Lilith and the "The Little Faces"

Ancient Christianity is littered with references of semi-divine women and full blown female deities   Figures like Asherah, Sophia, Mary Magdalene and Lilith fascinate us in the modern age, now that we have the resources to revisit them.  Lilith is the most notorious.  There is no denying that.  Most likely this is due to her popularity as Judaism's Queen of Demons.  There is no great emphasis placed on the rest of the story, what transpired before she arrived in the desert and after she left Eden.

     The Zohar paints an interesting picture of Lilith's adventures.  Some time after leaving Adam behind in Paradise (or immediately after) she flew to Heaven.  There she noticed the Cherubim:

"She desired to cleave to them and to be shaped as one of them, and was loath to depart from them.  But the Holy One, blessed be He, removed her from them and made her go below...

Then He...gave him [Adam] a partner, as soon as Lilith saw Eve clinging to his side she was reminded by his form of the supernal beauty, she flew up from thence and tried as before to attach herself to the 'little faces' [Cherubim].  The supernal guardians of the gates, however, did not permit her.  The Holy One, blessed be He, chide her and cast her into the depths of the sea."

So Lilith, the "Queen of Demons" is capable of feeling affection and loss.  She left Eden because her mate insisted he was superior to her.  She found a new home and attempted to join a community.  Ultimately she is rejected in a very serious way. Sometime after Adam and Eve are expelled, God brings Lilith out from the depths of the sea:

"...and gave her power over all those children, the ''little faces' of the sons of men, who are liable to punishment for the sins of their fathers.  She then wandered up and down the world.  She approached the gates of the terrestrial paradise [Eden], where she saw the Cherubim, the guardians of the gates of Paradise, and sat down near the flashing sword, to which she was akin in origin.  When she saw the flashing sword revolving, indicating that man had sinned, she fled and wandered about the world...finding children liable to punishment."

     Lilith's fate has strong parallels with the legend of La Llorona, the roving specter explored in a previous entry concerning Latin America.  La Llorona was once Maria, a Mexican divorcee who drowned her children to punish her adulterous husband.  Maria was turned away from the gates of Heaven and instructed to find her children, which is why she roams the world, finding children who resemble her own.

Lilith's story does not end after she leaves Eden.  She does not deteriorate and become the Queen of Demons.  Like Moses, Elijah or Jesus himself, her story is told in layers.  In Midrash, the Talmud and the Dead Sea Scrolls we have additional chapters in the evolution of a turbulent character.  But unlike her Biblical contemporaries  Lilith's name occurs in older parts of the world, linking her with past lives and an older class of gods and heroes. 

Ghost Stories: Lilith in Latin America (Revised, 11/25)

Lilith is best known as the Queen of Demons in Jewish Mythology, the spectral genetrix of every of "unclean spirit" we've ever known. Oddly enough her presence is felt in the the folktales of Latin America as the roving ghost La Llorona.  Like it or not, she also bears resemblance to Brujeria's favorite folk saint, Holy Death.  Let's take a look at a few of the reasons why.

As a child in the American Midwest I heard very little about Mexico.  The older people in my neighborhood didn't paint a pretty picture.  Most of the information they gave me was based on ignorance.  It became clear this was a misunderstood place, home to people who weren't at all welcome in my conservative hemisphere.  Every so often we'd read a geographical fact or folktale in grade school credited to Mexico.  By third of fourth grade I heard about La Llorona, the ghostly woman in white who hunted for children.  By twenty-three I was living in New Mexico and learned several different versions of her tale.  It became clear she was just as misunderstood as the Mexicans who occasionally made their way to my home town.  

     So who is La Llorona?  I asked my boyfriend who grew up in Moriarty and Albuquerque, New Mexico, if he ever heard of her.  He told me she was a woman who was searching for "her kid" and drowned at a certain point.  "I always kind of thought she was real, you know?"  This from a practical twenty-six year old who grew up with the realities of racism, violence and road rage that plagues our city.  "I just knew."

     There are several different versions of La Llorona.  Like Santisima Muerte (The Holy Death) she is partially rooted in Cihuacoatl, the Aztec deity who supposedly appeared weeping in white for her children who would be conquered by the Spaniards.  Later she is linked to La Malinche, an Aztec woman who stabbed her children by a lake in Mexico City to protect them from Cortes.  After her death she was said to haunt the area as the Weeping Woman, terrifying locals with her famous scream.  In more modern times the name has been applied to Maria, a mother who drowned her own children to punish her husband.  After he death she was turned away from the gates of Heaven and told to find her children.  She exists ever after as the mournful Weeping Woman, searching for children who look like her own.

