#george macdonald lilith

[chasingmypen]

My first in a series of pen and watercolor miniatures, contributing to a display for a George MacDonald bicentennial literary conference.

This one is specifically inspired by Lilith, and Mr. Raven's commentary about traveling between worlds...

[yeoldecryptid]

The best I’ve ever read: a list

book: The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. The depth of this book is unmatched, like, you could write thousands of pages on it and still have more to write about.

Short Story: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. I may be biased because of how relatable the story is to me, but I have never seen a metaphor better utilized.

Children’s book: The Lorax. I mean, if you’ve read it, you know how bold, emotional, and yet still fun it is.

Character: Lord Havelock Vetinari from Discworld. I wrote a post about this the other day, but the gist of it is that he’s a living contradiction and yet it works beautifully.

Film: The Tale of Princess Kaguya. In all seriousness, I cannot think of anything this film could have done better.

Prose Novel: Frankenstein by Mary Shelly. It just shows birth in such a unique light, and you cannot ignore its influence.

Most underrated: Lilith by George Macdonald. Okay, if you check out one book because of this post, it should be this one. How is this not one of the great fantasy classics?

[castingmysilver]

"Jadis, George MacDonald's Lilith, Mr. Beaver's ancestry theory, and the corruption of the dynasty in Charn."

"Jadis, George MacDonald's Lilith, Mr. Beaver's ancestry theory, and the corruption of the dynasty in Charn."

We have in The Chronicles of Narnia what seem to be two very different origin stories for Jadis, the White Witch and enchantress-tyrant of Narnia. The Beavers tell the curious Pevensie children, who ask whether she is Human: "She'd like us to believe it. And it's on that that she bases her claim to be Queen. She comes of your father Adam's first wife, her they called Lilith. And she was one of the Jinn. That's what she comes from on one side. And on the other side she comes of the giants."

In the prequel-story The Magician's Nephew, originally not published until near the end of the series, we learn that she was the destructively victorious final ruler of the ancient world of Charn, brought into Narnia by tragic accident by the boy who grew up to become Professor Kirke. I have heard it proposed before that in the Doylist, Lewis hadn't fully decided what he was doing with her yet when he wrote Beaver's lines; and perhaps in the Watsonian sense Beaver was passing along a dark rumor popular among the Narnian resistance, with no real understanding of the truth behind the Witch. But I personally like to believe that the two origins are not actually completely incompatible.

It is at this point that my Doylist and Watsonian reasoning start to blur. Mr. Beaver, and the hypothetical resistance against the Witch in Narnia, had no good reason to know the Witch’s origin. The bit about the Giantish blood, at the very least, seems unlikely given the context of The Magician’s Nephew; I like to think it was an assumption based on Jadis having come down from the North where the Giants lived, within living memory for several of the more long-lived Narnian creatures such as the Trees. At the same time though, Mr. Beaver had no good reason to know about Lilith at all, unless she had some form of real existence within the Narnian universe. The only known Humans in Narnia up until that point in history had been, as far as we know: two young English children with little literary background other than adventure-stories and whatever they had taught to them in Victorian schools; one grown-up and very odd uncle with reason to have some understanding of the weird and unnatural, but who spent most of his time in Narnia frantically trying to avoid an existential crisis and avoiding talking to the Beasts there; two very decent and very working-class grown-up Humans who were probably Anglican Christian if anything religious before encountering Aslan, and who I’m not sure seem the sort for collecting semi-obscure myths and legends about extrabiblical figures; and arguably, depending on the timing of the Telmarines’ arrival, somewhere in the world of Narnia a band of rowdy pirate-relations and kidnapped islander women. No Human tradition Narnia had access to told Mr. Beaver about Lilith. But why mention her name in association with The White Witch?

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[luxetobscuritas-blog]

JOMP Book Photo Challenge / November / 6 / frustrating writing

I had thought about going to the bookstore after work to photograph the first book of the Twisted series by Ana Huang for today's prompt, but my laziness prevailed and I was able to find another book at home with a writing style that drove me insane during my fifth semester of studying literature.

[marydarkblacknoir]

There is no harm in being afraid. The only harm is in doing what Fear tells you. Fear is not your master! Laugh in his face and he will run away.

George MacDonald, Lilith

[apenitentialprayer]

She loves no one, therefore she cannot be WITH any one. There is One who will be with her, but she will not be with Him. [... And] the great Shadow will be in her, I fear, but he cannot be WITH her, or with any one.

George MacDonald (Lilith, Chapter XXXVIII)

[bones-ivy-breath]

The strife of thought, accusing and excusing, began afresh, and gathered fierceness. The soul of Lilith lay naked to the torture of pure interpenetrating inward light. She began to moan, and sigh deep sighs, then murmur as if holding colloquy with a dividual self: her queendom was no longer whole; it was divided against itself.... At length she began what seemed a tale about herself, in a language so strange, and in forms so shadowy, that I could but here and there understand a little.

