what you're looking at is an incantation Bowl One of several hundred examples discovered in Mesopotamia dating somewhere between the 500's and 700 CE they're typically shallow clay bowls around the size of a cereal bowl and as you can guess from the name incantation Bowls they're covered in magical formulas intended to ward off demons or protect against Misfortune these incantations usually start from the rim and spiral inward toward the center where you'll often find a little drawing of a demon sometimes tied up in chain symbolizing what the bull will do to the demon some of these
demon drawings specifically seem to depict and Target a female demon while many are familiar with the story of Adam and Eve a lesser known thread in medieval Jewish folklore popularized the idea that Eve was not Adam's first wife but rather he was initially paired with a demonic figure named Lilith but who exactly was Lilith where did this idea come from and what about her compelled these communities to resort to Magic to protect themselves against her traces of the character Lilith stretch as far back as 4,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamian demonology the name Lilith itself
probably derives from the Samarian word leil most often translated as wind or Spirit and the Acadian words lelu and litu a class of male and female demons respectively though very little is known about how these beings were understood in ancient Mesopotamia ancient Acadian medical texts blame lelu type demons for all sorts of diseases and physical conditions generally in these texts these demons victimize people of the opposite sex lelu attacking women litu attacking men for example one medical text attributes seizur like symptoms to lelu and litu first it describes the symptoms if when a state of
confusion comes over him he rolls the whites of his eyes and blood flows from his nose then the text offers an explanation for the symptoms for a woman lelu for a man l to in other words these demons are causing the problem another text blames them for fevers if when it afflicts him he continually cries out my insides my insides he opens and shuts his eyes he has fever the tips of his fingers and toes are cold and if you try to make that patient talk he does not answer it attributes the symptoms to the
hand of lelu other ancient Mesopotamian texts suggest that lelu demons were believed to be the unhappy ghosts of young men and women who died prematurely and thus doomed to wander the Earth unfulfilled these texts especially focus on young women who died before having sex or died before having kids and thus they terrorize young men in this limbo State one text reads our do ly slips in a man's window young girl not faded to be married young woman who was never impregnated young woman whose garment pin a good man never loosened the r ly mentioned here
or Maiden Lily apparently were a type of unhappy wandering Spirit associated with negative sexuality here the reference to the Demonic figure slipping in through a man's window suggests that they were considered a type of succubus a female demon who seduces and traps and has sex with men while they're asleep The Scholar Ali Z argues that these demons were demonic personifications of sexual Envy the unhappy ghosts of people who never found sexual satisfaction while alive so it follows that the ritual strategy to deal with these Spirits was to perform a symbolic marriage rituals called for making
figurines of a male and female Lilith demon and then performing a marriage between the two figurines the aim of this ritual is to cause the two demons to lose interest in their human victims in the past Scholars argued that the so-called Bernie relief a Babylonian representation of a female Divine figure actually depicts aitu however most now believe that it's probably Ishtar or some other goddess notice how we've been talking about a type or category of demon not a single entity named Lilith this holds true for most of her history only in later Jewish Traditions does
Lilith begin to crystallize as a distinct character with her own narrative but even in this early phase there are named figures that seem to have influenced the later development of the singular figure Lilith an epic poem called gilgames and the hupu tree which dates to around 2,000 BCE seems to refer to a female demon named LEL though Scholars dispute the translation what's more widely accepted is that Lilith was inspired by the Mesopotamian demonic goddess lashu known for attacking infants and women during childbirth archaeologists have discovered dozens of amulets from ancient Mesopotamia designed to protect people
from lashu She's often depicted with animal and human features sometimes with a lion's or bird's head covered in feathers with Talons for feet many of the incantations specifically highlight the threat that she presents to birthing mothers and newborns an old Assyrian lashu incantation regarding still birth says she is fierce fearsome Divine the daughter of Anu is a shewolf she intercepts the running youth she utterly smashes the tiny ones so in this earliest layer of Lilith's history we find a strong focus on the dangers of childbirth and infancy which were among the most dangerous phases of
life in Antiquity though reconstructing precise stats from Antiquity is challenging the assyriologist Jonathan vul estimates that infant mortality was around 20 to 30% in the pre-modern period maternal mortality undoubtedly was high as well lelu demons and lashu arose to personify these deep-seated fears embodying anxieties about the most vulnerable people in the most perilous moments of human existence and Lilith in later Jewish mythology appears to be a composite of these figures and anxieties blurring the baby snatching role of lashu with the negative sexuality of the ghostly lelu Spirits so how do we go from ancient Mesopotamian
