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Lilith: Adam's First Wife. - Religion - Nairaland

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The Missionary Lilith / Lilith: The First Wife Of Adam / Adam And Lilith,then Eve. (2) (3) (4)

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Lilith: Adam's First Wife. by LeOstrich: 12:44pm On Feb 22, 2013
[size=20pt]So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.[/size] - Gen 1 vs 27

In ancient Hebrew text extended references of Lilith do exist. She is believed to have been created alongside Adam from the same Earth. She was rebellious to Adam and did not yield to his desires and will. On one occasion Adam complains to God about Lilith and when God appears to both of them in the Garden of Eden, Lilith full of rage uttered the name of God. She then immediately ascended into the sky and came to rest in a desert for she had uttered the name of God and as such became as God.

God then dispatched 4 angels to bring Lilith back but she refused. She slept with demons and other fallen Angels as well as animals and became more hideous in both physical and spiritual form.

God then leaves her alone and after a while notices Adam feeling very lonely and depressed from his lost mate.
God then puts Adam to sleep and takes a spare rib from him and forms eve.

There is a direct reference to Lilith in the Bible and that is in the book of Isiah.

Wildcats shall meet with hyenas,
goat-demons shall call to each other;
there too Lilith shall repose,
and find a place to rest.
There shall the owl nest
and lay and hatch and brood in its shadow

Isiah 34 vs 14

Re: Lilith: Adam's First Wife. by LeOstrich: 12:47pm On Feb 22, 2013
[size=20pt]Lilith is the most important of a small collection of named female demons in Jewish legend. Historically, she is actually older than Judaism (at least Judaism as defined as a post-restoration phenomenon). Her earliest appearance is probably in ancient Sumer. Although it is far from certain, she may be a minor character in a prologue to the Epic of Gilgamesh. In the ancient world she also sometimes appears in magical texts, amulets, etc., intended to thwart her activities. She appears once in the Bible (Isaiah), in a context that associates her with demons of the desert, and again in some Dead Sea Scroll passages clearly based on the Isaiah reference.
We see somewhat more of her in late Roman/early medieval Judaism. She appears frequently on prophylactic magical bowls. In this context, she is clearly associated with childbirth (e.g. as a threat), and perhaps also as a succubus against which men need protection. In these bowls she is often countered by invoking the powers of her nemesis angels: Snvi, Snsvi, and Smnglof (we don't know what vowels to use with these names, but presumably they were intended to be pronounceable). She also shows up in the Talmud, and is clearly linked with the demonic world. Here also, her role as succubus begins to take clear shape.

Somewhere between the eighth and tenth centuries, CE, she makes an appearance in a satirical work entitled the Alphabet of Ben Sira. It is here that she is first given what has become her most famous persona: the first wife of Adam (before Eve). In this story, she is created at more or less the same time as Adam, and, as was Adam, out of the ground. Because of this she tries to assert her equality -- an assertion which Adam rejects. Refusing to conform to Adam's desires, she escapes from Eden, and is subsequently replaced by the more subservient Eve (who has less claim to equality, since she was made out of Adam's side). Having escaped Eden, Lilith takes on her renowned role as baby-stealer and mother of demons. She also promises to leave babies alone who are protected by amulets with the names of the three angels mentioned above.

While it is true that there was a rabbinic tradition that Adam briefly had another wife before the creation of Eve (Genesis Rabbah), there is a great deal of doubt as to whether Lilith had any connection at all to this first wife of Adam story prior the publication of the Alphabet. The satirical nature of the Alphabet casts further doubt on the authenticity of this Lilith connection. But whatever its origins, the connection between Lilith and the first Eve seems to have struck a chord with Jewish folk imagination and it is now an inexorable part of those traditions. It has been able to function both as a 'woman's story' (in which Lilith is a role model for uppity women), and as a patriarchal story (in which we see the dire consequences of being an uppity woman). As a midrash, it also helps to solve a problem that arises from the fact that Genesis 1 has mankind created "male and female," but when we get to Genesis 2, Adam seems to be alone and in need of a partner.

