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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5

Satanism and Lilith

I'm wonder why, looking at the archive, why the whole church of Satan (who uses her most symbolically at least as the wife of Satan), was *complained* about on this page in the archive and then edited off. But with the popular references, such as a Narnia reference, this was allowed on this page for a very long time. This is something I don't get. If references to her in a religious organization is not allowed, then why was popular references for a longer period of time? I think that's why too biased and unacademic for wikipedia. 173.171.36.206 (talk) 03:55, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Similar Themes?

I would like to suggest some tie between Sumerian, later Israelite (and subsequent Jewish), and Helladic (later subsequent Greek): I believe it is possible, from looking at the linguistics about a 'ladies thing' connected to the 'moon', and 'night', and its potential to 'drive both men and women mad' that the ancients may have been trying to personify the experience of menstrual cramps and labor pains-- as is seen in the connection to both Lilith as a 'childstealer', and as in the corpus of myth about Eileithyia. who brought pain if not properly placated.I apologize if this is naive.

lead in

There's been some activity on the lead-in. Some parts about here role as first Adam wife got deleted and I restored those. The scope of the article has expanded beyond her roles in Jewish and Christian books and the lead in doesn't acknowledge these views so I add a small blurb from the occultists section. If you read through the article hew common themes are:

  • Able to make any woman infertile yet she can produce hundreds of her own offspring daily.
  • Induce lust in any man
  • Choose who she has sex with.
  • Eats or steals children.

Everyone agree these are common themes? Am I missing some? Alatari (talk) 03:52, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Great job! Thank you. USchick (talk) 19:05, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Overly Broad

I've removed the claim of an analog in Greek myth in the lead section. It wasn't sourced. And for good reason because it isn't the case.Indeed the subsequent later paragraphs down at the bottom referring to Lamia are at best sketchy.

I find some of the references to be graduate papers that are not peer reviewed or published in serious journals.

In the reference list I added above? I won't add the graduate paper as a source but they do an excellent job of compiling other sources. Alatari (talk) 04:33, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Overall the tendency to try and create broad analogs is a problem with obscure archetypal figures and should be avoided. Jenston (talk) 00:17, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Addition to the leadin

I want to add something like: The Lilith legend is still commonly used as source material in modern fantasy and horror. I think it is a good summary of the Modern Culture section that is regularly modified. Not an amazing amount of TV and movie appearances but she has 21 at IMDB starting in 1920. Is there a similar database for book references? Alatari (talk) 05:03, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Dubious

The Kurdish translation seems wrong. The first letter in Shin, which is a "sh" sound.--72.178.134.135 (talk) 02:51, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

You a native Kurdish speaker and writer? Alatari (talk) 09:13, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Added ToDo template

There are things that need to be done so check the ToDo list above and help out. Alatari (talk) 16:33, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Transformation?

Lilith is not, nor was ever, consider a deity to ancient Mesopotamians. I have plenty of actual scholarship on this. Furthermore, this section conflates Inanna's and lilitu's mythologies and makes some irrelevant statements. All this is a biased revisionist version of history to try to assert ancient worship where there is none. Xuchilbara (talk) 16:32, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

There were over 500 deities listed in some of the lists found. The handmaiden of Inanna was one. There are sources tying lilitu to that handmaiden. You need to refute the sources. Alatari (talk) 19:02, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

And while I am at it. There is more irrelevance in the fact that the previous section repeated much of what was already covered in Mesopotamia Lilitu. Xuchilbara (talk) 16:34, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your help on the article. New sections on talk pages go at the bottom. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:07, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
On revisionism: If a notable number of the populace or numbers of published scholars believe in revision of any history (not just Lilith) under WP:NPOV their views must be included in the article even if it's just to mention refutation of those views. Flat earth is refuted but is still notable. If it's stemming from the Neopagan movement then the information can be moved into that section. Since you have actual scholarship you would know if their are controversies about her origins and be able to edit a section on those controversies. Alatari (talk) 13:18, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
I reworked a few of the deleted paragraphs working from the sources and the work you deleted had many mistakes. Lilitu wasn't the serpent but there was a serpent there in the Gilgamesh tale. Much of the stuff deleted was information found in other articles and the last paragraph is disputed elsewhere. I'm done re-netering and sourcing and fact checking these paragraphs. Maybe there's more mistakes but 6 hours is enough of my day. Alatari (talk) 19:02, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I am thinking we should have a Neopaganism section as she's in early Wicca, modern Wicca, and the Gospel of Aradia as another form of Aradia. (And Gardner used Aradia's corrupted name in his original BOS.) I know of some groups like Lilithians, that have popped up. There's a lot to be covered there but I am limited in my Neopagan research to an extent. I almost think maybe it'd warrant another Lilith (Neopaganism) page as the views are so radically different than the historical Lilith. Either way it takes a lot of ground to cover.