demonology to Lilith as we know her today in ancient Jewish mythology the story of Lilith as Adam's first wife actually has no basis in the Hebrew Bible the word Lilith does appear in the Hebrew Bible but only once a single mention in Isaiah 34 in this chapter the god of Israel reeks Vengeance on the neighboring Kingdom of Edom turning it into a wasteland verse 14 paints a picture of the devastation a desolate land inhabited only by wild animals and demonic creatures wild cats shall meet with hyenas goat demons shall call to each other there also
Lilith shall Repose and find a place to rest the text doesn't offer any more detail apparently the audience knew enough about Lilith that the author didn't need to but reading between the lines Lilith seems to be a Wilderness demonist of some sort or at least a demon who's comfortable hanging out in a Barren Wasteland but the actual translation here is disputed some Scholars argue that the word Lilith here is not the proper name of a specific demon but like the Lily to of ancient Mesopotamia refers to a type or class of demon and thus should
be translated as the Lilith lowercase L others argue that Isaiah 34:14 doesn't refer to a demon at all but rather some sort of nocturnal creature or bird like an owl we see this disagreement play out in different translations of the Bible the NIV translates the word as night creatures the ESV nightbird and the KJV as screech owl that the nrsv translation generally reflects the majority position among Scholars and it's worth mentioning that the supernatural translation caught on very early when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek the ancient Greek translators rendered the word Lilith as
a type of Centaur and the Latin translation of the verse translated Lilith as lamia a baby killing monster in Greco Roman mythology so while there is a great deal of uncertainty about this passage today at least in Antiquity this verse was assumed to refer to a supernatural creature of some sort if not a demon specifically so throughout the bronze and iron ages we get glimpses of a type of child killing anti fertility anti- maternal female demon sometimes conceptualized as a singular entity like lashu this figure Finds Its way into the demonology of second temple Judaism
for example Lilith specifically and Lilith generically appear in the Dead Sea Scrolls for example check out this exorcistic hymn and I the sage sound the Majesty of his Beauty to terrify and confound all the spirits of destroying angels and the bastard Spirits the demons and Lilith here God is called upon to Ward away a parade of evil spirits bastard Spirits is likely a reference to The Offspring of angels and humans as described in The Book of Enoch Lilith makes an appearance as a singular entity but with little detail revealing how while she was conceptualized by
the Dead Sea Scrolls Community other Scrolls show that some ancient Jews continue to view Lilith as a type of demon as well for example if you look up Isaiah 34:14 in the great Isaiah scroll found at kumran you'll find the plural lilot Lilith which suggests a generic category of demon rather than a specific being but we don't have much more evidence from this period she becomes a much bigger deal in the early centuries of Rabbi Judaism the Babylonian talmud mentions Lilith on several occasions where she's conceptualized as a humanoid female demon with wings and long
hair one Rabbi even proposes Banning people from sleeping alone at night warning that anyone who sleeps alone in a house will be seized by Lilith but she wasn't just a concern for the rabbis let's return to those incantation bowls this is a body of evidence showing that Jewish communities in Mesopotamia recognized her as a demonic foe in everyday life leading them to develop ritual strategies to nullify her now different religious commun ities used incantation bowls like mandans and Christians but most of these bowls were composed in Babylonian Jewish Aramaic and we see a ton of
overlap between Rabbi texts and these bowls not only do they date to around the same time that the talmud was completed but rabbis may have been the ritual Specialists who helped to compose the incantations many of them were found in what's now South Central Iraq a large and vibrant Jewish Community must have lived there in late Antiquity who apparently turned to these incantation bows as a way to to battle Lilith many of these formulas are symbolic divorce papers in which the practitioner divorces from a Lilith one reads this is the deed of divorce of the
Lilith Lilith's male Lilith and female Lilith you are stripped naked your mother is the Lilith palh Hadad go out from the house and from the dwelling and from the body of this hormes son of imma and from his wife from this text we can learn a few things presumably a guy named hormes was concerned about Lilith demons so he commissioned this bowl to protect his house himself and his wife the symbolic divorce papers mention Lilith generically which continues to refer to a species of demon and not a specific figure in fact in this incantation there
is a Lilith with a name the Lilith palh Hadad much like how other demons in Jewish and Christian mythology have specific names like beel or asadas but we also learn that Lilith were believed to be male or female which hearkens back to bronze and Iron Age Mesopotamia with lelu and lichu demons though the scholar Nama vasni argues that the sex of Lilith demons is often ambiguous they could transform depending on who they victimize a Jewish incantation bull explicitly says this this is an amulet against the Lilith that haunt the house of this ephra who do
violence and trample and Scourge and mutilate who appear to humans to men in the likeness of women and to women in the likeness of men with the formula I've written against thee evil Lilith whatsoever name be thine so again this guy ephra who commissioned this object assumes that Lilith are a species of demon that presumably shapeshift Okay so we've covered a lot of ground so far in this video from ancient Mesopotamia up through the early centuries of rabic Judaism and over the course of 2 and a half thousand years we see surprising consistency in the