     So how do these spirits relate to Lilith?  They each transcend Christian and Pagan boundaries.  They each have many hats. La Llorona has been called a Mexican Lamia, the child-stealing monster discussed last entry.  Lilith, who was said to steal human children to replace those God had murdered was also refuse by Heaven when she tried to retire there like Maria's Weeping Woman.  In the case of Santisima Muerte we have a Mexican folk saint believed to derive from pre-Christian sources, whose colored robes connect to certain events in the Garden of Eden. Her messenger is none other than Lilith's totemic owl.  They are all phantoms, but they are also angels and ghosts.

Rough Magic: The Wicked Queen

Lilith has been called the Queen of Witches.  Like Diana and Herodias her name appears in witch trials and folklore.  One well known story links Lilith's cave by the Red Sea with "every mirror." In it, a mother buys a mirror in connection to several furnishings for her home.  She places the mirror in the room of her daughter who later becomes possessed by a daughter of Lilith because, "every mirror is a gateway to the Other World and leads directly to Lilith's cave...That is why it is said that Lilith makes her home in every mirror..."  That said, is it likely that such traditions made their way to the mythos collected by the Brothers Grimm?  Enter the Wicked Queen.

   We are all familiar with Snow-white and the Seven Dwarves.  In the earliest version, Snow-white offends her jealous stepmother, the Queen, by possessing richer beauty than her own.  This is discovered by a magic mirror the Queen consults everyday.  "Looking glass upon the wall, who is fairest of us all?"  After the huntsmen tries to deceive her with a deer's heart the Queen makes three attempts on Snow-white's life.  Each time she poses as a peddler and tempts Snow-white with fatal wares.  At first she uses a corset and a comb "poisoned with witchcraft."  In the end she offers Snow-white the fabled apple and temporarily ends her life.  The Queen herself is captured when the heroic Prince weds Snow-white.  Her life ends after she is forced to dance in a pair of red-hot shoes.  Typically, abridged reincarnations omit this part, taking a page (perhaps) from Walt Disney.

   Modern renditions featuring Snow-white and the Wicked Queen attempt to flesh out her back story.  In both  The 10th Kingdom and Once Upon a Time (owned by Disney subordinate ABC) the "Evil Queen" represents a pact or bond between two women, a sort of lineage.  Diane Weist's Evil Queen from The 10th Kingdom was chosen as the successor of the original Queen to continue her work and ruin Snow White's entire house.  Lana Parrilla's Evil Queen from Once Upon a Time was forced into power by conniving mother, who arranges her marriage to the father of Snow White.

   Concerning her connection to the Queen of Demons in Jewish mythology, the Wicked Queen shares several of her motifs.  An apple is used to tempt Snow-white and an apple is used to temp Eve by the serpent in the Garden of Eden.  In art, the serpent has been depicted as Lilith, reflecting an older belief in the Fall of Man.  Consider too the Wicked Queen's fascination with mirrors   Everyday she stood before the magic looking-glass to assess her beauty, not unlike the daughter in the famous Jewish tale.  While it is unlikely that the Wicked Queen is a Brothers Grimm avatar of Lilith she makes an appropriate totem.  Even more likely, their shared features stem from Lilith's lineage in world mythology. Lilith is "the soul of every living thing which creepeth," and the genetrix of every spirit, demon, goblin and fatal entity from the ancient world.  Perhaps like Jadis in C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, the Wicked Queen could be viewed as her descendant.

PULP! Lilith and Vampirella

Vampirella is a famous comic book character whose mother just happens to be Lilith.  She was devised in the late sixties for Warren Publishing by Forrest Ackerman, Tim Sutton and costume designer Trina Robbins.  In the 1990's she was rewritten as the daughter of Lilith and, possibly, her avatar.  As a result, Vampirella made it her mission to rid the world of all vampires and redeem her mother.  But Lilith, who fashioned her daughter in the bowels of Hell, had an ulterior motive.

In the Vampirella universe Lilith is known as The Conjuress.  She is based primarily on the Garden of Eden Lilith with a heavy emphasis on her vampiric legends.  In story she was banished from Paradise by God and birthed legions of demons as an act of spite.  Apparently repentant, she created Vampirella as a counter agent.  The anti-heroine's mission was to erase her mother's work by ridding the earth of every last vampire.  Of course this was merely a ploy.  Lilith had been killed by God and was using these murders to fuel her resurrection.  Currently the character appears in Dynamite's Vampirella and Pantha titles.

