Record #97
Lilith
A shifting female night-being associated with temptation, revenge, and terror.
Original Text
‘For before Eve was Lilith’, we readin an old Hebrew text. This legend moved the English poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti (I828-82) to write the poem ‘Eden Bower’ . Lilith was a serpent; she was Adam’s first wife and gave him Shapes that coiled in the woods and waters, Glittering sons and radiant daughters.
It was later that God created Eve; Lilith, to revenge herself on Adam’s human wife, urged Eve to taste the forbidden fruit and to conceive Cain, brother and murderer of Abel. Such is the early form of the myth followed and bettered by Rossetti. Throughout the Middle Ages the influence of the word layil, Hebrew for ‘night’, gave a new turn to the myth. Lilith is no longer a serpent; she becomes an apparition of the night. At times she is an angel who rules over the procreation of mankind, at times a demon who assaults those who sleep alone or those who travel lonely roads. In popular imagination she is a tall silent woman with long black hair worn loose.
It was later that God created Eve; Lilith, to revenge herself on Adam’s human wife, urged Eve to taste the forbidden fruit and to conceive Cain, brother and murderer of Abel. Such is the early form of the myth followed and bettered by Rossetti. Throughout the Middle Ages the influence of the word layil, Hebrew for ‘night’, gave a new turn to the myth. Lilith is no longer a serpent; she becomes an apparition of the night. At times she is an angel who rules over the procreation of mankind, at times a demon who assaults those who sleep alone or those who travel lonely roads. In popular imagination she is a tall silent woman with long black hair worn loose.