Lilith
The name Lilith derives from the Assyrian-Babylonian word LILITU, which means "spirit of the wind." She is mentioned only once in the Bible, but more often in the Talmud (the commentary on the biblical texts) and in the Book of Splendors (a text that explains the mystical meanings of what is written in the Bible). Ernest Jones reports, "like Incubi sucking the vital fluids, bringing the victim to consumption, so the Vampires often rest on the chest of the victim, suffocating her. The Hebrew Lilith, whom Johannes Wejer called the princess of the succubi, descended from the Babylonian Lilitu, known vampire."
According to Jewish tradition, Lilith was Adam's first wife. It is said that she was the mother of Cain. Lilith was created in the same way as Adam, that is, from dust and clay (some texts speak of "sediments and dirt" to highlight her negative traits). She considered herself equal to Adam, and when he tried to subdue her by force (Lilith did not want to lie beneath him during sexual intercourse, considering such a position "offensive"), she rebelled and fled to the desert near the Red Sea, where she mated with the Djinn and spawned countless demons (called Lilim).
God tried to bring her back to Adam, and sent 3 angels (Sanvi, Sansanvi, and Semangelaf), but Lilith refused to return. The three angels punished her by exterminating almost all her children. Lilith swore mortal hatred for the children of men: it is said that she strangled infants in their cradles and tormented semi-sleeping men, after having had deadly intercourse with them.
Adam was given a new woman, Eve, whom Lilith was extremely jealous of and whom she killed a good part of her offspring, and some versions claim she was the serpent that induced her to pick the forbidden fruit. For the Jews, Lilith will definitively become a female demon depicted as a woman whose body ends in a serpent's tail.
In the Christian Bible, references to Lilith are very few, probably due to subsequent rewrites for doctrinal and priestly purposes aimed at exalting the obedience that women must demonstrate towards men, the most explicit citation is found in Isaiah 34:14:
The wildcats shall meet with the jackals,
And the satyr shall call to his fellow;
There Lilith shall repose and find for herself a place of rest.
In this text, she is likened to predatory animals and also linked to nocturnal birds whose cry disturbs those who hear it; indeed, when God killed the children of Lilith, her desperate wails echoed through the night for a long time.
According to Christian iconography, Lilith rules hell, looks like an extremely beautiful naked woman, with blue hair and red eyes, her skin is silvery gray; she commands the ranks of succubi and intercourse with her leads to madness.
Lilith in literature
In Goethe's Faust, we meet Lilith on Walpurgis Night:
FAUST: But who is that?
MEPHISTOPHELES: That is Lilith.
FAUST: Who?
MEPHISTOPHELES: Adam's first wife,
Beware of her fair hair,
Of that beauty that entails her gown.
Once she has caught a young man in her hair,
It takes much before she lets him go.
This symbolism of the hair is present in Gypsy folklore where Lilith is called Lilyi, her hair penetrates the flesh of the unfortunate lover, tearing him apart and absorbing his blood.
Goethe also wrote The New Melusina, a rewrite of the snake-woman fairy tale which becomes, however, a female gnome retaining the seductive characteristics.
In France, we have Cecily from The Mysteries of Paris written by Eugene Sue:
"...This tall Creole at times lithe and voluptuous, vigorous and supple as a panther, was the incarnation of the burning sensuality that ignites only in the heat of the tropics. Everyone has heard of these girls of color who then add Mortal to Europeans, of these enchanting vampires who, they drain their victims with terrible embraces, sucking up the last drop of gold and blood, and leave them, according to the country's expression, only their tears to drink and their hearts to gnaw."
Gautier seemed of the same opinion in Fortunio when he spoke of the Javanese women who drink a European man dry in three weeks. Victims of Lilith's lineage are also the accursed poets such as Baudelaire and Rimbaud:
You, like a knife blade
Entered my heart in tears!
You, strong as a band
Of demons, mad and decked out,
you came to make my
humiliated spirit your bed and your realm!
You, infamous to whom I am tied
As the convict to his chain
(...)
(C. Baudelaire: The Vampire)
And also Rudyard Kipling, after seeing the Burne Jones painting, embraced the myth of Lilith in the poem The Vampire:
(...)
The fool was stripped to his foolish hide
(Even as you and I!)
Which she might have seen when she threw him aside—
(But it isn't on record the lady tried)
So some of him lived but the most of him died—
(Even as you and I!)
And it isn't the shame and it isn't the blame
That stings like a white-hot brand—
It's coming to know that she never knew why
(Seeing at last she could never know why
And never could understand!)
Our Lilith, in her nocturnal wanderings, has now left traces in many narrative spheres, with fleeting appearances in music, comics, and the modern novels of Anne Rice, who has revitalized the entirely female origin of the vampire myth; from a multiplicity of ambiguous deities, Lilith has escaped religious tradition to become part of our folkloric-imaginative heritage, becoming the symbol of the unnatural mother and the perverse lover, and she will never cease to torment, with her irresistible charm, the dreams of those who cross her path.
