The Creation Of Lilith
did she wake up in hell
dragged from another world
another earth
another garden
another life
did her soft wings cocoon rigid around her all the way through black hole portals
absorb endings and voids and grief until they were depthless black
cradle her at the crash
pull open just a crack
inches at a time
to birth her into a new life
one she didn’t ask for
and there the god crouched
gasped
clapped his hands together
peered down into a woman shaped crater
eyes sparkling with stupid awe
the absurdity of his roaring declaration
LOOK AT WHAT I MADE
he bellowed to winged creatures
their too many eyes roving, poking, grabbing
and Lilith is so far from home
too frozen to speak
to resist
to rage
to claw her way up
out
away
so the god drops heavy into the hollow
death womb carved into remorseful earth
pulls her from a living grave
shakes a little when he passes Lilith up
cold lightning shivering through her veins
a hesitant being pulls her to his chest
Azreal, angel of death, sent to collect from Gaia
even the earth trembles
bristles
aches
reaches for Lilith
but it’s too late
too late
far too late
The story of Lilith is fascinating and elusive. You’d think she’d have book after book devoted to just her. She is, after all, the first created woman in the Yahweh story. So maybe, like me, you go looking for an introduction to this myth-crosser and then, also like me, you find it extremely hard to find a satisfactory compilation of her stories. She is surprisingly a side character rather than a main character in every story she lands in. And the further you dig the more you realize that a side glance from the corner of your eye is actually the only way to truly see her. She is nearly a ghost, a haunting, an omen flickering across your periphery. To see her you have to stop trying to make her sit directly in front of you. Instead you discover (by frustrating trial and error) to pick up the clues she’s dropped, weigh them in both hands, add them to your own cauldron of collected myth and lore and legends. Whatever comes bubbling up to the surface, alchemized in the fire of archetype, is yours to keep.
Lilith is not a woman who lives in the center of the village. She is a woman of the wild, of uncrossable deserts, of realms that glimmer and stutter while they overlap ours. She is something other, something different, something else. Following after her, picking up her trails, won’t ever be done with a map or by seeking out obvious mile markers. It’ll only ever be done by sense, by intuition, by wandering out into the thickest, hottest elements led only by the faint scent of oasis. And, when you find her, you’ll finally understand why she has never allowed her story to be central, to be first, to be worshipped, to be sat down on a sturdy chair in full sunlight. Lilith is not a story you own. She is a story you live.
Still the question lingers: who is this woman who plays such a vital role in ancient stories? In the stories written by patriarchy she is marked with a simple, diminishing label nailed into her belly every time: demon. Dark Goddess. There are plenty of names reserved for her, even in places of reverence, but in my opinion they all fall short. They all forget that she was something else long before she was Adam’s first wife. Maybe she was a dark goddess. Maybe she was the thief of men’s seed and the mother of demons. Maybe. I’m going to hold open the doors for the complexities of Lilith and of the people, like myself, who hold her as an archetype. I’m going to clear the ground and make room for our shadows to sit with us. And I’m going to invite you to travel through the slivers of Lilith’s myth with me while taking into account the stories that surround her, the cultural practices at the time of writing her, the world she was first born into and the world she was remade into. But Lilith did not begin in a garden with a first man named Adam. She didn’t begin with a male deity. Lilith was born into the world of storytelling a thousand years earlier in another garden with a goddess named Inanna.
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