Who is Lilith?
Lilith is a mythological demon goddess. She is said to be a female demon who flies around in search of newborn children to strangle and kill them. Her origination is from the sumero-babylonian tradition. Lilith is mentioned in the Bible in (Isaiah 34:14), where her name is translated as "screech-owl" in the King James Version.
The story of Lilith that has come to be the most famous is found in The Alphabet of Ben-Sira, an anonymous work in Hebrew and Aramaic written between the 8th and 11th centuries CE. It is The Alphabet of Ben-Sira that tells of Lilith as Adam's first wife. According to that story, she refused to lie beneath Adam during sexual intercourse, and he in turn refused to lie beneath her. Lilith then called upon the name of God, left Eden, and settled on the Red Sea coast, where she consorted with Samael and other demons. Her children by Samael are known as the lilin.
Adam asked God to return Lilith to him, and he sent three angels on the task. They were to kill 100 of Lilith's children for each day she failed to return. Instead of returning to Eden, Lilith responded to the threat with one of her own; she vowed to torment the children of Adam and Eve throughout eternity.
The story from The Alphabet of Ben-Sira became incorporated into Jewish tradition. As the text stated that mortal children could be safe from Lilith only by invoking the angels that God sent to kill the lilin, medieval Jews placed an amulet with the angels'names - Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof - around male babies'necks until their circumcision. Another tradition consisted of letting a boy's hair grow until he reached the age of three in order to fool Lilith into thinking he was a girl.
Although Lilith has long been considered a demon, some modern day feminists have been inspired by the story that she left Adam when he tried to assert dominance over her. Because she calls on the name of God, Lilith is seen as powerful, and because she left the garden of Eden before Eve was created, she can be considered free from original sin. The Lilith Fair, an all-female music festival that ran from 1997 to 1999, is the legendary Lilith's namesake.
Lilith appears in the ancient Jewish texts of the Talmud, Midrash, and Kabbala, in all of which she is equated with demons. In the Kabbala, she is said to be the mate of Samael, one of the most well-known and powerful demons. In the Talmud, she is described as having long hair and wings, and her behavior is similar to that of the succubus, a European female demon who visits men in the night and drains them of sexual energy. Lilith is mentioned by name in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, entitled Song for a Sage, in which she appears in a list of demonic creatures. Another Dead Sea Scroll, called The Seductress, is sometimes presumed to refer to Lilith, although it does not do so overtly.
Even though most of the Lilith legend is derived from Jewish folklore, descriptions of the Lilith demon appear in Iranian, Babylonian, Mexican, Greek, Arab, English, German, Oriental and Native American legends. Also, she sometimes has been associated with legendary and mythological characters such as the Queen of Sheba and Helen of Troy. In medieval Europe she was proclaimed to be the wife, concubine or grandmother of Satan.
Men who experienced nocturnal emissions during their sleep believed they had been seduced by Lilith and said certain incantations to prevent the offspring from becoming demons. It was thought each time a pious Christian had a wet dream, Lilith laughed. It was believed that Lilith was assisted in her bloodthirsty nocturnal quests by succubi, who gathered with her near the "mountains of darkness" to frolic with her demon lover Samael, whose name means "poison of God" (sam-el). The Zohar, the principal work of the Kabbalah, describes Lilith's powers at their height during the waning of the moon.
These beliefs continued for centuries. As late as the 18th century, it was a common practice in many cultures to protect new mothers and their infants with amulets against Lilith. Males were most vulnerable during the first week of life, girls during the first three weeks. Sometimes a magic circle was drawn around the lying-in-bed, with a charm inscribed with the names of the three angels, Adam and Eve and the words "barring Lilith" or "protect this newborn child from all harm." Frequently amulets were place in the four corners and throughout the bedchamber. If a child laughed while sleeping, it was taken as a sign that Lilith was present. Tapping the child on the nose, it was believed, made her go away.
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