My Personal Practice: Lilith
So, a kindly Anon on Pagans Uncensored said I should talk about my practice more. I’m assuming they mean the religious side, since that’s what the blog is ostensibly about (it’s either that or screeching like monkeys and throwing poop, and I’m gonna pass on that), so now that I’ve been doing it a while and feel pretty settled in it, I’m going to talk about how I understand Lilith.
Everything following is personal belief and experience, and I don’t expect it to match your experiences, or for you to believe or practice it. It might or might not agree with existing views. I’ve spent a lot of time and energy building this system, but I’ve also been careful to source from Lilith’s recorded stories as well and avoid appropriation. I’m always available to discuss if you find any part of this problematic, because I understand she’s originally a Jewish demon (with some Babylonian, Sumerian, and modern DNA as well) and I’m not Jewish.
I’ve touched on this briefly before, but not in as much depth as I’d like – I worship Lilith as a quadripartite entity. It’s not entirely unlike the Maiden-Mother-Crone iconography in concept, but not truly like it either as it doesn’t necessarily correlate to age or reproductive status, but more to the roles that she fills in her history (and mine, because like I said, this is a highly personal system). In each role she is still Lilith, but focusing on a different aspect of her personality and history. These roles occur chronologically.
I strongly believe Lilith is a queer deity. In my experience with her, she has not only appeared to me as multiple gender presentations and biological configurations (including intersex, and hermaphroditic/having multiple sets of external genitalia) but she has consistently given me messages of radical self-acceptance and self-realization, especially as pertaining to sex and gender identity. Hermaphrodeities (Raven Kaldera, questionable as a source but eh) and Lilith: Queen of the Desert (Anya Kless) both also mention this belief.
(Apologies for the less-than-stellar references. I really need to actually buy more books so I can properly cite things.)
Her first role is as the Childless Mother. Her backstories are interesting in that they seem to conflict on whether she has children or is herself barren – she either has a hundred demonic children a day (Alphabet of Ben-Sira), had half-demon children with Adam for 130 years while he was separated from Eve (Zohar), or was struck barren by God and no longer bears children at all (Raphael Patai). Not that these are necessarily mutually exclusive, either; she could be barren now and have previous children, or (and this is my personal belief) she adopts her children from humanity and other spirits, while her pre-existing children continue to reproduce, and their entire lineage is called hers, whether first generation or great-great-great-great-grandchild.
Mother Lilith is a figure of protection, tough love, and mourning. She has borne countless children, only to have them slaughtered by angels as punishment for her leaving. Her human children are often similarly outcast – transgender people, nonbinary people, queer people, and people with disabilities all number among her human-bodied children. I’m a nonbinary queer person with a disability myself, and when I am feeling downtrodden or in pain, she is an enormous source of strength to me and helps me to speak up for myself and others.
Her element in this role is water, symbolizing the waters of her womb, which may be dried but nonetheless she bears multitudes.
Her second role is as the Deathless Martyr. The Alphabet of Ben-Sira is a satirical, if not anti-Semitic work, but even so it became a major part of her modern mythos and the story itself is an important part of our current understanding of her. The legend of Lilith as Adam’s first wife, who refused to lie beneath him (exactly what it sounds like) and fled Eden, speaking the forbidden Name of God and taking flight, resonates strongly for me. A lot of modern neo-Pagans call her the first feminist, which isn’t really true – Adam was a jerk to her in the story, sure, but Judaism is in no way anti-women. The Martyr Lilith is definitely a modern interpretation of her, but I disagree strongly with groups that would make her out to be a misandrist. In my experience, she does not hate men, she hates oppressors; she banished herself from paradise to escape such treatment, becoming a martyr for others who are forced to leave to preserve their own dignity and health. (But not dying. Thus the Deathless part. I admit, there is a degree of wanting to sound cool in the titles. Doesn’t everyone?)
Martyr Lilith doesn’t tolerate oppression, no matter how lovely the chains may be. She can leave paradise itself if she wants, not like Eve who was fooled into sinning, but with her eyes wide open, on her own terms. She was there when I told my now-ex-husband that I no longer want to be with men. She was watching when I said I wanted a divorce, and she was waiting for me when I left to live with my now-girlfriend. (As an aside, in The Treatise on the Left Emanation, it mentions that Lilith and Samael were created androgynously and conjoined in the same manner as Adam and Eve were at the beginning, and elsewhere and later Lilith as the Serpent (with Samael as her…male parts) seduced and impregnated Eve. Hot damn, ladies.)
Her element in my practice is air. When she spoke the Name of God, she flew into the sky, forsaking the soil of Eden for the wind and wilderness, bending even the laws of physics to her knowledge.
Her third role is as the Bloodless Murderer. Lilith is most known as a child-suffocating, miscarriage-causing demoness; I don’t try to deny or sugarcoat this. I don’t want children. If I were to somehow become pregnant (unlikely, as I’m not sexually interested in penises), I would want an abortion, or if that somehow failed, to miscarry. A lot of the world would view this as selfish, but I take the opposite view: given our state of overpopulation, passing on my crappy genetics and increasing the burden of humanity on the ecosystem would be the ultimate in selfishness. For these reasons, I do in fact celebrate Lilith’s child-killing aspect, at least as it extends into my own life.
More abstractly, Murderer Lilith is about cutting away parts of you that aren’t beneficial. It can be relationships, paths not taken, emotional baggage, even literal body parts (though this hasn’t happened to me, knock on wood). Like a surgeon with a scalpel, she reaches inside you and – snikt – a connection you thought you couldn’t live without is severed, and you slowly realize that you are in pain, but you are alive, and you will recover.
In her role as the Murderer, Lilith’s element is fire. She is angry, passionate, and devouring, like a wildfire that both destroys and rejuvenates the forest.
Lastly, Lilith is the Nationless Queen. This role is the most personally-derived one (although one could argue she’s a ruler in the Qlipha of Gamaliel). Having left literal Paradise, where she would have been as a queen, mourned her children, rejected all other authority, and cut ties with everything that held her back, Lilith becomes complete unto herself. She’s unassailable because her knowledge of herself is perfect. She has burned away her weaknesses and strengthened what remains; she’s like a circle with no edges, corners, or weak points for attackers to get their claws into from any side. Queen Lilith owns not an inch of the world, but she is still in and of it, and reigns over her scattered children, lending them her indomitable strength.
Lilith as the Queen symbolizes the power that comes from self-knowledge. She stands for endurance and victory over a world that would see you molded and sanded into a shape that isn’t the true You, and reminds you that you have inside you a tiny, hard core of ‘self’ that once found and nourished can become an incredible source of power and actualization. The world will tell you that you aren’t enough; Queen Lilith will tell you that you are more than you can ever realize.
As the Nationless Queen, Lilith’s element is earth; like the mountains, she is mighty, ancient, and even millennia of survival barely weather her. Though she has no country or crown, she has sovereignty over herself, and thus the entire world is hers.
…Well, I hope that was informative! Obviously it’s not more than an overview, but it still took me ages to type out. I’m kinda feeling a bit shy about saying even as much as I have (to reiterate: it is a very personal system!) but the nice Anon did ask, and I said I would, and I really should, so here you are, dear followers, and others as well.
I could add about a billion more words to this, but this seems like a good start, so I will leave it here for the moment. This should also explain the name of my (sadly neglected) shrine blog, mother-martyr-murderer-queen.
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