belief in demonic figures known for killing babies or sexually victimizing people but notice something that's completely missing from all of this evidence the whole notion that Lilith was the first wife of Adam is absent where did this come from this myth emerges in the early medieval period first appearing in the alphabet of benar an anonymous Jewish text dating somewhere between the 8th Century up to the year 1000 the text expands on the Garden of Eden story found in Genesis in the text God creates Lilith Out of the Dust of the earth just like Adam but
she challenges Adam's Authority specifically she refuses to be on the bottom during sex she says because they're both made from the same Earth they are equals when Adam refuses to let her on top she pronounces the ineffable four-letter name of God and flies away to the Red Sea Three Angels pursue her to bring her back but she stands her ground after they threaten to drown her she says leave me I was created only to cause sickness to infants so here we see a mythical explanation for why she's associated with child killing we next see a
mythical justification to use anti- Lilith amulets the angels and Lilith eventually reach a settlement with her swearing that she will spare infants that wear an amulet overall Lilith in the alphabet of benser is an evil defiant anti- mother killing human babies while at the same time birthing hundreds of demonic babies so where did this Legend come from well it obviously draws on previous ideas that Lilith or Lilith in general are responsible for killing infants and associated with negative sexuality as a succubus requiring symbolic divorce papers to remove her evil presence from your life but the
notion that she was Adam's wife seems to emerge from a perceived plot hole in the Book of Genesis Scholars have long recognized that there are two creation stories in Genesis and thus two accounts of the creation of humanity Genesis 1 simply says so God created humans in His image male and female he created them while in Genesis 2 it says then the Lord God formed Man Out of the Dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the Breath of Life followed by the whole story of God creating Eve out of Adam's Rib while he
sleeps some Jewish Scholars must have recognized that these are two creation myths and attempted to harmonize them by saying that they describe the creation of two different women the first being Lilith and the second being Eve I'd argue that this version of Lilith is the best known version to Modern audiences but her identity continued to evolve in Jewish mythology in the following centuries later in the medieval period she became very prominent in the Jewish mystical tradition known as cabala now there are several myths about Lilith in cabalistic text but one notable mythological development is to
pair her with the evil figure samel a somewhat similar figure to Satan in Christianity in this mythological narrative samel is not a second husband after Adam but rather her original primordial mate and the words of the scholar of Jewish mysticism Joseph Dan this created a kind of parallelism between Adam and Eve and Lilith and somel but perhaps the most dramatic transformation in her history happened not all that long ago in the 20th century Lilith was rebranded from a malevolent figure to one worthy of respect a second-wave feminist icon symbolizing Independence Defiance and empowerment in 1976
a group of Jewish Women founded a magazine that aimed to be a Jewish alternative to secular feminist Publications with a mission to amplify Jewish feminist voices and to be a feminist Chang maker in and for Jewish communities they decided to name the magazine Lilith in the word of one of the founders Susan Weidman Schneider the cover of the first issue featured our artist version of the Jewish Superwoman who managed to amalgamate almost all possible roles an expecting mother scholar doctor and server of chicken soup balancing it all on a tight rope while wearing a fancy
dress in that first issue they address the Lilith question why choose the name Lilith is Lilith a model for Jewish women they conceptualized her not as a wild-haired vengeful witch but as a power ful female figure who radiates strength assertiveness and refuses to cooperate in her own victimization some of the very qualities that defined her as wicked in the alphabet of Bens her independence and refusal to submit were reclaimed as positive traits by the end of the 20th century this feminist Rebrand of Lilith made its way outside of Jewish communities and found a new home
especially in contemporary Pagan circles do a quick YouTube search and you'll find Contemporary witches publishing how to guides on how to work with Lilith and one's daily ritual practice and this positive reinterpretation might be reflected in broader American society as well because the name Lilith has Skyrocket in popularity since the early 2010s according to the biggest baby name websites Lilith was around the 900th most popular name for girls in 2010 and jumped to the 270th most popular name by 2022 so for most of her 4,000 years of History Lilith was an unambiguously malevolent figure dangerous
specifically to women but here in the 21st century we're witnessing an ironic twist in her narrative Lilith has proven not only to be a surprisingly enduring character but also a malleable character reshaped to resonate with contemporary audiences if you want to learn more about ancient demonology I'll be teaching an online course about exorcism in early Christianity with a focus on the centuries after Jesus we'll learn about how early Christians conceptualized demons like what they actually thought demons were we learn about what types of Christians functioned as exorcists and we'll learn about the magical strategies that
Christians used to nullify demons yes early Christians did a lot of magic and there's not much daylight between exorcism and magical practice I'll be holding the class on October 26 at 9:00 p.m. Us East Coast time to sign up head on over to religion for breakfast. eventbrite.com as usual you can pay whatever you want to attend as low as $1 and if you're not able to make the class live everyone who signs up can download a recording of the class thanks everyone hope to see you there