Kabbalistic literature is occasionally aware of the Alphabet story, but more frequently not. Here Lilith usually appears as a partner for Samael (=Satan), and as the chief feminine expression of the Left (evil) Emanation. In some passages, she participates in the temptation of Eve/Adam, and, after the expulsion, she serves as succubus to Adam, generating hoards of demons from his seed. She is also the personification of temptation, and is for all intents and purposes identified with the woman Folly from the early chapters of Proverbs. In one story, she actually serves as consort to the Holy One.

She also appears in Christian iconography. Most late medieval and renaissance paintings of the temptation of Adam and Eve have portrayed the serpent as having a woman's head and often torso as well. This is usually referred to by art historians as 'Lilith,' but there is no Jewish story which easily corresponds to the pictorial representations (the one exception is Bacharach, 'Emeq haMelekh 23c-d, but it is confusing, and problematic at best). I am led to presume that there were Christian versions of the Lilith myth in which the identification between her and the Serpent were made explicit. Unfortunately, none of these versions have survived in either text or known folklore.

Lilith enjoyed something of a revival in literature beginning in the mid 19th century. Usually she represents the feminine dark side (the part that men subliminally fear). Carl Jung made use of her as prime expression of the anima in men (the suppressed feme within), and the best monograph on her still belongs to one of Jung's disciples (Siegmund Hurwitz).

She has also been embraced by many modern, particularly Jewish, feminists. Based mainly, or entirely, on the Alphabet, she is presented as the proto-feminist, willing to sacrifice even the paradise of Eden as the necessary cost of freedom and equality. Of course, her role as baby-stealer is usually down-played (or assigned to a patriarchal layer of the tradition). Some neo-pagan groups have taken up her cause as well, either accepting her dark nature as part of larger sacred reality, or finding the erotic goddess within after removing the clutter of what they argue are patriarchal and monotheistic condemnations.

Finally, she has a place in vampire lore either as the first and most powerful of the vampires, or at least as their queen. She is sometimes presented as either the daughter or the consort of Dracula. In her role as succubus, she has, of course, particular control of nightmares and erotic dreams. She also rules a horde of other succuba and incubi.




Re: Lilith: Adam's First Wife. by LeOstrich: 12:51pm On Feb 22, 2013
Lilith has been linked to pre-islamic cultures and the site of the Kabbah was a shrine oriinally dedicated to her.

She is known as the the head of the demons in the desert.
Re: Lilith: Adam's First Wife. by LeOstrich: 12:52pm On Feb 22, 2013
Rabbi Jeremia ben Eleazar said, "During those years (after their expulsion from the Garden), in which Adam, the first man, was separated from Eve, he became the father of ghouls and demons and lilin." Rabbi Meir said, "Adam, the first man, being very pious and finding that he had caused death to come into the world, sat fasting for 130 years, and separated himself from his wife for 130 years, and wore fig vines for 130 years. His fathering of evil spirits, referred to here, came as a result of wet dreams.
Re: Lilith: Adam's First Wife. by LeOstrich: 12:52pm On Feb 22, 2013
Zohar 3:76b-77a