I did notice, however, that someone did add a bit about the modern views on the top page. Xuchilbara (talk) 03:37, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Sources list of newer works on Lilith (some of which are modern interpretations not academic sources on history)


No offense to the above user. But the works cited aren't necessarily academic. Although they should be included in a Neopaganism/historical revisionism section of the article, I want to point out the sources. Looking at Sacred Spiral's select Bibliography, references include Walker, Barbara G.. The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets & Stone, Merlin. When God Was a Woman. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich who aren't really academics on Mesopotamia or the myth of Lilitu. You can see this in some reviews. It represents the Goddess movement, or Goddess spirituality movement, and this is where you get the assertion Lilith is a goddess or a facet of the Goddess. Xuchilbara (talk) 03:58, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I understood the reliability of the source. Those sources can be used to assert that there are modern interpretations of Lilith. They can not be used as reliable sources as to Lilith's history or evolution (except amongst the pagan community). I edited the Mesopotamia section heavily Saturday and that sources aren't relied upon. Hurwitz, Patai and others were used. I'll check again now but if I miss something point the section out. Alatari (talk) 16:21, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

It's growing and I'm not sure how notable any of them are. I think it needs shortening but cant find the Wikipedia guidelines on this section, ATM. Alatari (talk) 17:31, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I found a guideline: WP:POPCULTURE but haven't digested it yet. Anyone adding new PopCulture content please read this first. Alatari (talk) 17:37, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Major deletion

I read through this deletion and agree that the section appears to be WP:OR and the sources do not support the cross cultural diffusion of Ianna into Lilith. There is one section that is sourced and unless the sources bear out to be misquoted, should be kept. It doesn't state that Ianna is Lilith but the sources claim that Lilith was Ianna's handmaiden.

Babylonian texts depict Lilith as the sacred prostitute of the goddess Ishtar, the Assyrian and Babylonian counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna. Similarly, older Sumerian accounts assert that Lilitu is called the handmaiden of Inanna or "hand of Inanna." The Sumerian texts state that "Inanna has sent the beautiful, unmarried, and seductive prostitute Lilitu out into the fields and streets in order to lead men astray." That is why Lilitu is called the "hand of Inanna."<ref>S.H. Langdon p.74</ref><ref>Hurwitz p.58</ref> Lilith is further associated with the Anzu bird,<ref>Kramer translates the Anzu as "owl," but most often it is translated as "eagle," "vulture," or "bird of prey."</ref> lions, owls, and serpents, which are animals associated with the Lilitu, later reappearing in the Kabbalah.

  • What does S.H. Langdon book p74 and Hurwitz p.58 actually say and support?
  • What is the name of the "hand of Inanna" if not Lilith? Then we can move the text to the appropriate Wikipedia article as we are not supposed to remove properly source material from the encyclopedia.

The Hurwitz book p. 58 clearly states the That is why Lilitu is called the "hand of Inanna.. Unless Hurwitz can be destroyed as a reliable source this section is properly sourced and will be returned to the article. Alatari (talk) 13:26, 22 May 2010 (UTC)


Hurwitz references Langdon from his book Tammuz and Ishtar, Oxford 1914, pg. 74. You can view such references and more here. If I recall correctly Patai also cites this text in the Hebrew Goddess in his chapter on Lilith.
A major reason that section was deleted btw is that it tended to try to use the revisionist historical account that is not academic consensus on the demonic spirit Lilitu. There is no evidence of historical Lilith worship until the modern era, at least as far back as 1899 in Aradia. It also repeated much of what is already part of the article and tended to switch focus to Inanna. The "hand of Inanna" part was in there before the add and deletion. It didn't need to be repeated. Xuchilbara (talk) 23:35, 22 May 2010 (UTC)


