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Hello all. Welcome to another episode of Southern Demonology. I'm JJ, and today we are going to be talking about Lilith, the topic I've promised for a few episodes now, but I want to take a little bit of a backdoor to get there. And I hope you'll excuse me for the diversion. Have you seen the original Twilight Zone? It's kind of a strange question. If you're coming from my generation, the answer is going to be inevitably yes. Just because it would show up on you know holidays that you'd watch it uh on Halloween.
Uh if you know you happen to watch in the sci-fi channel, then it's usually re-ran several times a year, so it was pretty ubiquitous in time in terms of its audience. Not quite so much now, but I bring it up because the genius of the original Twilight Zone was that it wasn't really pegged into any one particular genre.
Yes, the vast majority of the episodes were, you know, dedicated to horror, but you also had a lot of science fiction mixed in, uh, post-apocalyptic themes, but one of the biggest ones, and I think this is the one that most people tend to forget about, is that there were quite a few episodes that were geared to humor. And it was that humor that really kind of stood out.
It didn't allow itself to be one dimension, and that's why in this, you know, the series have been remade quite a few times, but none of them will ever approach the original, and it's not just because they're, you know, shocky piece of media that's trying to capitalize on a well-known name, although I'm sure that has a good bit to do with it, but it's just because of the fact that all of these new ones, they have to go into it with one driving purpose. We're going to be horror, we're going to try to shock the audience. But it didn't take a little bit more of an intellectual cast to things.
And why do I bring this up? Well, there was another series that came along later that although it still defined itself within the pure kind of horror genre, and I was doing finger quotes when I was saying that, even though no one can see that. Sorry about that. Um, it also remembered that humor goes extremely well with horror. And that was HBO's Tell us in the Crypt. Now it tried to like distinguish itself by not only its spokesperson, which was a nice little, you know, ponerific uh host, the Cryptkeeper, but it also had the Cryptkeeper inject humor into everything.
Now, unfortunately, the stories themselves were extremely lackluster, and the only kind of like selling point that it had was, well, we can bring some big stars to each one of our shows. Didn't really help at all that much. However, it did actually launch two movies as well, and I don't know if you've seen them. I hope you have. I think that that's pretty much the only thing that movie got right. You see, Lilith has gone through a ton of transformations, and she's been around for oh so long. Ever since Mesopotamia and actually Sumeria as well.
So she stretches back in history for a great deal. Now most people that happen to know her knows that she is somehow Adam's first wife, or maybe she's the mother of demons, or something along those lines. Um uh Blizzard announced uh the newest Diablo, Diablo 4, and it is the main great prime evil, but that's how they classify their demons and that, um, is actually going to be Lilith, which is what made me think, well, hey, maybe this would be a an interesting show to be able to bring up.
But Lilith, beyond just the video game aspect, has fascinated me for quite a while, uh, because it's this fluidity of uh of her uh nature. You see her start off as a goddess who then becomes a night hag, who then eventually becomes the mother of all demons. So, how did this happen? What's some of the history behind this mysterious figure? That's what we want to explore tonight. So, hope you sit back and enjoy.
It's going to be kind of a long ride, but I will make it as entertaining as possible, or at least as much as I'm able to, which isn't that much, but you know, we'll see how we get going. So surprisingly enough, the mystery of Lilith starts at the beginning in Genesis and Beresheath.
If you look at Genesis 1, starting at verse 26, um, and I'm reading from the JPS version, it says, And God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
And God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created he him, male and female created he them, and God blessed them and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth. Did you notice anything strange about that passage? If you said that doesn't quite jive with what I thought about how God created man and woman, you would be absolutely right.
If you look in Genesis, there's actually two creation myths regarding humanity. There's this first one in Genesis 1, and then follows is the more complete version that most people are you know very familiar with, where you know God creates man and then creates woman from a rib from man. Now this has caused, again, a lot of confusion. How can you have two stories, one in which man and woman are created at the same time, and the other in which man's created first and then woman is created after.
Some people have explained this by saying, well, the first is just an allusion to the second, or the first is more an abbreviated telling of the second. But some people really didn't buy that. So you have this idea that well in English we call them Adam, but that there's Adam and a female that was created. And then the second one is you know, you you still have Adam, but then you have Eve who is created as a second woman.
And if you look at later rabbinic material, this is kind of the concept that's gone with, where it was actually Adam and Lilith who was created first, and then they quarreled, she would not be subdued by Adam, and then she took off, and later became the consort of demons, and then evolved into the mother of all demons. So that's where Lilith wound up at.
Some believe that Lilith started in the Epic of Gilgamesh, where there was a demon called Ki Sakilila, which made its lair in the tree that um that would that uh the goddess um Inanna, or commonly known as Ishtar, wanted to cut down to make herself a throne and a bed. And others think that that root term Lil, which means wind literally, but also can stand for the Hebrew word ruach, which can also mean breath or life, uh, with one associated with three goddesses uh or demons as they later became known of the winds.
So she has kind of a complex uh history in Sumerian and Mesopotamian texts, which in the delineation isn't really all quite there, but there are two interesting aspects. So you have, you know, that so the three goddesses were like Lilu, Lili Tu, and uh Wardat or Ardat Lili, and they all kind of became mixed together, but although they all meant wind, um some of them also, especially the Ardat Lili, um is really the name of a young marriageable woman.
