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.

Martin Luther: Father of German Anti-Semitism?

If you ever read Von den Jüden und ihren Lügen (On the Jews and their Lies) you may possibly feel that you have entered into a world inhabited by the likes of Julius Streicher: the language is vicious, the imagery unrestrained in its ugliness.

But look more closely; you will find none of the preoccupations with race and blood that were the key feature of the forms of anti-Semitism promoted by Hitler and the like. For Luther a Jew who converted was no longer a Jew. It's even more basic than that: for the salvation of the Jews was a precondition for the salvation of all. Luther's world was one of imminence; a world poised on the threshold of the Second Coming.

In anticipation of this the forces of Anti-Christ, whether they be Jews, Muslims or Catholics, were gathering, threatening to prevent the final victory of Christ. This was a danger for all, faithful and faithless alike. If the Jews would not convert they must "driven out like mad dogs, so that we do not partake in their abomniable blasphemy...and thus merit God's wrath and be damned with them." It was this fear that explains Luther's explosive sense of frustration at Jewish intransigence, and all of the venom and malice that erupted thereafter.

So, you will find him in the Nazi pantheon, admired by Hitler and the like, with his work displayed in a glass case at each and every Nuremberg Rally. At the time of the Kristalnacht, Martin Sasse, a Nazi and a Lutheran Bishop, was to express satisfaction that the pogrom had occured on Luther's birthday, and that the founder of his church deserved to be remembered as "the greatest anti-Semite of his time."

And yet Luther was a sixteenth century Christian, a Reformer, a man who set German against German in a way that did not sit comfortably with Nazi ideology and racial politics. Rassenpolitik, published in 1943, specifically targets Christianity as an enemy of the National Socialist world view. From this perspective the churches are guilty of building walls were none should exist; of dividing German from German; a place were the marriages between 'Aryans, Jews and Negroes are blessed'. The Reformation started as a 'German Revolution', but degenerated into a battle over dogma, where "Luther finally bound the conscience to the Jewish teachings of the Bible." And thus the real distance is displayed in all its clarity.

The Victorian Crisis of Faith

Robert Browning fashions Easter-Day as a discussion between two voices, exploring, amongst other things, the nature of faith, how insecure it is, and how necessary God's help is in sustaining it. The simple fact is that the Victorian world was beginning to lose some of its past certainties in matters of faith and religion, a process that the publication of David Strauss's The Life of Jesus helped to accelerate. Browning was later to say "I know the difficulty of believing...I know all that may be said against it [the Christian scheme of salvation] on the ground of history, of reason, of even moral sense. I grant even that it may be a fiction. But I am none the less convinced that the life and death of Christ, as Christians apprehend it, supply something that their humanity requires; and that is true for them."

The same uncertainty, the same crisis of faith, was also taken up by Matthew Arnold in "Dover Beach":

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.


Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Oh, How I Hate Jehovah!

This may be my last blog because I simply have to make a declaration: I hate, really hate Jehovah, Yahweh, if you prefer, the Jewish God, the God of the Christian ‘Old Testament’. So, in making this declaration, I expect to be struck dead at any moment, any second now…what; nothing; it hasn’t happened; I’m still here, so on I go!

Why do I hate him (oops, no caps!) because I can’t imagine a figure less worthy of deification, a shallow tribal god, a god defined not by transcendence and nobility but by all that is worst in the human spirit. Yes, I know, all gods are created by people and invested to some degree with human attributes. But Yahweh, what attributes does he have? Read the Old Testament and you will see: he is jealous, devious, tyrannical, paranoid and insecure by turns. He even demands that a father sacrifice his own son just to test the extent of his authority, to see if he is truly ‘loved’. Satan understands this monster’s pathological insecurities, which seems to me to be the true message behind the story of Job. The ‘Adversary’ is, in essence, making fun of god!

I contrast this creature with the beautiful deities of the Greek pantheon; deities like Pan. Yes, I know they are also full of frailties, but there is something wonderful about them, something which reflects back on humanity, which ennobles and amplifies the human spirit. They are fascinating, even in their weaknesses. Jehovah? All I can say is that Lucifer did not rebel out of pride; he rebelled out of boredom. :-))

Hey, I'm in the middle of some important exams. I really needed to let off some steam!