I looked up Tammuz and Ishtar and found it here. The citation provided by Hurwitz is correct. In Langdon's notes on the same page he notes that this demon he is describing is what the Semites call "Lilitu". Xuchilbara (talk) 02:45, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not an expert but just a critical reader from my science backround. As I edited the Mesopotamian sections I noticed a great deal of errors and did my best to correct. Some of this debate and confusion seems to me to stem from referring to a single lilitu demon or the Lilitu demon Lilith. Is a reference in the archaic literature properly translated? How did the Sumerians refer to a class of items and to a proper individual? Is Ki-sikil-lil-la-ke a reference to a specific demon or a class? How about Ardat-lil? Alatari (talk) 16:41, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Another point was that Hurwitz even disagrees with the etymology of Lilith from the widely accepted Rabbinic opinions. He admits his opinion is minority (see pg 50? of 1980 book). I sense Lilith has some controversy even in the academic community. Wikipedia has guidelines about giving equal time to non-equal opinions WP:UNDUE. Alatari (talk) 16:41, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I have no idea how to judge how accepted the Mesopotamian section is as of 2010. If I understand the hypothesis goes: Judaism descend as a subbranch from the Akkadian Semitic speakers. Their concepts of religion descended from (or were reactionary to) the concepts of that time. Attributes of Lilith existed attached to some of the 500+ deities of that period. Lilith of Judaism is a distant memory evolved from those times. This is controversial because of the limited amount of information from that period and the lack of language (speaking, writing) usage of that period. Both of those are limits to all archaeology. Alatari (talk) 16:41, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm gonna do my best here. The word "lilitu" is confusing. Its a word that can refer to owls, a entire class of spirits, or just Lilitu herself. I am presuming the Hebrews inherited the loan word of "lilith" from their days in Babylonian captivity, as this is when the word first appears in Isa. 34:14. In fact this is where it gets tricky. (Hebrew language is similar to Canaanite. Lilith comes from the Sumero-Babylonian side of myth.) It is hottly debated rather this passage actually really refers to the Lilith or not. According to the later Zohar it does. According to other people it doesn't. See, owls, lilitu demons, and Lilith herself were said to roam the desert with wild animals and haunt desolate places and graveyards. (Inanna: Queen of heaven and earth states that after Lilith left the garden when Gilgamesh cut down the try she fled into the wilderness (desert) where she dwells today.) Owls in Mesopotamia are associated with evil spirits and haunted desolate and wild places like lilitu demons.

A good portion of this debate with sources is found here. Part of Patai's chapter on Lilith. There is this from Patai too. " 'Lilith' is usually derived from the Babylonian-Assyrian word lilitu, ,a female demon, or wind-spirit'-one of a triad mentioned in Babylonian spells. But she appears earlier as 'Lillake' on a 2000 B.G. Sumerian tablet from Ur containing the tale of Gilgamesh and the Willow Tree. There she is a demoness dwelling in the trunk of a willow-tree tended by the Goddess Inanna (Anath) on the banks of the Euphrates. Popular Hebrew etymology seems to have derived 'Lilith' from layil, 'night'; and she therefore often appears as a hairy night-monster, as she also does in Arabian folklore. Solomon suspected the Queen of Sheba of being Lilith, because she had hairy legs. His judgement on the two harlots is recorded in I Kings III. 16 ff. According to Isaiah xxxiv. I4-I5, Lilith dwells among the desolate ruins in the Edomite Desert where satyrs (se'ir), reems, pelicans, owls, jackals, ostriches, arrow-snakes and kites keep her company."

"The Lamiae, who seduced sleeping men, sucked their blood and ate their flesh, as Lilith and her fellow-demonesses did,"

As followed from the above the Babylonian/Persian incantation bowls speak of multiple "liliths", here. "You are bound and sealed, 

    all you demons and devils and liliths,

by that hard and strong, 

    mighty and powerful bond with which are tied Sison and Sisin....

The evil Lilith, 

    who causes the hearts of men to go astray 
    and appears in the dream of the night "

Another one: "In the name of the Lord of salvations. Designated is this bowl 

    for the sealing of the house of this 
   Geyonai bar Mamai,

that there flee from him the evil Lilith, 

    in the name of "YHWH-El has scattered"; 
    the Lilith, 
    the male lilin, 
   the female liliths, "

If I recall Patai also mentioned "liliths" being exorcised in his part about the Babylonian incantation bowls.


Further adding to confusion Killi, seems to be an epithet of Inanna's and denotes the owls connections with prostitution, in which Lilitu is called a "prostitute". Harris suggests in his thing about the Burney relief: ""Relevant here is the new interpretation by Thorkild Jacobsen of the well-known Burney Relief. [referring to Jacobsen "Pictures and Pictorial Language (The Burney Relief) from Figurative Language of the Ancient Near East 1987]. The winged goddess of the plaque with bird's claws, flanked by owls and standing on two lions couchant, he believes, is Inanna as "Lady Owl" who, when named Kilili, "denotes the harlot who like the owl comes out at dusk.: He suggests that the Burney Relief may have "served as a cult-relief at the house alter of an ancient bordello." If so, and Jacobsen makes a convincing case, then the very depiction of the goddess breaks down the boundary between species, between the divine and ornithic.""

There's also a few passages talking about Lilitu hanging out windows as a prostitute, as well as Ishtar.

This is one of the many reasons that the Burney relief was once thought to depict Lilith, besides the seductive bird woman flanked by owls.

Xuchilbara (talk) 20:20, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

The Edenic Serpent as Lilith in Christian Art?