Doctor Lilith Sternin

No blog about Lilith is ever complete without mentioning the character played by Bebe Neuwirth on Cheers and Frasier.  A Jewish research scientist and Jungian psychiatrist, Lilith Sternin was married and subsequently divorced to Kelsey Grammar's Frasier Crane.  She is often characterized by her "corpse-like" complexion and constant allusions to vampires, demons and witches.  At one point she is directly linked to her namesake, the "demon goddess," by a potential boyfriend.  Lilith, in her uniquely sharp monotones replies, "I make her look like a vacillating cream puff."  This is a typical example of Lilith's dry, wordy, and emasculating sense of humor.

   Lilith has strange effects on the world around her.   According to self-proclaimed psychic Daphne Moon, she creates disturbances in the space-time continuum and represents a supernaturally malign force.  Frasier once portends her arrival by dreaming of an "ice volcano."  Contrary to Dr. Crane's over zealous, scientific nature, the writers go out of their to demonstrate the fact that there is something cosmically twisted about Lilith.

   Concerning her relationship with the famous spin-off's title character, Lilith meets Fraiser early on as a guest star on Cheers.  They quickly become rivals and Fraiser dubs her the "ice cube in heels."  Under the surface she represents the sum of his desires.  Diane Chambers, Fraiser's ex-fiance and Cheers barmaid helps Lilith play on this by unbinding her seductive long hair.  Freed from constraints she becomes an unparalleled sex symbol, a theme revisited for the rest of the character's long life on NBC.  While she often strives to become Fraiser's equal they are written as combustible opposites.  Lilith, interestingly enough, is Jungian, while Fraiser is Freudian.  There's a subtle theme in this affiliation that ties Lilith to her namesake, especially when coupled with her Jewish faith.  This difference also supplies them with a great deal of sexual electricity, as noted by Fraiser several times.  The two of them become married after a forced engagement and finally divorce between the Cheers finale and Frasier premier episodes.  According to Lilith, she felt there was more to her identity as a woman than powerful sex.

   In each of her appearances on Frasier Lilith corresponds with change, regret, sex and fate.  She often inspires her ex-husband with brushes of sexual-relapse and bitter-sweet visions of the past.  She appears randomly to tempt him with forbidden fruit.  Sometimes this occurs subconsciously or accidentally.  Once she even sleeps with his divorced brother Niles.  However well or ill-meaning she brings Fraiser to a place of solid content or finalized realization.  "How will I ever move forward if I don't put you behind me!" ; "You can't use the past to fill what's missing in the present...it's gone."

   A strange brew of repression and sexual energy Lilith Sternin could be described as someone who plays both sides of her female identity.  Bebe Neuwirth describes her as shy, she relates Lilith as, "very innocent, very sweet, very naïve. She's socially inept. She has no idea how to react with other people. She's shy and uncomfortable with people. She's a scientist, she's very analytical, she's very honest."  But she can also be seen in your Netflix Queue dancing provocatively for Sam Malone.  For my money, Lilith Sternin is someone who truly enjoys being a woman.  And she's damn good at it.

Point of Origin

The Devil is in the details.

Lilith has no canon.  She has no official iconography, mythology, back story or religion.  Over analyze her and the details fall apart.  Lilith has associations, scattershots of a legacy reaching as far back as the Sumerians.  She is similiar to Tiamat, Nammu, Lammashtu and Bellit-Illi, local spirits of child birth, sex and murder.  She is supposedly the wind spirit Lilitu or a handmaiden of Innana.  She is also the ex-wife of Adam in Judeo-Christian mythology, the Queen of Demons.  In Islam she is related to several Djiin.  She is viewed as a goddess by Women's Liberation movements, Wicca and Neo-Paganism.  Psychologists say she is part of the Dark Feminine.  She is also known as the Queen of Witches, Sheba and the Black Madonna.  Try to unravel the sequence and you're back at zero.

The purpose of this blog isn't to contrive or bind Lilith's many stories.  This a place of reference, an ongoing project to collect Lilith's legends.  We'll also explore her many parallels in myth, religion, literature and popular culture, twice weekly beginning on Thursdays and Sundays.  I hope you enjoy this journey and feel free to share any resources, insight or opinions along the way.  Please subscribe and share!

FM 2012