For 130 years Adam kept separate from his wife and did not beget. After Cain killed Abel, Adam did not want to copulate with his wife. Rabbi Yose said: "From the hour in which death was decreed upon him and upon the whole world, he said 'Why should I beget children for terror?' and instantly separated from his wife." And two female spirits [Lilith and Naamah] would come and copulate with him and bear children. and those whom they bore are the evil spirits of the world who are called the Plagues of Mankind. And they lead the sons of man astray, and dwell in the doorway of the house, and in the cisterns and in the latrines.... But if the holy name Shaddai with supernal crowns is found in the doorway of a man's house, they all flee and go away from there. And we have learned that in the hour in which man descended to the earth in the supernal image, in the image of the Holy One, and the higher and lower beings saw him, they all approached him and proclaimed him king over this world. After the Serpent mounted Eve and injected filth into her, she gave birth to Cain. From thence descended all the wicked generations in the world. And the abode of demons and spirits is from there and from his side. Therefore, all the spirits and demons have one half from man below, and the other half from the angels of the supernal realm. Thereafter Adam begot on those spirits daughters who are the beauty of those above and those below. And all went astray after them. And there was one male who came into the world from the spirit of Cain's side, and they called Tubal-Cain. And a female came forth with him, and the creatures went astray after her, and her name was Naamah. From her issued other spirits and demons. and they hover in the air and tell things to those others found below. And this Tubal-Cain brought weapons of killing into the world. And this Naamah became aroused and adhered to her [evil] side. And to this day she exists, and her abode is among the waves of the great sea. And she comes forth, and makes sport with the sons of man, and becomes hot from them in the dream, in that desire which a man has, and she clings to him, and she takes the desire and from it she conceives and brings forth other kinds [of spirits] into the world. And those children whom she bears from the sons of man come to the women, and they conceive from them and bear spirits. And all of them go to Lilith the Ancient, and she rears them.... (Patai81:456f) And she goes out into the world and seeks her children. And she sees the sons of man and clings to them, in order to kill them, and to become absorbed into the souls of the children of the sons of man, and she goes off with that child. But three holy spirits arrive there and fly before her and take that child from her and place him before the Holy One, blessed be He, and there he studies before Him. Therefore the Tora warns, Be sacred (Lev. 19:2). If a man is holy, he is not harmed by her, for the Holy One, blessed be He, orders those three holy angels whom we have mentioned, and they guard that child, and she cannot harm him. But if a man is not holy, and draws a spirit from the impure side, then she comes and makes sport with that child, and when she kills him she penetrates that soul [which departs from the child] and never leaves it.... (Patai81:466) At times it happens that Naamah goes forth into the world to become hot from the sons of man, and a man finds himself in a connection of lust with her, and he awakens from his sleep and takes hold of his wife and lies with her. And this desire comes from that lust which he had in his dream. Then the child that she begets comes from the side of Naamah, for the man was driven by his lust for her. And when Lilith comes and sees that child, she knows what happened, and she ties herself to him and brings him up like all those other sons of Naamah. And she is with him many times, but does not kill him. This is the man who becomes blemished on every New Moon, for she never gives him up. For month after month, when the moon becomes renewed in the world Lilith comes forth and visits all those whom she brings up, and makes sport with them, and therefore that person is blemished at that time. (Patai81:457f)
Zohar Sitrei Torah 1:147b-148b

Jacob's Journey

Jacob had entered this gateway to faith. [1]
Adhering to that faith, he had to be tested
in the same place his fathers had been tested,
entering in peace and emerging in peace.[2]
Adam entered but was not careful.[3]
Seduced by her, he sinned with that LovePeddler of a woman,
the primordial serpent.[4]
Noah entered but was not careful.
Seduced by her, he sinned as well,
as it is written:
He drank of the wine and became drunk
and uncovered himself within his tent (Gen. 9:21)

Abraham entered and emerged,
as it is written:
And Abram went down to Egypt...
And Abram came up from Egypt (Gen. 12:10, 13:1)

Isaac entered and emerged,
as it is written:
Isaac went to Abimelech, king of the Philistines, in Gerar...
From there he went up to Be'er Sheva (Gen 26:1, 23)

Jacob, having entered into faith,
had to continue and probe the other side.
For one who is saved from there is a loved one,
a chosen one of the Blessed Holy One.
What is written?
Jacob left Be'er Sheva
the secret of the mystery of faith,
and set out for Haran
the side of the woman of whoredom, the adulteress. [5]
The secret of secrets:
Out of the scorching noon of Isaac,
out of the dregs of wine,[6]
a fungus emerged, a cluster,
male and female together,
red as a rose,[7]
expanding in many directions and paths.
The male is called Sama'el,
his female is always included within him.
Just as it is on the side of holiness,
so it is on the other side:
male and female embracing one another.
The female of Sama'el is called Serpent, [8]
Woman of Whoredom,
End of All Flesh, End of Days.
Two evil spirits joined together:
the spirit of the male is subtle;
the spirit of the female is diffused in many ways and paths
but joined to the spirit of the male.

