#eruvin 18b

[keshetchai]

#oh this is a really interesting perspective#I definitely know of (more younger) pagans who latch on to Lilith#which I think is interesting because most of the early neopagan practitioners used the figures of Diana or Hecate or Frig or Brigid or even#the Morrigan to stand in for the ‘divine feminine’ or whatever#lots of goyim (and I’m no exception) found the popular culture imagining of Lilith as the ‘mother of monsters’ inspirational#but she has been robbed of context and repackaged as another pop culture goddess#(don’t get me started on witch washing)#anyway I’ve always found her appearance in the epic of Gilgamesh

(Do get started on Witch-washing, lol!) I think this is interesting to mention the Gilgamesh appearance, because the idea that "Lilith" is even in the Epic of Gilgamesh is disputed by some academics.

Because what we have is ki-sikil-lil-la-ke mentioned in Tablet XII (An Assyrian Akkadian translation), and it happened to be one single translator in 1932 who translated the "lil-la-ke" part as Lilith.

I'm not really convinced we have genuine textual grounds to firmly connect the ki-sikil-lil-la-ke with Lilit (Lilith) as an individual character. The Lil-la-ke of the Assyrian Gilgamesh has also been argued to be a water-spirit, or an owl (given that it makes a home within the tree trunk). Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian scripts variously refer to classes of spirits/demons known as: lilu, hilu, lili, and lilitu -- but they aren't typically individuals. It would seem to me that is why the lil-la-ke in question is specified as the "ki-sikil" -- which has been suggested to mean "sacred place".

This would be more similar to the Jewish usage of "lilin" as a class of being, but not a specific individual like Lilit (Lilith). The singular use of "lilit" within the Hebrew Bible is in the book of Isaiah. There is a Dead Sea Scrolls fragment of the same part of Isaiah that actually renders this in plural form -- liliyyot.

Tablet XII is a translation from about 600 BCE, and the historical Isaiah would've been mid-late 8th century BCE. The development of a story of "first Eve," and even "mother of monsters" however, is centuries later. The DSS has one mention of a lilit singular in a "Songs of the Sage":

And I, the Instructor, proclaim His glorious splendour so as to frighten and to te[rrify] all the spirits of the destroying angels, spirits of the bastards, demons, Lilith, howlers, and [desert dwellers]...

This dates to the Herodian period. So like... nearly 600 years later, there is another one (still extent) mention of Lilith (singular).

And it's maybe a century or two after that before a "mother of monsters" association is found in Jewish texts.

I do get the appeal of a "mother of monsters" vibe comes from -- of course I understand why people are drawn to safety, acceptance, protection for those the world might deem "monstrous."

But like, in Jewish mythology, Lilith like...I mean she's not a great mother? The first mention of a Lilith who is mother of monster children that we have is literally Moses mentioning she murders her own children.

Now that this has got me thinking, there's one other very good reason all the appeal is in the "Eve" parallel (which is...actually medieval, not ancient), combined with misunderstanding "mother of monsters" as potentially empowering/subversive. And that's that absolutely no one latches on to Adam in the same way, and that has never been part of the pop culture thrall, and yet we have just as solid reasons to see him as the father of countless monsters within Judaism.

and like, for some reason, "Adam's wet dreams created hundreds of spirits, demons, and female-demons" never really got this pop culture pagan feminist treatment, lmfao.

Btw the reason gentile pagans are fixated with Lilith is because she is the parallel to their fixation with "Lucifer," or "Satan," as a means of deconstructing their fucked up relationship with Christianity and Christian theology, and the internalized terrible garbage they picked up from Christian normativity, even if they weren't previously practicing Christians.

Lucifer/Satan gets to replace Jesus/God (the representation of XYZ Christian theologies they have issues with) and Lilith gets to replace Eve (the representation of XYZ Christian theologies relating to women that they have issues with).

The replacements represent - to some extent - themselves. They choose means of interpreting these characters that specifically make them into people who were unfairly victimized (within Christian theology) and marginalized, and who were ultimately "right." Or more "powerful," or ultimately more sympathetic/human/compassionate.

It's a fantasy wherein they get to validate their own frustration/pain/feeling of exclusion or powerlessness/treatment of being seen as an "ungodly" or "bad" person, and then make that person who typifies those things in their mind as the real hero, regardless of how doing that affects other people, or even if it makes sense.

It's actually very transparent when you think about it. I can almost guarantee Lilith would hold almost no sway to any of them if she wasn't explicitly mentioned as a counterpoint to Eve.

[33-108]

ZOHAR AND LILITH:

"References to Lilith in the Zohar include the following:

She roams at night, and goes all about the world and makes sport with men and causes them to emit seed. In every place where a man sleeps alone in a house, she visits him and grabs him and attaches herself to him and has her desire from him, and bears from him.

And she also afflicts him with sickness, and he knows it not, and all this takes place when the moon is on the wane.

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.

17th-century Hebrew magical amulets

Medieval Hebrew amulet intended to protect a mother and her child from Lilith (see picture)

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."- Adam van norden