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Lilith is a figure with two lives. In Babylonian and Hebrew texts she is a night demon. In Jewish folklore she is Adam’s first wife, who left him before Eve.
The Bible names her once. In Isaiah 34:14 a lilit, a night creature, lives among the ruins of Edom.
The night demon of Babylon
Lilith says she is first mentioned in Babylonian texts as a class of winged female demons that attack pregnant women and infants. The page also gives the form Lillake. In the Huluppu tree story, a fragmentary text often treated as an appendix to the Gilgamesh epic, Lillake builds a house in a willow planted by Inanna. The serpent is driven off, the Anzu bird flies away, and Lillake flees into the wilderness.
Aramaic incantation bowls and the figure of Lilith covers the pots that were written against her. The bowls were often buried at the threshold of houses. Many clients were women, including pregnant women. ESOTERICA describes how she was drawn:
Lilith recognizable basically immediately as a female nude figure
ESOTERICA, Aramaic bowls and Lilith
Adam’s first wife
In the “first Eve” account on the Lilith page, God fashions Lilith from dust and sets her in the garden beside Adam. She will not lie beneath him, and she leaves. Three angels, Senoi, Sansenoi and Sammangelof, find her in a cave and demand that she return. She refuses, and the angels tell her that a hundred of her children will die every day.
Androgyne Adam adds that it was a common Rabbinic speculation that Eve was Adam’s second wife. It prints Abraham Ecchellensis on how the story passed to the Arabs and what it said happened to her afterward:
But Lilith, after she was expelled from Paradise, is said to have married the Devil, by whom she had children, who are called Jins.
Abraham Ecchellensis
The Lilith page gives a second Islamic version from Ibn Ishaq. There Lilith, or the Qarinah, is one of the mates of Iblis, and she bears jinn. The Jinn covers those beings.
The serpent in Eden
Genesis 2 – Enclosed gardens treats Eden as an enclosed garden, and it lists the serpent among the names with a question mark: Lilith? The page does not settle it.
Bashar, a being channeled by Darryl Anka, gives a different frame. The Hidden Truth of Adam, Eve, and Lilith: ANUNNAKI ORIGINS Explained summarizes his claim that the Anunnaki altered Homo erectus to make Homo sapiens. In his account Lilith stands for independence and for the balance between male and female, and she was removed from modern stories under patriarchal influence. The Adam race gives the same account, in which the snake stands for knowledge of DNA. Genesis 3 – The birth chamber sets the same summary beside the text of the chapter.
A reading from Cayce
The Lilith page also quotes a reading of Edgar Cayce. Asked how the legend of Lilith connects to the period of Amilius, Cayce answers in terms of the Sons of God, who were male and female in one being. In the page’s summary, the helpmeet is brought out of that being from within, and Cayce says this is the story behind the old legends.
That is a channeled reading, and it is a different kind of source from Ben Sira or the bowls.
Related pages
- Lilith
- Androgyne Adam
- Genesis 2 – Enclosed gardens
- Genesis 3 – The birth chamber
- The Adam race
- Adam
- The Jinn
- Aramaic incantation bowls and the figure of Lilith
- The Hidden Truth of Adam, Eve, and Lilith: ANUNNAKI ORIGINS Explained
For every page I tagged with Lilith, see the Lilith tag archive.
