Lilith-Mother of Witches

If Lucifer was the first male rebel in creation then Lilith has to be the first female. And what a rebel she was: the first feminist; the first witch; the first sexually assertive woman; the first divorcee! As a figure she is an inspiration, a mentor and a guide; a woman who deliberately exiled herself from paradise in search of nothing more substantive than freedom, nothing more important than freedom. For there is nothing more important.

In tradition she takes many shapes, drawing to herself the creatures of the dark and the night, not just witches but Jinn, vampires and demons of all sorts. In Hebrew her name means ‘screech owl’ and she is sometimes depicted in the form of a bird-woman. ‘Lilith’ is also related to the Semitic root word for ‘night.’

She is depicted in Jewish lore sometimes as a beautiful young woman, at other times a hag. She is also depicted as a woman from head to waist, with fire down below, which, I suppose, might very well be a comment on her sexual appetite. :-)) In other depictions the lower parts take the form of a snake.

She also takes on a complete animal form, most usually a large black cat, an owl or a snake. It’s possible that she may have emerged in some ancient traditions as a tree spirit. In one Sumerian myth ‘Dark Maid Lilith’ lives as in a sacred tree with a snake and a sacred bird as companions.

In her most familiar form she appears in Jewish legend as the first wife of Adam, created not from his rib, like Eve, but from the Earth itself at the same time as her partner. Because of this she demanded equal status, which included refusing always to take the ‘missionary position’ when they had sex, seeing that as an admission of submissiveness. And that was not her style; oh, no. When Adam attempted to force her she gave voice to the secret name of the Creator, which allowed her to leave Paradise on wings. All attempts to bring her back failed; for if the angels threatened Lilith threatened even more.

In some accounts Lilith is unfertile; in others she is mother to a host of demons, the Lilin or Daughters of Lilith. The father of these girls is uncertain, with suggestions ranging from Samael, the fallen angel, or even Asmodeus. Lilith is also the original succubus.

She continues to have a strong presence in Jewish fairy-tales and folklore. In the Sephardic tradition she is La Broosha, which simply means ‘the witch.’ Here she often appears as a large black cat.

There seems to me to be some Greek influences in the general make up of Lilith, in that the owl is her sacred bird, as it is for Pallas Athena, and she derives strength from the Moon, associating her with Artemis.

In whatever manner she is a potent symbol, the great mother, an inspiration to all witches, an example to all women.

St Valentine or Juno?

As we all know the early Christian church grafted many of its feast days on to pre-existing pagan festivals, Christmas being the chief case in point. I was told by someone, I can’t remember who, that St Valentine’s Day is actually the festival of Juno. I suppose it makes sense: after all why would a Christian martyr, of whom almost nothing is known, be associated with a pagan-like celebration of love? The matter, however, is not quite as simple as I was led to suppose.

The Romans celebrated Lupercalia in mid-February, a pastoral festival associate with purification and fertility rather than love as such. The chief deity invoked was Lupercus, sometimes identified with Faunus, the Roman equivalent to the Great God Pan. Yes, fertility and a degree of excess, as Plutarch depicts;

Lupercalia, of which many write that it was anciently celebrated by shepherds, and has also some connection with the Arcadian Lycaea. At this time many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy.

The other festival associated with this period, and the one to which I was guided, is that of Juno Februata, during which boys are supposed to have drawn girls names from a box in honour of the Goddess. Christians then took to substituting the names of saints. But this conjecture is traceable only to The Lives of the Saints, the work of the seventeenth century hagiographer and priest, Alban Butler. It was subsequently embellished by Francis Douce in Illustrations of Shakespeare, who supplies Valentine as the favoured name. Thus was the connection established, and thus it has been maintained. It’s no more than a romantic fiction!

Daughters of Lilith-a Tale of a Succubus

Underneath the darkened sky
All along the crooked way
The same story once again
Of sorrow and of pain
One fool in a dream
One black-hearted queen
A tale of unrequited love
That's written in tears, written in blood
She smiles, he cries
He begs, but she denies
As tonight becomes tomorrow
All joy will turn to sorrow

This is a tale of a succubus
A tale of love, pain and lust
A cheated heart and the broken trust
And death, and death!

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust
Where there's love, there is lust
Where there's a boy to give his heart
There's a woman to tear it apart
Where there's giving, there's taking
There's faking, and there's breaking
Where there's trust deceit's right there
The dream becomes the nightmare!

This is a tale of a succubus
A tale of love, pain and lust
A cheated heart and the broken trust
And death, and death!

To despair she'll take him
A shadow she'll make him
Before him, the open grave
On his wrist, the razor blade
Young man, hang your head and cry
It's time to suffer, it’s time to die
Abandon you the dreams of youth
Abandon love, hope and truth!

This is a tale of a succubus
A tale of love, pain and lust
A cheated heart and the broken trust
And death, and death!

