E : Eve, Lilith’s sister

In an earlier post in this thread of Lilith, I mentioned Lilith & Eve in the Garden of Eden as being the first trailblazers. Please remember that I am treating this story as a myth for the purpose of extracting some psychological meanings from the acts of Lilith who challenged Adam, and Eve who disobeyed the prohibition of not eating the apple.

Many authors, historians & theologians who have written about the fall from Paradise, view it as the rise from an ouroboric, unconscious, innocent and childlike state; that something had to happen to precipitate Eve & Adam’s departure from the Garden. For Paul Tillich (Western theologian), the Fall represented ‘…a fall from the state of dreaming innocence…’ ‘…and awakening from potentiality into actuality; and that the ‘fall’ was necessary for the development of humankind, a symbol for the human situation, not a story of an event that happened ‘once upon a time’.

I imagine Lilith in the depths of the Red Sea pondering her Fate and that of Eve. She temporarily shed her pain and anguish and returned in disguise as a serpent (I’ll write later of Lilith as serpent and symbol of transformation) and tempted Eve to take the apple. I imagine Eve being presented with a choice – to remain forever dependent in the Garden or to experience the world beyond, even given the very high stakes.

She took the apple, chewed and swallowed it, pips and all. And gave it to Adam to do the same. The digesting came later but the immediate consequence was the Authority admonishing Adam for eating the apple. Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent. This issue of blaming and not being accountable continues today in all spheres of society.  Even worse, denial –

From a world of perfect (unconscious) unity, they were immediately thrust into a new world, that of duality. Thrust into a world of as yet unknown opposites. To experience pain and pleasure, life and death, good and evil, divinity and mortality. Now they were fixed by time and space, fixed by corruptible bodies whose forms would not endure.

Is there meaning in disobeying injunctions and expulsion from Paradise? Are there times in our lives when we go against the taboo? A few myths come to mind – Bluebeard’s wife using the key she was prohibited from using to open a certain door which she did while he was away a’hunting, and discovering his dreadful secret. Psyche going against Eros’ injunction to not look upon him in his aware state. Anthony Stevens writes about breaking the taboo* : ‘Expulsion from Paradise results in contact with the real world and a development in consciousness’. ‘Disobedience is about defying the dominant male, refusing to be subordinate and coming to selfhood. It is a necessary step on the path to individuation, the realisation in consciousness of one’s full Self-potential’. **

“The Garden is a metaphor for the following: our minds, and our thinking in terms of pairs of opposites – man and woman, good and evil -are as holy as that of a god. Joseph Campbell

Thank you for reading!

*Anthony Stevens: Ariadne’s Clue: A Guide to the Symbols of Mankind

** Robert Johnson: She: Understanding Feminine Psychology

D: Lilith: Daimon or Demon

Daimon is from the Greek diamôn.

Socrates wrote of his daimon somewhat disparagingly when he said that sometimes his daimon played tricks on him and prevented him from the task at hand. Significantly, his daimon did not prompt him to do something else in its place. The daimon left it up to Socrates, in part so that Socrates retained his own authority and also that the daimon bore no blame. The daimon was often a feminine whisper –

Daimon can be seen as the higher part of a human’s spirit or as a gift, that inner voice that guides us if we care to listen well. It can be inspirational and enlightening …

Can the demons we deal with in our everyday lives be transformed? I imagine Lilith sitting in the depths of the Red Sea and plotting her revenge in the most demonic way possible. I feel like that sometimes when I fantasise about gouging out the eyes of the idiot driver who almost ran me over, or slicing off the extremities of women abusers, traffickers, child molesters. The depth of my feeling scares me. I acknowledge succumbing to self-destructive behaviour when I over eat like a demon. It is only afterwards when I reflect and digest my disgust at myself of over-eating completely unconsciously. I give a nod to Lilith when I see her in me, as a personification of the destructive demonic force – my ‘hunger’ for something that was there and which I did not acknowledge it for what it was, unconsciously turning it against myself.

Relating to Lilith in a more compassionate way, we can see in her, some of ourselves. We all get into horribly dark places at times when we feel unloved, unappreciated, unvalued, unfairly treated, exiled even from ourselves and we feel that dark, destructive and dangerous energy rising. Too often we act out our feelings of rage and despair, stuffing ourselves with food, whiskey, drugs, anything, to rid us, numb us, of those uncomfortable feelings and emotions.

 Lilith’s time alone in the depths of Red Sea was a time when all the demons invaded her. She must have felt the whole range of emotions experienced by us. 

What are we to do with that energy? Do we disregard it as too foreign to ourselves? Can we bring this dark Lilith energy out of the shadows and connect to it in a different way, releasing some of its demonic powers by acknowledging her? Any dark energy stored in darkness tends to become distorted and, if disregarded, turns against us to our detriment. 

We are in a sense daughters – and sons – of Lilith. We also experience deep wounding in our lives. Though the rose is a thing of beauty, its thorns prick and make us bleed. That pricking and bleeding can immobilise us. It is meant to …

Can the daimon appear to us in these times of sorrow? Are we open to the deeper messages, even if a whisper, that our soul is in need of receiving?