Lilith by George MacDonald

[brambonius]

Another advice from "Mr. Raven" (who might not be a bird at all even if he appears in the shape of one) from George MacDonald's 'Lilith'.

[pagingcs]

“I saw you,” she answered, still with her back to me, “in the light of the moon, just as she went down. I see badly in the day, but at night perfectly. The shadow of my house would have hidden you, but both its doors were open. I was out on the waste, and saw you go into this hollow. You were asleep, however, before I could reach you, and I was not willing to disturb you. People are frightened if I come on them suddenly. They call me the Cat-woman. It is not my name.”

George MacDonald, Lilith

[herunswithscissors]

[chasingmypen]

second of Drawtober

an interpretation of Mr. Raven from the wonderfully weird and sometimes spooky Lilith by George MacDonald.

[yeoldecryptid]

Alice (the wonderland kind) Dorothy Gale, Wendy Darling, Chihiro, Mr. Vane (from the novel Lilith,) Dante Alighieri, and Arthur Dent should start and adventure club together.

[writing-for-life]

You know that one time Neil Gaiman implied that Lucien might be Adam/the first man?

I’m not sure if I’ll make fandom faint with this, but it’s been strongly implied in The Sandman Companion:

NG: But that's not the only direction from which Lucien came. I was also thinking of George MacDonald's book Lilith, which describes a tall man in a frock coat who turns into a raven, and who is actually Adam, the first man. That image always stuck in my mind, and it definitely informed my handling of Lucien, who's dressed in a frock coat and - as is revealed in part 12 of The Kindly Ones - began as the first raven.

Also:

Bit of a family reunion here? Especially considering that Bhartari spoke about eating a special fruit that made him immortal in Hob’s Leviathan (so he ate from the Tree of Life). And I think it’s in the Companion, too that it can be surmised that Lucien/Adam (and Eve) ate from the Tree of Knowledge, which makes him the perfect librarian of course…

Yes, Dream has the metaphorical origins of the creation/evolution of (hu)man(kind) as denizens in The Dreaming—all of them and what they stand for. And it makes total sense, but that just as an aside.

Soooo, if we now have Lucienne, and she also handles the ravens, will we even get Eve? Or is she Eve (or rather what Eve stands for, because none of them are actual “people” or even humans—Cain and Abel never were either in that sense; we’re told this in “A Parliament of Rooks”)?

Just sayin’ that Lucienne might be the metaphorical first woman. Just might be (nah, she totally is)…

And now everyone can think about that for a while and also think about why the casting choice is perfect to the tiniest detail, and why Lucienne is so much more important than so many people think. Because she is literally where all of us came from (well, at least in the metaphorical sense). And why she watches over our stories and understands them so much deeper than anyone else…

[catulhu333]

Lilith and Carmilla

I mentioned in my post about this, Lilith, like the other Demon Queens, has the WLW aspect of her mythology usually forgotten - but arguably has influenced the defining "lesbian vampire" - Carmilla.

This ties to the very possible inspiration for Sheridan Le Fanu - "Christabel" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The narrative ballad has the character of Geraldine - a bisexual woman, who is implied to be vampire and/or succubus. But Geraldine is seemingly based and representing Lilith (indeed, perhaps Lilith herself) (while the seduced by Geraldine Christabel, represented Eve), as noted by Heather Rolufs in "Unbalancing Binaries: Re-thinking Lilith and Eve in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Christabel," Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market," and George MacDonald's Lilith" and Kathryn Elizabeth Beavers in "The balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities‘: political tensions and religious transitions in the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge".

But it also seems Carmilla herself might be also directly based on Lilith. Carmilla's famous transformation into giant black cat to drink blood of her victims, might be based on Spanish-Jewish legends about Lilith transforming also into a giant black cat that drinks blood, in this form as "El Broosha".

Like Eve (seemingly?) first meeting Lilith under a characteristic tree (Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), so does Laura meet Carmilla first under a lime tree (described by Laura as "magnificent"), if after the vampire's carriage crashed. Though this is also similar, and possibly instead derived from how Christabel met Geraldine, but is still striking.

It should be also noted Carmilla's name is seemingly derived from the Hebrew רְמֶל (Karmel), meaning "vineyard/orchard/garden of God". While Carmilla within the story is an alias, an anagram of Carmilla's true name (Mircalla), it is the name with a seemingly real etymology, Mircalla being seemingly created then from it by Le Fanu.

To be clear, all of these might coincidences, or like with the tree inspired by Christabel, but I think the possible connection between Carmilla and Lilith is still interesting to note.

Graphics used and cropped: "Lilith and Eve" by Yuri Klapouh and an illustration for Carmilla by Michael Fitzgerald, depicting Carmilla and Laura.

[talesofpassingtime]

"My boy,” I answered, “there is no harm in being afraid. The only harm is in doing what Fear tells you. Fear is not your master! Laugh in his face and he will run away."

— George MacDonald, Lilith