She will crush you, she'll excite you
She'll destroy you, she'll ignite you
She'll take you to a world of darkness
And death, and death!

On a night of dread and wonder
Hear her heartbeat turn to thunder
Now's the time for soul surrender
And death, and death!

So, what’s a succubus? The name itself comes from the Latin, meaning ‘to lie beneath.’ The succubus, traditionally understood, is a female demon, the equivalent of the male incubus, a demon that comes at night in order to seduce men in their sleep, extracting sperm in the process.

Throughout the Middle Ages the emission of sperm in the night was thought to indicate that the individual in question had been visited by a succubus. Not surprisingly there was an unusually high incidence of this amongst monks, who were thus thought to be particularly susceptible to the attentions of the demon ladies!

Taking the form of a beautiful woman, most often depicted with bat-like wings, she acted a little in the fashion of a vampire, draining her victims of vital energy and life-force, sometimes to the point of death, as well as stealing sperm to produce artificially conceived offspring. The child is not that of the succubus herself. Rather the sperm was passed to an incubus, who uses it to impregnate women in their sleep. The semi-demonic children produced in this manner were known as cambions, thought to be particularly susceptible to demonic influence.

Lilith, the first wife of Adam in Jewish lore, ejected from Eden after refusing to accept his authority, is said to have become the first succubus to avenger herself on his descendants. Because of this succubae are known collectively as the Daughters of Lilith.

Death Birds

This is a story from Ethiopia of an as yet unidentified species of vampire bat, one that is reputed to drink the blood of people in their sleep, and one that is much feared by the local people. It’s possible that this is yet another ‘rural myth’, for the only substantive source-beyond hearsay -is Dead Men Do Tell Tales, a book published as long ago as 1943 by one Byron de Prorok, a traveler and a kind of archeologist, along the lines of Lara Croft or Indiana Jones! He wrote several books describing his adventures, which depend more on sensation than science. It’s also possible that he was something of a fantasist.

So, it was in Ethiopia that he reports coming across mention of these bats, known to the indigenous communities as death birds. According to his account they are to be found in the province of Walaga, in a remote location known as the Devil’s Cave. De Prorok travelled to the place, disturbing a great colony of bats, with wingspans of some two to three feet. From there he went to a nearby goatherd’s camp, where he found that the men had bite wounds on their arms. All showed signs of sever blood loss. One man, soaked in bloody rags, was close to death.

That’s it, not really very much to go on, just an unconfirmed report from a somewhat questionable source. It’s still true, though, that not all of nature’s secrets have been revealed. :-)

Hell and the Lamia

I saw Drag me to Hell recently, directed by Sam Rami, the guiding hand behind the Spider Man movies and, still earlier, The Evil Dead. I loved this movie, I love Rami's black sense of humour but then I love the whole horror movie genre. I also love discovering something new. Rami’s movie introduced me to the Lamia, who appears as a devil-like demon in the movie. I looked into this, discovering that the Lamia has deep mythological roots…and that she is female, one with a tragic history, a plaything of the selfish passions of the gods.

In Classical mythology Lamia was a Queen of Libya. Beloved by Zeus, she incurred the wrath of Hera, who, in an act of revenge, killed her children. Either cursed by the jealous goddess, or consumed by grief, Lamia turned a monster. Taking on the partial shape of a serpent, she began to devour other people’s children in furious envy. In Greek folklore Lamia has the same basic form-and purpose- as the witch Baba Yaga in that of Russia, a monster who combines a taste for human flesh with the gift of prophecy; a monster who serves as a warning. Philostratus, in The Life of Apollonius, says that she took on the shape of a beautiful woman at will to entice young men prior to devouring them. Something of the tragedy of Lamia was later captured in a romantic form by John Keats, who describes her thus;

She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;
Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr'd;
And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed,
Dissolv'd, or brighter shone, or interwreathed
Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries-
So rainbow-sided, touch'd with miseries,
She seem'd, at once, some penanced lady elf,
Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self.
Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire
Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne's tiar:
Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet!
She had a woman's mouth with all its pearls complete:
And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there
But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?

As far as the movie is concerned I thought that Christine’s fate was rather hard. If anyone deserved to be dragged to hell it was the board of directors of the bank she worked for, not a lowly employee. The old gypsy’s curse was misdirected; we can all understand that much!

Christianity and the Mother Goddess

The more I look into Christianity the more complex the religion appears. In some sense it really is not a monotheistic religion at all, despite all the subtle apologetics over the exact nature of the Trinity. Indeed, if one looks beyond this core theological concept, there is a clear pantheistic quality to the faith, certainly in its Catholic clothing, with saints and intermediaries of all kinds in a sort of mutation of a late pagan tradition. But the key-figure, the mother-goddess, if you like, is the figure of the Virgin.