However, the interesting part is is that um the marriageable part in this part is kind of questionable because of the fact that it's this is viewed as a type of seductress that you don't have normal intercourse with. So in fact, one of the legends or theories, whatever you may want to call it, depict um Ardat Lily Lee as being able to flee a house like an ill wind. Um and then you actually see in later Talmudic texts of people admonishing young men not to sleep alone lest Lilith come into your house and seduce you.
So from the earliest days, Lilith has been very much associated with these ideas of wind, of breath, of spirit, and then also sexuality. Lilith has only really one mention in the Hebrew Bible, and that is in Isaiah 34, and that's where this passage is going over Edom and the desolation that it entails. So reading from the Revised Standard Version, because the translation in this case is a little bit better, uh Isaiah 34 14. And wild beasts shall meet with hyenas, the satyr shall cry to his fellow, yea, there shall be the night hag a light, and find for herself a resting place.
There shall the night the owl nest and lay and hatch and gather her young in her shadow, yea, there shall be kites be gathered, each one with her mate. And that ran also into verse fifteen. But that part where it said night hag, that is actually Lilith. And this is kind of a folk etymology, but Lilith sounds pretty close to the Hebrew word for night or laylaw. So the kind of popular etymology is that she is a night hag or a night demon. So as we all know, Israel did not exist by itself.
Judaism did not exist by itself, it sat in a wide net of concepts and beliefs and mythologies, and it borrowed from them, and it was heavily influenced by those different aspects. And so Lilith appears here as a night hag, as a creature that is associated not only with hyenas and jackals and goats, but also with owls and kites and raptors, etc. So you can see there's still this concept of wind, of you know, all with all of these um horrible night creatures that dwell within the desert, but she's something slightly different. She is a definite evil force all unto herself.
And the interesting part is being able to track back when did this transition happen. You know, you had her start off in Sumerian and Akkadian texts, she then mysteriously shows up in Isaiah as a demon that resides in the desert. And then you have her further evolutions that go forth um within later Talmudic and Rabbinic texts that show that, you know, because she argued with Adam, she flew away from the garden and then started cavorting with demons and giving birth to them, and that's why she became as n became known as the mother of demons.
The interesting part is that you know, even in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we have 5Q, 5, 10, and 11 that I read last time. I'm not gonna read the whole thing again, I promise, but she's mentioned there again. You know, not only do you have the spirits of the angels of destruction, the spirits of the bastards, demons, lilith, howlers, blah blah blah. She is still a very definite force, and I think one of the staying powers that she has is not only this entire entanglement with sexuality. But moreover, it's really the concept of wind.
That she is like the giants, another one of these demons that is comprised of life, of breath, of spirit. And that's what makes her so entirely dangerous. She is at once, you know, tangible and intangible, with you know the biblical references of her appearing alongside satyrs and also owls and kites. She's both familiar and unfamiliar. She is one of these things that lurks in the darkness. In fact, it gets really kind of interesting because if you look in some of the psalms where it meant starts mentioning demons by illusion, you get this concept of an arrow that flieth by day.
And that is often associated with Lilith. And in fact, Lilith has in has been introduced in several other areas. Um she's often confused with Lamashtu, which is another demoness that you know sometimes is portrayed with the head of a lion and the teeth of a donkey, or later she's depicted as holding snakes and riding a donkey. And then later, uh even within like early translations of uh the Greek and uh Latin versions of the Bible, you will see weird translations of Lilith becoming Lamia. You find that in the Vulgate, you find it in a few others.
So Lilith is all over the place, and she and it's probably because you know her influence spread outside of Mesopotamia into Phoenicia and later into um you even find her in Zoroastrianism, where she becomes one of the daughters of Achraman, uh, which is like the head evil demon. So it just all goes to show that you know Lilith has staying power.
She was really evident in folklore and mythology until the Middle Ages, and that's kind of tampered down, but now you know people are reaching back in antiquity, they're trying to find new sources of material to imagine, and her name is one of those that gets pulled up from the rift, and rightfully so. She is a fascinating character. I wish we had more source text so that we can actually depict what she was, you know, what her idea uh was at any particular period in time. If I ever had a chance, I would do so.
But um, you even find her mentioned uh in um in magical amulets that supposedly Solomon had crafted. And that's gonna be a topic for a future episode um going over Solomon, because Solomon and his wisdom are is you know spans multiple different books in the pseudo pigrapha and onward. Um and it's always Solomon was, you know, uh a tamer of demons, so but regardless, this is gonna kind of wrap up uh Lilith, and it will wrap up the you know, kind of a three-part series in which we've gone over what the um the angels were that were alluded to in Genesis 6.
1, then we went into the giants, and then we finally finished up with Lilith, and the period of you know the the tying thread between each one of those three is definitely this idea of spirit that is able to lash out at humanity, no matter if it is, you know, been sent against each other in battle or confined in the desert of Duda L, whatever it may be, it still has lasting power, and at this point has lasted for more than 3,000 years. So I would say that it is um it definitely has very long arms that has been able to reach us even here in the present day.
So we've been going over some pretty heavy-hitting topics these past few episodes, so we're going to back it up a little bit and have a little bit more fun, I think. I'm gonna go over some horror movies that I have been watching, and they're not just gonna be from you know this year or last year, or and I'm definitely not gonna make a best of or worst of of the decade because A, no one cares to hear my opinion, and B, it would be very torturous to do so.
Uh, but rather I'm gonna go over some of the best and worst and go, you know, and try to highlight the ones that if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend. Uh, or if you have, then hopefully we can commiserate together. So look forward to that. Join us again. Can't tell you how happy I am that you're with us, and I hope that we can keep this party going for a good bit longer. So until next time, take care.