She bedecks herself with all kinds of jewelry
like an abhorrent prostitute posing on the corner to seduce men.
The fool who approaches her--
she grabs him and kisses him, [Prov. 7:13]
pours him wine from the dregs, from the venom of vipers.
As soon as he drinks, he strays after her.
Seeing him stray from the path of truth,
she strips herself of all her finery that she dangled before that fool,
her adornments for seducing men:
her hair all arranged, red as a rose,
her face white and red,
six trinkets dangling from her ears,
her bed covered with fabric from Egypt,
on her neck all the jewels of the East,
her mouth poised, a delicate opening,
what lovely trappings!
The tongue pointed like a sword,
her words smooth like oil,
her lips beautiful, red as a rose,
sweet with all the sweetness of the world.
She is dressed in purple,
adorned with forty adornments minus one. [9]
This fool follows her, drinks from the cup of wine,
fornicates with her, deviates after her.
What does she do?
She leaves him sleeping in bed.
She ascends, denounces him, obtains permission, and descends.
[10]
That fool wakes up and plans to play with her as before.
But she removes her decorations
and turns into a powerful warrior confronting him.
Arrayed in armor of flashing fire,
his[11] awesome terror vibrates the victim's body and soul.
He is full of fearsome eyes;
in his hand a sharp-edged sword drips bitter drops.
He kills that fool and flings him into hell.

Jacob descended to her, went straight to her abode, [12]
as it is said:
and he set out for Haran. [5]
He saw all the trappings of her house
and was saved from her.
Her mate, Sama'el, was offended
and swooped down to wage war
but could not overcome him,
as it is written:
And a man wrested with him... (Gen. 32:25)

Now he was saved and perfected,
raised to a perfect sphere and called Israel.
He attained a high rung, total perfection!
He became the central pillar, of whom it is written:
The center bar in the middle of the planks
shall run from end to end (Exo. 26:28) (Matt83:76-79f)

Zohar 2:267b

And that spirit which is called Asirta becomes stirred up...and goes to the female who is beneath all females. And she is Lilith the mother of demons. And a man may become stirred up by that evil spirit called Asirta, which attaches himself to that man and ties himself to him permanently. And on every New Moon that spirit of evil appearance becomes stirred up by Lilith, and at time that man suffers harm from the spirit, and falls to the ground and cannot get up, or even dies. (Patai81:462)
Bacharach, 'Emeq haMelekh, 19c

And behold, the harsh husk, that is Lilith, is always in the sheet of the bed of a man and a woman who copulate, in order to take the sparks of the drops of seed which go waste, because it cannot be without this, and she creates from them demons, spirits and Lilin. And there is an incantation to drive away Lilith from the bed and to bring forth holy souls, which is mentioned in the holy Zohar. (Patai81:463f)
Zohar 3:19a

The remedy against Lilith is this: In that hour in which a man copulates with his wife, he should concentrate in his head on the holiness of his Master and say this:
O you who are wrapped in velvet,
You have appeared!
Release, release!
Neither come nor go!
Neither you nor yours!
Go back, go back!
The sea is raging,
Its waves call you,
I hold on to the Holy One,
Wrap myself in the King's holiness.
Then let him cover his head and his wife for one hour, and do thus each time for three days of the receiving. For a grafting which is not received within three days will not be received at all. But in the book which Ashmodai gave to King Solomon it says for thirty days, and it says that after he finished the act he should sprinkle clear water around the couch. (Patai81:463)
Bacharach, 'Emeq haMelekh, 102d-103a

The Alien Woman is Lilith, and she is the sweetness of sin and the evil tongue. And from the lips of the Alien Woman honey flows. And although the Impure Female has no hands and feet for copulation, for the feet of the serpent were cut off, nevertheless the Female in her adornments looks as if she had hands and feet. And it is the mystery of her adornments that she can seduce men.... And she leaves the husband of her youth [Samael] and descends and fornicates with men who sleep below in the impurity of spontaneous emission, and from them are born demons and spirits and Lilin, and they are called the Sons of Man. (Patai81:462ff)
Zohar 1:54b-55a

R. Yitzhaq said: From the hour in which Cain killed Abel, Adam separated himself from his wife, [and] two female spirits came and copulated with him, and he begot spirits and demons which roam in the world. And this should not be difficult for you [to understand], for when a man dreams, female spirits come and play with him and get hot from him and thereafter bear [those demons] which are called the Plagues of Mankind. And they turn into a likeness of men, but they have no hair on their head.... And in a similar manner male spirits come to the women of this world who become pregnant from them and give birth to spirits and all of them are called Plagues of Mankind. After 130 years Adam clothed himself in zeal and had union with his wife and begot a son and called his name Seth (Patai81:471)
Re: Lilith: Adam's First Wife. by LeOstrich: 1:02pm On Feb 22, 2013
(a) Having decided to give Adam a helpmeet lest he should be alone of his kind, God put him into a deep sleep, removed one of his ribs, formed it into a woman, and closed up the wound, Adam awoke and said: 'This being shall be named "Woman", because she has been taken out o f man. A man and a woman shall be one flesh.' The title he gave her was Eve, 'the Mother of All Living''. [1]

