The Evolution of Lilith

The Evolution of Lilith

The first appearance of Lilith came in the form of a cameo in a story called the "Prologue of Gilgamesh". In it, a great tree is described, obviously the tree of life. On the top of a tree rests a bird, possibly an eagle, and in the center lives a "dragon[who] had build it's nest there...the demon Lilith..." This can be equated with the Midguard Serpent of Norse mythology and various other chaos creatures who lived and gnawed on the Tree of Life. The purpose these entities served was one of balancing the Yang with the Yin, tempering the force of Creation with the force of Destruction, order with chaos, as one cannot exist without the other.

Thus Lilith, and other so-called "serpents" served an important purpose, that of keeping the Yang under control, and thus also serving a psychological purpose. When one rests too much in the light, one can develop a self-righteous attitude, and starts to think that they know everything. This was the true nature of the state Adam and Eve were in before the serpent in the garden, who was Lilith as we shall later see, were in....Adam and Eve had the false sense of security that they knew everything there was to know and carried within them the forces of creation (Yang). Lilith, on the other hand, who was the personification of Yin brought them down to earth when she got Eve to eat from the tree. Where Yang says "I know the right way, I know everything", Yin says "You don't know everything, you never will know everything, and there is no right way." Thus, Adam and Eve were brought down to earth, so to speak, when they partook of the fruit. The expulsion from paradise symbolized their acceptance of reality, and Yahweh's displeasure symbolized humankind's need to control and escape reality. As one can see, each character in the story of the fall are archtypical symbols for forces within the human psyche...

Going back to Lilith, after her appearence in the Prologue, she became described on tablets found in ancient Sumeria as "the hand of Inanna" who swept men into her temples for sacred sexual rights. Lilith became the symbolism of feminine allure, the dangerous seductive qualities of the dark moon. Though she was never a Goddess in Sumerian lore, Lilith was nonetheless an important enough figure for later cultures to take note of her.