lilith, a photo by doodle_juice on Flickr.

If you were a little kid in middle east you would remember when your Mum and Dad would say if you were naughty Lulu would take you away? Well here is her story. Our Lulu is known as Lilith. There are so many versions to her story. She is a female demon, deity, and Adam’s first wife. In some stories she is born before or at the same time as Adam. She is not a spare rib and was made from clay. According to Kabbalah writing she was created before Adam on the fifth day of creation as a water creature. But other writings mention that she was created from the same substance as Adam.

In Folk tradition because Lilith came out of clay just like Adam she demanded to be treated as an equal to him. Adam and Lilith quarrel so much and she runs away. Adam prays for help and God sends three angels to bring her back. ‘Leave me!’ she said. ‘I was created only to cause sickness to infants. If the infant is male, I have dominion over him for eight days after his birth, and if female, for twenty days. ’

When the angels heard Lilith’s words, they insisted she comes back  instead she swore to them by the name of the living and eternal God: ‘Whenever I see you or your names or your forms in an amulet, I will have no power over that infant. ‘ She also agreed to have one hundred of her children die every day. Accordingly, every day one hundred demons perish, and for the same reason, some still write the angels’ names on the amulets of young children. When Lilith sees their names, she remembers her oath, and the child recovers.

Another widely taught version of this is that the Hebrew cosmogony originally told a story of Yahweh creating Adam to marry a local Goddess-associated figure named Lilith. Lilith was a follower of the Great Mother Goddess, Inanna — later known as both Ishtar and Asherah.

In The Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh was said to have destroyed a tree that was in a sacred grove dedicated to the Goddess Ishtar/Inanna/Asherah. Lilith ran into the wilderness in despair. She then is depicted in the Talmud and Kabbalah as first wife to Yahweh’s first creation of man, Adam. In time, as stated in the Old testament, the Hebrew followers continued to worship “false idols”, like Asherah, as being as powerful as Yahweh.

Jeremiah speaks of his (and Yahweh’s) displeasure at this behavior to the Hebrew people about the worship of the Goddess in the Old Testament. Lilith is banished from Adam and Yahweh’s presence when she is discovered to be a “demon” and Eve becomes Adam’s wife. Lilith then took the form of the serpent in her jealous rage at being displaced as Adam’s wife. Lilith as serpent then proceeds to trick Eve into eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge and in this way is responsible for the downfall of all of humankind. It is worthwhile to note here that in religions pre-dating Judaism, the serpent was known to be associated with wisdom and re-birth (with the shedding of its skin). In Arabic mythology she is refered to as Karina.

Karina of Arabic lore is considered Lilith’s equivalent.

She is mentioned as a child-stealing and child-killing witch. In this context, Karina plays the role of a “shadow” of a woman and a corresponding male demon, Karin, is the “shadow” of a man. Should a woman marry, her Karina marries the man’s Karin. When the woman becomes pregnant is when Karina will cause her chaos.

She will try to drive the woman out and take her place, cause a miscarriage by striking the woman and if the woman succeeds in having children then her Karina will have the same number of children she does. The Karina will continuously try to create discord between the woman and her husband. Here, Karina plays the role of disruptor of marital relations, akin to one of Lilith’s roles in Jewish tradition. I think this is how in Iranian myth the story of “ Ham Zaad” or our shadow doubles must have come about. If you like this mythology then read the full story in the Wiki. http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Lilith