(b) Some say that God created man and woman in His own image on the Sixth Day, giving them charge over the world; [2] but that Eve did not yet exist. Now, God had set Adam to name every beast, bird and other living thing. When they passed before him in pairs, male and female, Adam-being already like a twenty-year-old man-felt jealous of their loves, and though he tried coupling with each female in turn, found no satisfaction in the act. He therefore cried: 'Every creature but I has a proper matel', and prayed God would remedy this injustice. [3]

(c) God then formed Lilith, the first woman, just as He had formed Adam, except that He used filth and sediment instead of pure dust. From Adam's union with this demoness, and with another like her named Naamah, Tubal Cain's sister, sprang Asmodeus and innumerable demons that still plague mankind. Many generations later, Lilith and Naamah came to Solomon's judgement seat, disguised as harlots of Jerusalem'. [4]

(d) Adam and Lilith never found peace together; for when he wished to lie with her, she took offence at the recumbent posture he demanded. 'Why must I lie beneath you?' she asked. 'I also was made from dust, and am therefore your equal.' Because Adam tried to compel her obedience by force, Lilith, in a rage, uttered the magic name of God, rose into the air and left him.

Adam complained to God: 'I have been deserted by my helpmeet' God at once sent the angels Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof to fetch Lilith back. They found her beside the Red Sea, a region abounding in lascivious demons, to whom she bore lilim at the rate of more than one hundred a day. 'Return to Adam without delay,' the angels said, `or we will drown you!' Lilith asked: `How can I return to Adam and live like an honest housewife, after my stay beside the Red Sea?? 'It will be death to refuse!' they answered. `How can I die,' Lilith asked again, `when God has ordered me to take charge of all newborn children: boys up to the eighth day of life, that of circumcision; girls up to the twentieth day. None the less, if ever I see your three names or likenesses displayed in an amulet above a newborn child, I promise to spare it.' To this they agreed; but God punished Lilith by making one hundred of her demon children perish daily; [5] and if she could not destroy a human infant, because of the angelic amulet, she would spitefully turn against her own. [6]

(e) Some say that Lilith ruled as queen in Zmargad, and again in Sheba; and was the demoness who destroyed job's sons. [7] Yet she escaped the curse of death which overtook Adam, since they had parted long before the Fall. Lilith and Naamah not only strangle infants but also seduce dreaming men, any one of whom, sleeping alone, may become their victim. [8]

(f) Undismayed by His failure to give Adam a suitable helpmeet, God tried again, and let him watch while he built up a woman's anatomy: using bones, tissues, muscles, blood and glandular secretions, then covering the whole with skin and adding tufts of hair in places. The sight caused Adam such disgust that even when this woman, the First Eve, stood there in her full beauty, he felt an invincible repugnance. God knew that He had failed once more, and took the First Eve away. Where she went, nobody knows for certain. [9]

(g) God tried a third time, and acted more circumspectly. Having taken a rib from Adam's side in his sleep, He formed it into a woman; then plaited her hair and adorned her, like a bride, with twenty-four pieces of jewellery, before waking him. Adam was entranced. [10]

(h) Some say that God created Eve not from Adam's rib, but from a tail ending in a sting which had been part of his body. God cut this off, and the stump-now a useless coccyx-is still carried by Adam's descendants. [11]

(i) Others say that God's original thought had been to create two human beings, male and female; but instead He designed a single one with a male face looking forward, and a female face looking back. Again He changed His mind, removed Adam's backward-looking face, and built a woman's body for it. [12]

(j) Still others hold that Adam was originally created as an androgyne of male and female bodies joined back to back. Since this posture made locomotion difficult, and conversation awkward, God divided the androgyne and gave each half a new rear. These separate beings He placed in Eden, forbidding them to couple. [13]

Notes on sources:

1. Genesis II. 18-25; III. 20.

2. Genesis I. 26-28.

3. Gen. Rab. 17.4; B. Yebamot 632.

4. Yalqut Reubeni ad. Gen. II. 21; IV. 8.

5. Alpha Beta diBen Sira, 47; Gaster, MGWJ, 29 (1880), 553 ff.

6. Num. Rab. 16.25.

7. Targum ad job 1. 15.

8. B. Shabbat 151b; Ginzberg, LJ, V. 147-48.

9. Gen. Rab. 158, 163-64; Mid. Abkir 133, 135; Abot diR. Nathan 24; B. Sanhedrin 39a.

10. Gen. II. 21-22; Gen. Rab. 161.

11. Gen. Rab. 134; B. Erubin 18a.

12. B. Erubin 18a.

13. Gen. Rab. 55; Lev. Rab. 14.1: Abot diR. Nathan 1.8; B. Berakhot 61a; B. Erubin 18a; Tanhuma Tazri'a 1; Yalchut Gen. 20; Tanh. Buber iii.33; Mid. Tehillim 139, 529.
Re: Lilith: Adam's First Wife. by LeOstrich: 1:05pm On Feb 22, 2013
1. The tradition that man's first sexual intercourse was with animals, not women, may be due to the widely spread practice of bestiality among herdsmen of the Middle East, which is still condoned by custom, although figuring three times in the Pentateuch as a capital crime. In the Akkadian Gilgamesh Epic, Enkidu is said to have lived with gazelles and jostled other wild beasts at the watering place, until civilized by Aruru's priestess. Having enjoyed her embraces for six days and seven nights, he wished to rejoin the wild beasts but, to his surprise, they fled from him. Enkidu then knew that he had gained understanding, and the priestess said: 'Thou art wise, Enkidu, like unto a godl'

2. Primeval man was held by the Babylonians to have been androgynous. Thus the Gilgamesh Epic gives Enkidu androgynous features: `the hair of his head like a woman's, with locks that sprout like those of Nisaba, the Grain-goddess.' The Hebrew tradition evidently derives from Greek sources, because both terms used in a Tannaitic midrash to describe the bisexual Adam are Greek: androgynos, 'man-woman', and diprosopon, 'twofaced'. Philo of Alexandria, the Hellenistic philosopher and commentator on the Bible, contemporary with Jesus, held that man was at first bisexual; so did the Gnostics. This belief is clearly borrowed from Plato. Yet the myth of two bodies placed back to back may well have been founded on observation of Siamese twins, which are sometimes joined in this awkward manner. The two-faced Adam appears to be a fancy derived from coins or statues of Janus, the Roman New Year god.

3. Divergences between the Creation myths of Genesis r and n, which allow Lilith to be presumed as Adam's first mate, result from a careless weaving together of an early Judaean and a late priestly tradition. The older version contains the rib incident. Lilith typifies the Anath-worshipping Canaanite women, who were permitted pre-nuptial promiscuity. Time after time the prophets denounced Israelite women for following Canaanite practices; at first, apparently, with the priests' approval-since their habit of dedicating to God the fees thus earned is expressly forbidden in Deuteronomy xxIII. I8. Lilith's flight to the Red Sea recalls the ancient Hebrew view that water attracts demons. 'Tortured and rebellious demons' also found safe harbourage in Egypt. Thus Asmodeus, who had strangled Sarah's first six husbands, fled 'to the uttermost parts of Egypt' (Tobit viii. 3), when Tobias burned the heart and liver of a fish on their wedding night.

4. Lilith's bargain with the angels has its ritual counterpart in an apotropaic rite once performed in many Jewish communities. To protect the newborn child against Lilith-and especially a male, until he could be permanently safeguarded by circumcision-a ring was drawn with natron, or charcoal, on the wall of the birthroom, and inside it were written the words: 'Adam and Eve. Out, Lilith!' Also the names Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof (meanings uncertain) were inscribed on the door. If Lilith nevertheless succeeded in approaching the child and handling him, he would laugh in his sleep. To avert danger, it was held wise to strike the sleeping child's lips with one finger-whereupon Lilith would vanish.

