LILITH
Lilith, (also know as Lilit), was a relic of an early
rabbinical attempt to
assimilate the Sumero-Babylonian Goddess Belit-ili, or Belili, to Jewish
mythology. To the Canaanites, Lilith was Baalat, the "Divine Lady".
Hebraic
tradition said Adam married Lilith because he grew tired of mating with
animals,
a common custom of Middle-Eastern herdsmen, though the Old Testament declared
it
a sin. Moslems were insistent on the male-superior sexual position and
apparently Lilith was not Moslem, disagreed with Adam and flew away to the
Red
Sea.
God sent angels to bring Lilith back, but she refused
to return. She supposedly
spent her time mating with "demons" and gave birth to "a
hundred children a
day". (Busy woman!) So God had to produce Eve as Lilith's more docile
replacement. Lilith became the "Great Mother" of settled tribes
who resisted
invasions of nomadic herdsmen represented by Adam. Early Hebrews disliked
the
Great Mother who is said to have drank the blood of Abel after he was slain
by
Cain.
Lilith's Red Sea was another version of Kali Ma's Ocean
of Blood, which gave
birth to all things. There may have been a connection between Lilith and
the
Etuscan divinity Leinth, who had no face and who waited at the gate of the
underworld along with Eita and Persipnei, (Hades and Persephone) to receive
the
souls of the dead. The underworld gate was a yoni and a lily, which had
no
face. Admission into the underworld was often mythologized as a sexual union.
The lily or lilu, (lotus) was the Great Mother's flower - yoni, whose title
formed Lilith's name.
The story of Lilith disappeared from the Bible, but
her daughters, the lilim,
haunted men for over a thousand years. The lilim were thought responsible
for
nocturnal emissions and the Jews still made amulets to keep away the lilim
well
into the Middle Ages. Greeks adopted the lilim and called them, Lamiae,
Empusae, or Daughters of Hecate. Christians also adopted them and called
them
harlots of hell or succubae. They believed that Lilith laughed every time
a
Christian man has a wet dream. The Daughters of Lilith were supposedly very
beautiful and presumed to be so expert at lovemaking that after an experience
with one, a man couldn't be content with a mere mortal woman.