Don’t Be An Eve, Be A Lilith

The history and mythology of the name Lilith dates as far back as the 3rd century, deriving from religious Mesopotamian texts about demons, but the more known stories of Lilith come later in the 1st millennium, when Lilith appears in Jewish mythology and Hebrew-Language texts as the first wife of Adam. Now, if you know anything about Christianity and the bible, or simply just haven’t been living under a rock, you are probably a lot more familiar with Eve being represented as the wife of Adam. That’s the very standard and very basic story most of us know and have been told. However, what you didn’t learn in Sunday School was that Lilith was supposedly created before Eve.

There are many interpretations of this story or myth, but to put it simply — Lilith was created at the same time as Adam. She was created from the same earth that Adam was created from, which represents a much different image of woman than Eve’s story does. It is written that Eve was created from one of Adam’s ribs, which represents a woman created in the likeness of man, or that man came first and was necessary for woman to exist. However, Lilith, being created from the same earth as Adam, represents a woman who is equal to man.

Unfortunately, poor Adam just couldn’t handle Lilith. Again, there are many different versions of this story, but the basic telling is that Adam wanted Lilith to be subservient to him, and to “lie beneath” him, but Lilith argued that they were equals and perhaps Adam should “lie beneath” her. As you can imagine, Adam wasn’t too happy about that, and thus Lilith ran away from Eden to have her own freedom. The story goes on to say that Adam whined about Lilith leaving him, wanting God to make him another woman, and that’s when Eve was created — a lesser version of Adam, more compliant and not as clever.

If you have heard of Lilith before this, you perhaps have only heard the mythological stories about her being the mother of demons. This is the more well known version that people have witnessed in movies, tv shows, or read in books. Lilith is typically portrayed as evil, manipulative, and deceptive. This idea that she is evil however, stems from the notion that when Lilith left Adam, she was actually given the chance to go back to him and live a blissful, yet obedient life as his wife in Eden, but when she refused, she was punished. Her punishment was to be cast into the “night”, and that all of her children would die. Demons being referred to as “creatures of the night”, and Lilith being the first “creature of the night”, is thus where the theory that Lilith is the mother of demons comes from.

It’s all very clever if you think about it. Men, wanted women to be obedient. So, what better way to frighten women into submission than to tell the story of Lilith — the woman who was strong and empowered, and equal to man — being cast out by God and turned into a demon. A good wife lies beneath her husband, she is docile and submissive, and she certainly isn’t intelligent and doesn’t have a mind of her own. A good woman is not a Lilith, a good woman is an Eve.

Brilliant, right?

Lilith was even given the option to return, and knowing that she would be punished and cast into the darkness, still seemed a better option to her than living the remainder of her life as a compliant and enslaved woman to man. Of course, we weren’t told that story. It got lost in time and forgotten, or perhaps it was purposely removed from most records. Better to let women always think that they are lesser than man, and that man came first and is therefore more important, than to even let women know at all that they were originally created equal to man. Men would just prefer we aren’t aware of our strength at all in the first place, than to have to deal with our defiance and punish us for it.

Thousands of years later and we’re still dealing with this shit?

It kind of makes you feel a bit hysterical, doesn’t it?

I myself am not religious, and I do believe that most of this is all just myth. I’m not a big believer in much that the bible tells us, but I’m also not stating that I know for a fact that it’s all bullshit, but that’s beside the point. Whether you are religious, and you do follow the teachings of the bible, or not, it’s absurd that we are still fighting for equality.

For centuries men have been trying to belittle women, and the story of Lilith is just one example among many. We are still living in an age when an Eve is still more desirable than a Lilith. Beauty, innocence, devotion, and obedience are still highly sought after in female partners, while being unique, out spoken, defiant, and intelligent make you a bitch — an evil, crazy, demonic bitch.

Well, I say I’d rather be a demon who knows my own mind and worth, than a foolish woman who is ignorant to her plight, or who is compliant and quieted by the thundering, overindulgent voice of man.

In a world full of Eves, we need so many more Liliths.