I read Mary and the Making of Europe by Mari Ruben in the March edition of History Today, part of the argument she presents in her book, The Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary, which I am also reading.

The cult of Mary served so many different purposes. For one thing its spread across Europe from the eleventh century onwards helped give a universal focus to a Church that had been fragmented in its devotion to local martyrs and saints. For another Mary was a more accessible figure, more human, if you like, than the Father, the Son or the Holy Ghost. More than that, she was believed to possess forms of leverage unique to herself. After all, she was a mother, was she not, and what son can refuse a plea from his mother? There is a twelfth century French prayer which sums up this mood perfectly;

Whatever you wish
Your only son will give you.
For whomever you seek
You will have the pardon and glory.

It was to her that even the monks turned when others might have been uncharitable or unforgiving;

O blessed and most saintly Mary, always Virgin, I am thus afflicted in the face of your goodness. I am greatly confused by the abominations of my sins which have made me deformed and horrible in the eyes of angels and all saints.


Mary also served as a focus of late Medieval anti-Judaism. As Mary was the vessel of the Incarnation-a blasphemous concept in Judaism-she was often deployed as proof of the perversity of the Jews and an instrument for converting unbelievers in the miracle stories of the period.

So Mary became a friend to the errant, a confidant of both monks and nuns, the Great Mother, in some ways more important than Christ himself in terms of popular devotion. All this is quite remarkable when one considers how little she figures in the Gospels.

Hecate at the Crossroads

Castles and manor houses are, of course, natural locations for hauntings, particularly if the have a tragic history; but if anything crossroads, yes, crossroads, have an even more tragic and supernatural associations. There is a simple explanation for this. In England, right up until the practice was condemned by Parliament in 1813, people who committed suicide were traditionally buried there. When and why this practice began is not entirely clear, though the suggestion is that it was though such locations would confuse troubled spirits.

But the lore associated with crossroads goes much deeper. In ancient Greece they were sacred to Hecate, the goddess of the witches. There are some lovely snippets of information on ancient beliefs in The Characters, a compendium by Theophrastus, a Greek author who died in 287BC. The author makes fun of superstitious people, which, penetrating to the Greek root, means those who have fear of spiritual things. Theophrastus goes that one step further, defining superstition as ‘cowardice in the face of the supernatural.’ The practice was for such people to anoint the stones at crossroads, both to appease the ghosts and Hecate, who was known to frequent such places.

In general boundaries and meeting points of all sorts have long had strong supernatural associations.

Sulis-Minerva

The brilliance and all-encompassing nature of Roman paganism is fully demonstrated by the tendency to adapt local cults and fit them within a wider pantheon. A perfect example of this can be found in the treatment of Sulis or Sul, the Celtic goddess of healing, long associated with the hot springs in what is now the city of Bath in south-west England.

After the occupation of Britain Sulis was conflated with Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom. It was at the heart of the cult of Sulis-Minerva that the new city of Aquae Sulis arose, a destination for pilgrims from across the Empire. It is reasonable to assume that while the cult of Sulis had been in part latinised, the Celtic element was always uppermost, in that her name always came before that of Minerva.

Sulis, like most ancient deities, had more than one dimension their power. She was a gentle goddess, whose curative waters could be used to cure a whole range of conditions. But her name could also be invoked to bring vengeance upon the enemies of those who sought her protection.

Ravens of the Tower

The first written reference to ravens being kept in the Tower of London dates no further back that the 1890s. If we go a little further back than that the Tower first established its place in the Gothic imagination with the publication in 1841 of The Tower of London an historical novel by Harrison Ainsworth. It included an illustration by George Cruikshank of large dark birds, possibly ravens, gathering around the scaffold erected for the execution of Lady Jane Grey. This, in turn, is likely to have been a reflection of the folk tradition that associated croaking ravens with death.

It would seem that as the popularity of the Tower began to grow the keepers decided to exploit the public's appetite for the macabre by, first, erecting a plaque in 1866 to the spot on Tower Green where the scaffold is supposed to have stood, a complete fiction, for there never was a permanent scaffold; and second, by amplifying on the raven stories.

The Tower from Within by George Younghusband, published in 1919, was the first to describe the ravens in detail. By this time the Yeomen Warders were in the practice of telling visitors that the raven used to gather at the site of the scaffold to pick at the severed heads. The earliest written reference to the legend that Britain will fall if the ravens leave the Tower dates to a letter published in the magazine Country Life in February 1955, which probably means this 'ancient' story was invented sometime during the Second World War.

Demeter, Opium and Winter

Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, the Greek goddess of fertility, was obliged to stay in Underworld for part of the year as the wife of the god, Hades, after she ate six pomegranate seeds. To forget her grief, Demeter went into hibernation, bringing on the winter. To aid her sleep she ate poppies. The poppy plant then became one of her symbols, often depicted alongside corn. So, it might be said, winter is a sleep induced by the power of opium. :)