat of death, Eve admits that she never loved Adam, while Lilith confesses that she always loved him:
Browning focused on Lilith's emotional attributes, rather than that of her ancient demon predecessors.
Scottish author George MacDonald also wrote a fantasy novel entitled Lilith, first published in 1895. MacDonald employed the character of Lilith in service to a spiritual drama about sin and redemption, in which Lilith finds a hard-won salvation. Many of the traditional characteristics of Lilith mythology are present in the author's depiction: Long dark hair, pale skin, a hatred and fear of children and babies, and an obsession with gazing at herself in a mirror. MacDonald's Lilith also has vampiric qualities: she bites people and sucks their blood for sustenance.
Australian poet and scholar Christopher John Brennan (1870–1932), included a section titled "Lilith" in his major work "Poems: 1913" (Sydney: G. B. Philip and Son, 1914). The "Lilith" section contains thirteen poems exploring the Lilith myth and is central to the meaning of the collection as a whole.
C. L. Moore's 1940 story Fruit of Knowledge is written from Lilith's point of view. It is a re-telling of the Fall of Man as a love triangle between Lilith, Adam and Eve – with Eve's eating the forbidden fruit being in this version the result of misguided manipulations by the jealous Lilith, who had hoped to get her rival discredited and destroyed by God and thus regain Adam's love.
British poet John Siddique's 2011 collection Full Blood has a suite of 11 poems called The Tree of Life, which features Lilith as the divine feminine aspect of God. A number of the poems feature Lilith directly, including the piece Unwritten which deals with the spiritual problem of the feminine being removed by the scribes from The Bible.
Lilith is also mentioned in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis. The character Mr. Beaver ascribes the ancestry of the main antagonist, Jadis the White Witch, to Lilith.
"Lilith" is a poem by Vladimir Nabokov, written in 1928. Many have connected it to Lolita, but Nabokov adamantly denies this: "Intelligent readers will abstain from examining this impersonal fantasy for any links with my later fiction."
Lilith: A Dramatic Poem is a four-act medieval fantasy verse drama written in blank verse by American poet and playwright George Sterling, first published in 1919. Influential critic H. L. Mencken said of Sterling: "I think his dramatic poem Lilith was the greatest thing he ever wrote." The New York Times declared Lilith "the finest thing in poetic drama yet done in America and one of the finest poetic dramas yet written in English." Author Theodore Dreiser said: "It rings richer in thought than any American dramatic poem with which I am familiar." Poet Clark Ashton Smith wrote: "Lilith is certainly the best dramatic poem in English since the days of Swinburne and Browning. ... The lyrics interspersed throughout the drama are as beautiful as any by the Elizabethans."
In the role playing game series Vampire the Masquerade, Lilith plays a major part in the mythology within the games.
Lilith is a 1961 novel by J. R. Salamanca that tells the story of a man, Vincent, who is seduced by a schizophrenic woman named Lilith. It explores themes of love, obsession, and blurred lines between fantasy and reality. A feature film of the same name written by Robert Rossen and starring Jean Seberg and Warren Beatty was released in 1964.
In the 2019 adult animated series Hazbin Hotel, Lilith is depicted as the wife of Lucifer and the queen of Hell. Charlie, the protagonist of the series, is Lilith's daughter. According to The Washington Times, Hazbin Hotel subverts traditional narratives of Lucifer and Lilith by presenting their betrayal of God as heroic and noble.
In the Diablo series of video games, Lilith is depicted as the daughter of Mephisto and the creator of the games world alongside her lover, the angel Inarius. Lilith serves as the main antagonist in Diablo IV.
The depiction of Lilith in Romanticism continues to be popular among Wiccans and in other modern occultism. A few magical orders dedicated to the undercurrent of Lilith, featuring initiations specifically related to the arcana of the "first mother", exist. Two organisations that use initiations and magic associated with Lilith are the Ordo Antichristianus Illuminati and the Order of Phosphorus. Lilith appears as a succubus in Aleister Crowley's De Arte Magica. Lilith was also one of the middle names of Crowley's first child, Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith Crowley (1904–1906), and Lilith is sometimes identified with Babalon in Thelemic writings. Many early occult writers who contributed to modern day Wicca expressed special reverence for Lilith. Charles Leland associated Aradia with Lilith: Aradia, says Leland, is Herodias, who was regarded in stregheria folklore as being associated with Diana as chief of the witches. Leland further notes that Herodias is a name that comes from west Asia, where it denoted an early form of Lilith.
Gerald Gardner asserted that there was continuous historical worship of Lilith to present day, and that her name is sometimes given to the goddess being personified in the coven by the priestess. This idea was further attested by Doreen Valiente, who cited her as a presiding goddess of the Craft: "the personification of erotic dreams, the suppressed desire for delights". In some contemporary concepts, Lilith is viewed as the embodiment of the Goddess, a designation that is thought to be shared with what these faiths believe to be her counterparts: Inanna, Ishtar, Asherah, Anath, Anahita and Isis. According to one view, Lilith was originally a Sumerian, Babylonian, or Hebrew mother goddess of childbirth, children, women, and sexuality.
Raymond Buckland holds that Lilith is a dark moon goddess on par with the Hindu Kali.
Many theistic Satanists consider Lilith a goddess. She is considered a goddess of independence by those Satanists and is often worshipped by women, but women are not the only people who worship her. Lilith is popular among theistic Satanists because of her association with Satan. Some Satanists believe that she is married to Satan and thus think of her as a mother figure. Others base their reverence for her on her history as a succubus and praise her as a sex goddess. A different approach to a Satanic Lilith holds that she was once a fertility and agricultural goddess.
The Western mystery tradition associates Lilith with the qlippoth of Kabbalah. Dion Fortune writes, "The Virgin Mary is reflected in Lilith", and that Lilith is the source of "lustful dreams".