5. 'Lilith' is usually derived from the Babylonian-Assyrian word lilitu, ,a female demon, or wind-spirit'-one of a triad mentioned in Babylonian spells. But she appears earlier as 'Lillake' on a 2000 B.G. Sumerian tablet from Ur containing the tale of Gilgamesh and the Willow Tree. There she is a demoness dwelling in the trunk of a willow-tree tended by the Goddess Inanna (Anath) on the banks of the Euphrates. Popular Hebrew etymology seems to have derived 'Lilith' from layil, 'night'; and she therefore often appears as a hairy night-monster, as she also does in Arabian folklore. Solomon suspected the Queen of Sheba of being Lilith, because she had hairy legs. His judgement on the two harlots is recorded in I Kings III. 16 ff. According to Isaiah xxxiv. I4-I5, Lilith dwells among the desolate ruins in the Edomite Desert where satyrs (se'ir), reems, pelicans, owls, jackals, ostriches, arrow-snakes and kites keep her company.

6. Lilith's children are called lilim. In the Targum Yerushalmi, the priestly blessing of Numbers vi. 26 becomes: 'The Lord bless thee in all thy doings, and preserve thee from the Lilim!' The fourth-century A.D. commentator Hieronymus identified Lilith with the Greek Lamia, a Libyan queen deserted by Zeus, whom his wife Hera robbed of her children. She took revenge by robbing other women of theirs.

7. The Lamiae, who seduced sleeping men, sucked their blood and ate their flesh, as Lilith and her fellow-demonesses did, were also known as Empusae, 'forcers-in'; or Mormolyceia, 'frightening wolves'; and described as 'Children of Hecate'. A Hellenistic relief shows a naked Lamia straddling a traveller asleep on his back. It is characteristic of civilizations where women are treated as chattels that they must adopt the recumbent posture during intercourse, which Lilith refused. That Greek witches who worshipped Hecate favoured the superior posture, we know from Apuleius; and it occurs in early Sumerian representations of the sexual act, though not in the Hittite. Malinowski writes that Melanesian girls ridicule what they call `the missionary position', which demands that they should lie passive and recumbent.

8. Naamah, 'pleasant', is explained as meaning that 'the demoness sang pleasant songs to idols'. Zmargad suggest smaragdos, the semi-precious aquamarine; and may therefore be her submarine dwelling. A demon named Smaragos occurs in the Homeric Epigrams.

9. Eve's creation by God from Adam's rib-a myth establishing male supremacy and disguising Eve's divinity-lacks parallels in Mediterranean or early Middle-Eastern myth. The story perhaps derives iconotropically from an ancient relief, or painting, which showed the naked Goddess Anath poised in the air, watching her lover Mot murder his twin Aliyan; Mot (mistaken by the mythographer for Yahweh) was driving a curved dagger under Aliyan's fifth rib, not removing a sixth one. The familiar story is helped by a hidden pun on tsela, the Hebrew for 'rib': Eve, though designed to be Adam's helpmeet, proved to be a tsela, a 'stumbling', or 'misfortune'. Eve's formation from Adam's tail is an even more damaging myth; perhaps suggested by the birth of a child with a vestigial tail instead of a coccyx-a not infrequent occurrence.

10. The story of Lilith's escape to the East and of Adam's subsequent marriage to Eve may, however, record an early historical incident: nomad herdsmen, admitted into Lilith's Canaanite queendom as guests (see 16. 1), suddenly seize power and, when the royal household thereupon flees, occupy a second queendom which owes allegiance to the Hittite Goddess Heba.

The meaning of 'Eve' is disputed. Hawwah is explained in Genesis III. 20 as 'mother of all living'; but this may well be a Hebraicized form of the divine name Heba, Hebat, Khebat or Khiba. This goddess, wife of the Hittite Storm-god, is shown riding a lion in a rock-sculpture at Hattusaswhich equates her with Anath-and appears as a form of Ishtar in Hurrian texts. She was worshipped at Jerusalem (see 27. 6). Her Greek name was Hebe, Heracles's goddess-wife.
Re: Lilith: Adam's First Wife. by ooman(m): 1:10pm On Feb 22, 2013
i feel like mastur.bating over her.

Re: Lilith: Adam's First Wife. by LeOstrich: 1:13pm On Feb 22, 2013
ooman: i feel like mastur.bating over her.

She is known as a Seductress, so I guess she is possessing you already
Re: Lilith: Adam's First Wife. by ooman(m): 1:19pm On Feb 22, 2013
Le Ostrich:

She is known as a Seductress, so I guess she is possessing you already

YES YES isnt she sweet. when will she visit me. I really need to, you know, with her wink

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