 Lilith as Catalyst

Lilith has had many projections made upon her and still does. She is seen as a demon who usurps man’s sperm while he sleeps at night, steals babies, tortures men by their overt sexuality, is wild, undomesticated, ruthless, destroying everything and everyone in her path. A harmful spirit who spreads chaos by casting spells all around her.  She is called ‘Alien Woman’, Impure Female’  – and many other such pejorative adjectives. This is a one dimensional approach though, but sadly, the images remain in the modern psyche.

She challenged the patriarchal authority, and though she was severely punished for this, she knew that her voice was to be honoured and not callously dismissed by those who thought her inferior and of no worth, worth only to be tamed into obedience and submission.

 Counter forces arise naturally when one’s ‘way in life’ is too one-sided, too fixed, too stagnant. Things cannot remain that way forever. I suppose they can if it serves the status quo or entropy. Lilith was such a counter force and thus was a catalyst – for change, for not settling for the status quo. Something in her must have said, no, things cannot always be like this. A real sense of her desire for freedom, not necessarily equality – some desire to stand as her own woman, to be her own ‘authority’ –

This is the energy of Lilith that we can use as a catalyst for our own awakening.

We see this today, strong women who say look at me, listen to me, who courageously write or speak of their pain and anguish in their lives from being oppressed from patriarchy. Their voices are being heard and shared gaining recognition for speaking out, in poignantly expressed lines of poetry, artworks, writings, laying bare and articulating what many times has been impossible to do. We receive a jolt  when we read and remember e.g. the witch hunts from the Middle Ages. We remember the courage of Rosa Parks (1913-2005) refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, and who helped initiate the civil rights movement in the United States. We remember the Quakers. We remember the Black Sash movement here in South Africa, started in 1955, by women, as a protest against apartheid. We remember the Helen Suzman’s of our world, the Ruth First’s, our past public protector Thuli Madonsela who stood up against our ruling party. We remember Malala Yousafzai who took a bullet to her head by the Taliban and young Emma Gonzàlez who stood in silence for over 6 minutes which is how long it took to mow down 17 students at the Parklands School in Florida. Standing up to the NRA no less –

So many many women past and present who said No! and took action. All catalysts for each of us. Lilith was the first. Eve the 2nd …

picture: Sumerin/Assyrian relief of Lilith – though this is in dispute by scholars ..

D: Daimon or daemon

A: Adam’s first wife, Lilith

In the ongoing April A-Z posts I’ll be writing about Lilith, first wife of Adam, in the Garden of Eden. In my retelling of the biblical story, you’ll gain a broader view of the first two women, Lilith & Eve. Both trailblazers. I’ll focus on Lilith. Hopefully we’ll have a better idea of the value of this myth. While myths and fairy tales may be ancient stories, they are also contemporary ones. The dynamics underpinning them are similar today. The time, place and circumstance may be different but the psychological dynamics and their after-effects are universal.

My posts will not exceed 500 words. It is a stretch and a bit unrealistic to give an overview of Lilith in the A-Z, so my posts will hint at the complexity of this mythological figure and how she is present in our lives, today. 

According to the Midrash*, Lilith was born at the same time as Adam, from the same dust and clay and they were born equal. They were happy in Paradise, until Lilith felt she did not want to always be in the supine position when making love. She wanted to experiment but Adam refused, not wanting to give up his ‘superior’ position. Her pleas to Adam were ignored and he begged G.d to make her obey him. This angered Lilith, and she called upon G.d to intervene in the impasse. G.d also did not listen; this further angered Lilith and she blasphemed against Him. He, in turn, aghast at her blasphemy, ordered her out of Paradise into the Depths of the Red Sea. 

Banished, exiled …

Dr. Susan E. Schwartz, Jungian Analyst resident in Paradise Valley, US., gave a talk many years ago to the Jung Centre here in Johannesburg on ‘Marriage & Divorce & the Nature of Unresolved Psychological Issues therein’. I’m quoting from her transcript –

‘The Adam & Lilith story represents a stereotype of the masculine and feminine in relationships we see today. Adam expresses no curiosity about Lilith’s needs. He complains to G.d the authority to correct Lilith and make her obey him. The two never work it out, learn nothing about communication skills and separate in mutual frustration. Later, G.d gives Adam another wife and we see the same unresolved issues of the original situation appearing again. Ignored, psychological elements tend to return – Eve also thinks for herself and challenges the masculine status quo by listening to the snake, eating the apple and encouraging Adam to do the same’.

‘Unresolved issues‘ – in our everyday lives. Do they remain unresolved only to ourselves or do we carry them forward in our relationships where they impact negatively, and we wonder why. Too often we do not know where to look for the source of ongoing difficulties within our relationships, whether between parent and child, spouse or partnership or friendships that always seem fraught with ongoing unresolved dramas.

*midrash – an ancient commentary on part of the Hebrew scriptures, attached to the biblical text. The earliest Midrashim come from the 2nd century AD, although much of their content is older.

*picture at top – I bought this print many years ago in an art museum in London when visiting. The original painting is by John Collier 1887.

Thank you for reading!