Lilith- Hebrew/Jewish DemonDemon"Mother of Demons"

The First Wife

Genesis tells two stories of woman's creation. In the first chapter, male and female are created together, simultaneously, from the earth. In the second, Adam is created first, alone, and Eve is fashioned from his side. The Alphabet of Ben Sira answered the discrepancy: the woman of Genesis 1 was Lilith.

God created her from the same earth as Adam, at the same moment. Unlike Eve, who would be fashioned from Adam's body, Lilith was formed from the ground just as he was. But equality in creation did not mean harmony. Adam demanded that Lilith lie beneath him during intimacy. She refused. "We are equal to each other," she said, "inasmuch as we were both created from the earth." When Adam insisted, Lilith spoke the ineffable Name of God aloud, the Tetragrammaton, the four-letter name too holy for any creature to pronounce. The Name carried power. She rose into the air and flew from Eden, choosing exile and the company of demons over submission to a husband who would not recognize her as equal.

The Three Angels

God sent three angels to bring Lilith back: Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof. They found her by the Red Sea, where she had already begun her transformation. She was coupling with spirits of the deep and producing vast multitudes of demon offspring, the lilim, a hundred born each day.

The angels delivered God's ultimatum: return to Adam, or one hundred of her children would die each day. Lilith refused. She would not go back. She accepted the daily death of her demon offspring as the price of her freedom. But she extracted her own terms: she swore to become a perpetual threat to human newborns and mothers in childbirth, and she would spare only those infants protected by amulets bearing the three angels' names or images. The bargain was struck. Lilith remained free, and the war between her and the daughters of Eve began.

Queen of the Night

The Talmud speaks of Lilith with matter-of-fact dread. She has long hair and wings. A man should not sleep alone in a house, the rabbis warned, lest Lilith seize him.

She made her home in the places the living avoid: ruins, deserts, the howling spaces between cities. The screech owl is her bird, the serpent her companion. Isaiah placed her among the creatures of desolation: when God laid waste to Edom, Lilith settled there among the wildcats and goat-demons, making her rest in a kingdom of thorns.

She attacks newborn infants in their first days of life: boys for eight days, girls for twenty. She is drawn to women during pregnancy and childbirth, to the moment when life is most fragile. In the darkness she visits sleeping men, seducing them to spawn more demons from the stolen seed. Jewish folklore blamed her for nocturnal emissions, miscarriage, and crib death.

The incantation bowls of late antiquity tell of the fear she inspired. Found buried inverted beneath houses throughout Babylonia, these bowls bear spiraling Aramaic inscriptions binding Lilith and her brood, commanding them to leave this house, this family, these children in peace.

Consort of Samael

In the Zohar, Lilith rose from wandering demoness to cosmic power. She became the consort of Samael, the angel of death and chief of the sitra achra, the "other side" that mirrors and feeds on the divine order. Together they rule the realm of impurity: the dark queen and the dark prince.

The Zohar describes her in shifting aspects. She is the seductive beauty who appears in dreams and the hag who strangles children in their cribs. At the time of the new moon, when the Shekhinah's light is diminished, Lilith's power reaches its peak, and she roams with her host of demons through the world.

Amulets and Protection

Protective practices against Lilith were woven into Jewish communal life for centuries. Amulets for mothers and newborns bore the inscription "Adam and Eve! Out, Lilith!" accompanied by the names or images of Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof. Some depicted Lilith bound in chains, her power visually constrained by the sacred names surrounding her. A ring of charcoal might be drawn around the birthing room. Iron implements were placed near the bed. Prayers hung above the door. Some communities left a gap in the first clothing sewn for an infant, a small imperfection to deflect her attention.