An Opinion....flip the bas relief image180 degrees and there appears a bat, a night screech owl... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.26.14.180 (talk) 00:30, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

There are a couple of images on the Lilith page that unambiguously identify a female serpent with Lilith. The identification of the serpent as Lilith in the Michelangelo and Notre Dame images (and perhaps others on this page?) is a mistake. The Edenic serpent, in the Christian tradition, is identified with Satan. The serpent is often depicted with female attributes to point up its seductiveness and its association with Eve. To identify such depictions as Lilith is a misinterpretation. I notice that Alan Humm, in his webpage that is cited as support in the Lilith article, advances the association between the iconography of the serpent with Lilith tentatively and speculatively, and says that he knows of no textual basis for the identification. The question, as they say, is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. JEM.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.41.28.120 (talk) 07:53, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Greek version

the section titled Greek version needs cleaned up (because of ambiguity). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.230.235.232 (talk) 22:01, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

The Sumerian Legend of Lilith ???

If this is a real myth, not an artistic forgery (or just plain forgery) it should be the basis of a section, or at least mentioned: The Sumerian Legend of Lilith. I for one am a bit skeptical, since...

  1. I cann't find a non-internet reference on any page with this,
  2. it diverges so much from most other accounts,
  3. it incorporates "Marilith," which I've not seen anywhere else except in D&D, and
  4. it seems little too pretty, romanticized, poetic, and engineered for certain modern audiences...

...but can't find explicit debunking either. Does anyone know if its real? --69.138.148.185 (talk) 21:47, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

The "translator," Charles Alexander Moffat, also wrote novels for the Forgotten Realms series of books. That, the mention of "six-armed marilitus", the benevolent-goddess role given to Lilith, and his article on "Atlantis Forgotten" makes me think it's just flakey hippie hogwash. Ian.thomson (talk) 00:15, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
I'm afraid this is a bit of an artisticly based forgery (not unlike the centaur skeleton displayed at our local university's library) -- though it was obviously done by someone who knows the field and is good at making the pieces fit. The author had me going for a bit.
What gives it away are the "maraliths" -- this is a creature from Dungeons & Dragons, which game creator Gary Gygax has admitted to having just made up. The creature was invented in the '70's with the name type V (5) demon, with marilith being suggested as a name for one. Later, marilith became the name of the demon type. Had Gygax been aware of such a legend, it would have been called marilith from the beginning, and probably not a demon. The name is cross between "Lilith" and "Mara" (a demon who tempts Buddha, much as Satan does Jesus). The "maralith" and "marilith" are too identical in both name and description to be coincidence -- the author had to have gotten this idea from the game. Other than the lack of any direct reference to an original source and radical departure from other known sources, this is the one obvious give-away to its being a bit of modern fiction.
Good bit of neo-romanticism though, poetic and well done, with a nice bit of ironic tragedy. The author should add a "this is fiction" boiler plate, however, and this is not a source that should be reference into a serious article. --Jared (talk) 01:10, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
It has occurred to me that this might belong in the section on modern pop-culture, along with the other modern Lilith fiction. The problem is without an admission from the author or referencable debunking, the ficticious nature falls into the realm of "opinion and original research"; since this doesn't belong else where it can't be used at all. That's unfortunate, since many people reprint, quote, and reference this as fact, and having a place where this story is listed for what it really is would be helpful for many gullible people researching Lilith for neopagan and/or feminist purposes. A debunking site for this would thus be useful, if there's one out there. --Jared (talk) 15:30, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
It doesn't belong in the article unless there are reliable, third-party sources establishing that it's notable enough to include in an article on Lilith in the first place. Without that we'd just be propagating something of dubious importance with coverage.--Cúchullain t/c 15:38, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Handicapped here since my own knowledge pretty well ends where the Sumerian material ends. It still seems that the article is very overlong, filled with poorly sourced content (and sources that are just poor), and with Sumerian, Kabbalah and pre-Raphaelite content drifting in and out of each section. This is only a suggestion but would actually dividing the article help downsize and stabilize content?

2. Alternatively someone who really understands what appear to be eight to ten different Talmudic, Midrashic and Kabbalah sources could try and go in and sift them out and put in chronological order so we can see some line of development in the traditions? In ictu oculi (talk) 06:30, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

perhaps it would be preferable to clean up the article instead of just splitting it. --dab (𒁳) 11:07, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
agree - I really hate arbitrary splits about what is essentially the same entity. Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:38, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
Cleanup, split not needed. TeraS (talk) 22:21, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
Okay that seems unanimously against the first suggestion, fair enough it wasn't a brilliant suggestion. withdrawn. But don't see objection to the second, so at least clean up can put the Jewish texts in chronological order?In ictu oculi (talk) 00:41, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
Go for it. Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:58, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
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