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    The Book of Lilith
    The Book of Lilith
    The Book of Lilith
    Ebook159 pages2 hours

    The Book of Lilith

    By Barbara Black Koltuv

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Lilith is the mythological seductress that has been repressed since Biblical times. She is the representative of the essentially motherless form of the feminine Self that arose as an embodiment of the neglected and rejected aspects of the Great Goddess. Written by a Jungian analyst, this material can help modern men and women come to terms with this aspect of the feminine within. 
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNicolas-Hays, Inc
    Release dateJan 15, 1986
    ISBN9780892545605
    Author

    Barbara Black Koltuv

    Barbara Black Koltuv is a clinical psychologist and a Jungian analyst and has studied biblical Hebrew for several decades. In her more than forty-five years of practice Dr. Koltuv learned that wholeness and healing come through a deep spiritual connection to the Self within. It is her hope that this book will help people find that connection by working with their dreams. She is an authority on amulets and talismans and the author of Amulets, Talismans, and Magical Jewelry, The Book of Lilith, Solomon and Sheba and Weaving Woman.

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    Reviews for The Book of Lilith

    3.5/5

    37 ratings3 reviews

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    • 3/5
      While it offers valuable historical insights through a feminist lens, it might not fully resonate with everyone. It's a solid choice if you're looking for a quick read with meaningful examples, but it falls short of achieving a higher rating due to some minor limitations.
    • 5/5
      Fascinating! Finally I got to meet lilith in a fair light.
    • 3/5
      A more profound and /or extensive bibliography would have made this book ever better, since, unfortunately, the bibliographical notes and the citations are the good part that came from Koltuv's pen, making it tiresome read. The Book of Lilith is written around citations from several sources, both historical and belles-lettres, making this a pretty decent secondary reference book but nothing, simply nothing saves it from being just that. Hardly the book of Lilith.

      3 people found this helpful

    Book preview

    The Book of Lilith - Barbara Black Koltuv

    Introduction

    Lilith, an irresistible, long haired, she demon of the night, flies through Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaanite, Persian, Hebrew, Arabic, and Teutonic mythology. During the third millenium b.c. in Sumer, she was at first Lil, a destructive storm or wind spirit. Among the Semites of Mesopotamia, she was Lilith, who later, confabulated with layil (the Hebrew word for night) became Lilith, a night demon who lays hold of men and women who sleep alone, causing erotic dreams and nocturnal orgasm. By the eighth century b.c. in Syria, Lilith, the succubus, was joined to what had originally been a quite distinct demonic figure of the child killing witch Lamashtu. In this form, Lilith, Winged One and Strangleress, became known throughout the world by the appellations Dame Donkey Legs, Vixen Bogey, Blood Sucker, Woman of Harlotry, Alien Woman, Impure Female, End of all Flesh, End of Day, bruha, strega, witch, hag, snatcher and enchantress. She was called serpent, dog, donkey and owl, screeching night jar or strix, and the soul of every living creature that creepeth. She was Adam’s first wife, the female of Leviathan, the wife of Samael the Devil and King Ashmodai, the Queen of Sheba and Zamargad, and is even the consort of God himself while the Shekhina is in exile. Attempts to suppress and deny her date from the sixth century BC, but she returns evermore, as a seductress and child killer, and will continue to do so until the Messiah comes and drives the unclean spirits from the land (Zech. 13:2).² This book, a psychological anthology, is an attempt to tell her story, to evoke her presence in consciousness, and to inquire into her meaning in the modern psyche.

    __________

    ²Bible references in this book are from The Jerusalem Bible (Doubleday, New York, 1966), and The Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text, Volumes I and II (Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 1955).

    CHAPTER I

    ORIGINS

    Lilith’s origins are shrouded in the time before time. She arose from the chaos. Although there are many myths of her beginnings, all make clear that she is a counter force, a balancing factor, an opposite but equal weight to God’s goodness and maleness.

    IN THE BEGINNING

    According to the Zohar,³ the book of splendor:

    God made two great lights. The two lights ascended together with the same dignity. The moon, however, was not at ease with the sun, and in fact each felt mortified by the other. The moon said: ‘Where dost thou pasture?’ (Song of Songs 1:7). The sun said ‘Where dost thou make thy flock to rest at noon?’ S. S. 1:7. ‘How can a little candle shine at midday?’ God thereupon said to her, ‘Go and diminish thyself.’ She felt humiliated and said ‘Why should I be as one that veileth herself?’ (S. S. 1:7) God then said ‘Go thy way forth in the footsteps of the flock.’ Thereupon she diminished herself so as to be head of the lower ranks. From that time she has had no light of her own, but derives her light from the sun. At first they were on an equality, but afterwards she diminished herself among all those grades of hers, although she is still head of them. When the moon was in connection with the sun, she was luminous, but as soon as she separated from the sun and was assigned the charge of her own hosts, she reduced her status and her light, and shells upon shells were created for covering the brain, and all for the benefit of the brain (Zohar I 20a).

