Lilith and The Drum Eden
As I mentioned in a previous post, I started hand drumming to improve my belly dancing, but then it began another Love affair, the beautiful drum, the Rhythm of the All. Previous Post The Rhythm of the All
Yesterday my new drum arrived. I was watching the tracking all day long, I felt like a kid on Christmas. It arrived and I fell in Love with the instrument. I had to find a name for my new drum child. When I play her, it is heavenly, it takes me somewhere. So I decided on the name Eden, but then I fought it because of my first understanding the myth of the Garden of Eden, and the roles played by Adam and Eve. Eden insisted on Eden, then I remembered the missing story, the one with Lilith in it, the "original myth."
Lilith has been gently saying her hello to me for a bit now, coincidences or perhaps not. The curious cat I am, I dig deeper...Take a bite? ;)
From one of my favorite authors Joseph Campbell:
"Mythology is not a lie. Mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth — penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words, beyond images. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told."
To Purchase Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth
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| Lilith and Eve |
The Story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden is one of the founding myths in western culture. So many of our most basic concepts about men, women, sexuality and the relationship between human life and nature are based upon what is described in this story, and thought of as holy truth. These concepts are entrenched deeply in our psyche; we are largely unaware of them. If we are to be free, we must first become aware of these basic concepts and of the roles they play in our lives, and then do our work as witches to change them.
...The purpose of the discussion is to bring to the surface the hidden agendas of the monotheistic religion...Issues such as childbirth as a punishment to women, violence and control in a relationship, women as temptress, the role of men and their relation to responsibility, our naked bodies as a source of shame and many more. Discussing and sharing our thoughts...allows each person to find his or her newly reclaimed images of Adam and Eve; this helps us reclaim our own unique masculinity and femininity and choose a more equal relationship between the two.
Excerpt taken from one of my favorite books to reference. Stepping Into Ourselves; An Anthology of Writings on Priestesses
Reclaiming Adam and Eve, Chapter written by Hava Montauriano
Edited by Anne Key and Candace Kant
According to midrashic literature, Adam's first wife was not Eve but a woman named Lilith, who was created in the first Genesis account. Only when Lilith rebelled and abandoned Adam did God create Eve, in the second account, as a replacement. In an important 13th century Kabbalah text, the Sefer ha-Zohar ("The Book of Splendour") written by the Spaniard Moses de Leon (c. 1240-1305), it is explained that:
At the same time Jehovah created Adam, he created a woman, Lilith, who like Adam was taken from the earth. She was given to Adam as his wife. But there was a dispute between them about a matter that when it came before the judges had to be discussed behind closed doors. She spoke the unspeakable name of Jehovah and vanished.
The origins of the Goddess Lilith are shrouded in mystery which seems appropos for Her. She is a banner for female power, authenticity, and the act of reclaiming parts of our Selves that are vital for survival. Many of Her stories are dark – whispers of stealing babies and cavorting with demons. They call Her a winged succubus, the bride of the devil and the patriarchy has seemed determined to make Lilith an object of fear and loathing.
As a Goddess with no cults or defined ritual ceremonies, seeking the threads of Lilith’s origins can be challenging. Lilith’s most ancient forms seem to be of a Bird and/or Snake Goddess. Her name appears as a spirit of the wind in early Sumer, associated with Queen of Heaven and Earth, Innana. By 2400 bce, as patriarchy began to encroach on Sumerian myths and traditions, Lilith was transformed into a demon of the night who caused storms and destructive winds. Several classes of demons were named for Her: the vampiric Lillu demons, the Lilitu (she-demons), and the Ardat Lili and the Irdu Lili who haunted lonely places waiting to prey on humans and conceive demon babies.
The Lilu, the Lilit, the night Lili,
Enchantments, disasters, spells,
Illnesses, evil charms,
In the name of heaven
and in the name of earth
Let them be exorcised.
~ from an ancient Babylonian seal
This litany of demonic beings is at complete odds with the graceful Spirit of the Air and Maiden of Innanna’s temples that was represented by a lily and surrounded by owls and lions.
As Sumerian culture was further superseded by the Babylonian, Hittite,and Semitic civilizations, the demonization of Lilith continued. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Lilith is the snake that rests in the tree and refuses to vacate it. The Goddess Innana turns to the”hero” Gilgamesh who in turn slays the serpent (sound familiar?) and restores the tree to Innana. Of course, in this rendition as created by men, the Goddess Inanna is grateful to Gilgamesh for banishing Her previous handmaiden – more layers to the banishing of Lilith.
Lilith was absorbed into Hebrew legends after the Babylonian exile(approximately 586 bce) and installed into Jewish demonology as a “buyer beware” sign to the Hebrew women who continued their tradition of praying to the Great Goddess. To promote submissiveness and adherence to the new monotheistic religion that the men were creating, Lilith was held up as a woman rejected and cast out. When She does not submit to Adam as his first wife, She is called the mother of demons and accused of killing children. She was the ancient symbol of what happened to women who demanded equality and disobeyed their husbands.
The bible speaks of the evil serpent who offers Eve (the new wife) a bite of the apple in the Garden of Eden. Here again is Lilith as the serpent Goddess but in a twisted fashion as the root of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Eve has been blamed for accepting the temptation of the serpent for 2000 years, but Lilith was the vehicle for that temptation.
For centuries, Lilith was relegated to the dusty, depths of the Zohar and only spoken of in prayers of protection against Her evil behavior. If men had wet dreams, it was blamed on Lilith. If infants died in their sleep, it was blamed on Lilith. She has been shrouded not only in mystery but in hundreds of years of fear, blame, rage, and isolation. Patriarchy established a pattern of a “woman” who disobeys man, flees from man, lives in isolation, takes out Her rage on innocents, and is the eternal femme fatale (emphasis on fatale).
What is left for modern women? Is Lilith just another casualty of patriarchy or has She survived over two thousand years of histrionic repression?
Like the screech owl for whom Lilith is named, Her screech cannot be silenced. She is all women who have been subjugated, humiliated, and cast out from male-defined society. Her rage is the rage of women who have realized that our natural women’s sexuality has been made dirty by men who fear the power of it and the power of free women.
Lilith is the experience large and small of each and every woman on this planetat one or more times in our lives: the rape victim who was asking for it; the woman who is told to shut up and, if she fails to do that, who is ignored; women who bump up against “glass ceilings;” women whose natural rhythms are disrespected, bullied into hiding, and are even denuded through pharmaceuticals and surgical manipulations; women who are told through nearly every aspect of society that they are not good enough, pretty enough, thin enough, or accomplished enough – and that they never will be; women told that their growth depends on the surrender of their bodies against their will and true desires; women who are subjected to sexual mutilation; the woman who lives in fear and isolation in her relationship with a man.
As I was writing this copy, I saw Lilith standing on the shores of the Red Sea. She was standing in the surf, wind blowing Her long red hair in tangles and the expression on Her face was one of calm defiance. Gone was the rage, the humiliation. The elementals danced around Her in delight. Here was a woman, a Goddess who has heard it all and been called every negative name in the book. Here was a woman, a Goddess who mourned and then gathered Herself together to stand tall and straight and beautiful once again. Here is a woman, a Goddess that is the symbol of reclaiming our Women’s Power and surviving.
Lilith brings us the message of creative female force in the breath of Her beloved spirits of Air. In Her serpent form, She calls us to cast off the parts of our lives that our suppressing us. Through all forms, She invites us to stand with Her and to know that we are never, ever alone.