    After the primordial light was withdrawn there was created a ‘membrane for the marrow,’ a k’lifah husk or shell, and this k’lifah expanded and produced another, who was Lilith (Zohar I 19b).

    So we see that in the beginning the Sun and the Moon were equal in dignity. (See figure 1 on page 3.) The Zohar explains how the origins of the Moon cause her to seek to merge with the Sun:

    He summoned to issue from the side of Darkness a kind of female moon which rules the night and is called night, and is associated with Adonai the Lord of all the Earth (Zohar I 16b) . . . the Left, the side of Darkness, flamed forth with its full power, producing at all points a kind of reflection, and from this fiery flame came forth the female moonlike essence .... Just as it is the desire of Darkness to merge itself in Light, so it is the desire of night to merge itself in day (Zohar I 17a-b). All this is brought out in the Book of Adam. It says there that when Darkness asserted itself, it did so with fury, (S. S. 1:7) But as soon as the wrath and the fury abated there arose a quarrel of another kind, to wit, a quarrel of love . . . (Zohar I 16b-17b).

    God, to settle the discord between Moon and Sun, caused a separation. He caused the Moon to diminish herself and go forth in the footsteps of the flock, at the head of the lower ranks:

    It is fit and proper that the two lights should rule, the greater light by day and the lesser light by night .... Thus the dominion of the day belongs to the male and the dominion of the night to the female. There are two kinds of luminaries. Those which ascend above are called ‘luminaries of light’ and those which descend below are called ‘luminaries of fire’ (Zohar I 20b).

    Figure 1. Here the Sun and Moon, male and female, do battle. An encounter of opposites with each opposing principle containing its opposite; hence the shields. (From Aurora Consurgens, late fourteenth century. Courtesy of Zentralbibliothek, Zurich, Ms. Rh. 172f. 10.)

    Although both luminaries continue to rule, the Moon clearly feels herself to be diminished. God’s intervention in her lover’s quarrel robs her of her freedom of choice. As a result of the Moon’s diminishment, the k’lifah (or husk of evil) that is Lilith was born. It is said that Lilith has the body of a beautiful woman from the head to the navel, but from the navel down she is flaming fire.⁴ From these Zoharic myths we see that Lilith’s energy is derived from the resentment and diminishment of the Moon. It is dark, and fiery, and of the night.

    The Zohar offers detailed instructions for deepening consciousness and individuation through knowing Lilith and her nature. In the following passage, the analogy is drawn between Lilith and the husks of evil, or the dark feminine side of the Self that appears to men and women at night in their dreams. The passage explains how successive encounters with the transpersonal shadow in its dark feminine form are necessary for the permanence of the world. This is similar to Jung’s view that God wants to be born in the flame of man’s consciousness, leaping ever higher. And what if this has no roots in the earth? If it is not a house of stone where the fire of God can dwell, but a wretched straw hut . . . .⁵ Knowledge of this Lilith shadow is necessary for strengthening man’s ego, and creating a balance for the ego-self axis, i.e., building a house of stone for man’s consciousness.

    King Solomon, when he penetrated into the depths of the nut garden (S. S. 6:11), took a nut-shell, a k’lifah and drew an analogy from its layers to these spirits [Lilith] which inspire sensual desires in human beings . . . and the pleasures in which men indulge in the time of sleep .... The Holy One, blessed be He, found it necessary to create all these things in the world to ensure its permanence, so that there should be, as it were, a brain with many membranes encircling it. The whole world is constructed on this principle, upper and lower, from the first mystic point up to the furthest removed of all the stages. They are all (20a) coverings one to another, brain within brain and spirit within spirit, so that one is a shell to another. The primal point is the innermost light of a translucency, tenuity, and purity passing comprehension. The extension of that point becomes a ‘palace’ (Hekal), which forms a vestment for that point with a radiance which is still unknowable on account of its translucency. The ‘palace’ which is the vestment for that unknowable point is also a radiance which cannot be comprehended, yet withal less subtle and translucent than the primal mystic point. This ‘palace’ extends into the primal Light, which is a vestment for it. From this point there is extension after extension, each one forming a vestment to the other, being in the relation of membrane and brain to one another. Although at first a vestment, each stage becomes a brain to the next stage. The same process takes place below, so that on this model man in this world combines brain and shell, spirit and body, all for the better ordering of the world. When the moon was in connection with the sun, she was luminous, but as soon as she separated from the sun and was assigned the charge of her own hosts, she reduced her status and her light, and shells upon shells were created for covering the brain, and all for the benefit of the brain (Zohar I 19b-20a).

    The familiar marriage quaternio diagram underlies several of the Kabbalistic myths of Lilith’s origins. Lilith is said to arise from the power aspect of God, from the side of stern judgement and punishment, the Gevurah or Din. This stern, punitive aspect of God has at

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