Her name was Lilith, and early Jewish folklore tells us that she was the first wife of Adam. This weaving together of folklore, legend and scripture became a way to explain the curious fact that in just the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis there are two separate versions of the creation of the first man and woman. Chapter Two relates the familiar version of Eve being formed from one of Adam’s ribs, but in Chapter One we are told that the man and the woman were created at the same time, and therefore independently of each other. This first couple remain unnamed, which is where folklore steps in and names the woman as Lilith.
Unlike Eve, who is something of a ‘second-generation’ product, from the very moment of her creation Lilith is an independent being, with equally independent thoughts and aspirations. As such she is clearly Adam’s equal, so it is unsurprising that when Adam expects his new partner to have a subservient role then Lilith is having none of it! She protests mightily both to Adam and to God himself that she is better than that, better than someone who must keep a respectful distance and walk behind her ‘master’, better than a mere servant who apparently is intended to keep Eden nicely cleaned and dusted while Adam lords it over her and busies himself with more important tasks like inventing names for all the animals.
We might imagine that both God and Adam were rather taken aback by this unexpected show of rebellion (as they saw it) on the part of the woman, and two bruised male egos must therefore have watched in dismay as Lilith stormed off into the night to begin her own independent existence. So unlike Eve who would come after her, Lilith was not expelled from Paradise, but kept the power to herself and left of her own accord. And so a new partner for Adam was created, this time out of Adam’s own flesh, and both God and Adam would make very sure that the second time around the woman would indeed be subservient to the man.
This is where the original folklore ends. So what happened to Lilith after she left Eden? What happened is that new folklore emerged, new tales were shaped, and a new Lilith was created out of them. But this was no longer the Lilith who was the strong and resourceful female. Lilith’s terrible (and as it turns out, bitterly unjust) punishment for doing nothing more than assert her equal gender rights was to be transformed by subsequent folklore from a strong, empowered and independent woman into a predatory and dangerous creature of the darkness, and there to be – quite literally – demonized.
We now picture Lilith as a dangerous and predatory demon of the night, and, quite literally, give her horns and even fangs to the extent that she resembles a sort of female version of Satan. But this Lilith is essentially a male fantasy, an invention which almost seems deliberately calculated to put the upstart Lilith in her place once and for all. Such a pity, because it is clear that the original version of who Lilith actually was and what she really was like is a Lilith who is needed now more than ever. Perhaps this is the task of our own age: to redeem Lilith, to restore her in all her original empowered femininity, so that a measure of balance also might be restored to our own troubled times.
“In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” This invocation to the Holy Trinity is so familiar in Christian prayer that it probably hardly registers that two of these terms are decidedly gender-specific, with the third term implied as being so by the first two. This can be a troubling point to maneuver around for those liberal souls who might insist that ‘God’ is neither male nor female, when the phrase ‘God the father’ has become so entrenched in our consciousness.
To help us to a greater understanding, let me here offer a thought of the Sikh sage and spiritual teacher Harbhajan Singh Khalsa, known as Yogi Bhajan: “Why do we call God the Father? Father does not have a creative nature... father can only seed. We are a soul and part of that whole great soul which is the seed in you. Creativity of sustenance and deliverance is from the mother, and that is why the Earth is called mother.”
Why indeed is God ‘the father’? It perhaps needs a mental effort to realize that things were not always this way, for in the beliefs of Ancient Babylonia the First Cause was female: the primordial Cosmic Ocean from whose waters all arose. It was the mingling of two waters, the salt waters of the seas and the fresh waters of the rivers and lakes of the land, which allowed all creation to begin, and it was the primordial Feminine which provided the impetus to initiate that momentous act. In this creative scheme of things no ‘father’ was necessary.
In nature as well ‘no father is necessary’, for in nature we encounter ‘parthenogenesis’, meaning ‘virgin birth’, and it is by no means uncommon in many species of reptiles, in bees, and in plants. No male is needed for these life forms to procreate: they simply do what they do! Nature might be showing us the way forward by example, although we in our Western mindset might still be a long way from ‘God the mother’.
To go back even further in time from these very first Babylonian beliefs of the primordial Mother Ocean, but staying in the Middle East, we arrive at the ancient civilization of Sumer, and the temple of Sumer’s High Priestess Enheduanna. Who did Enheduanna worship as the Supreme Creative force? The goddess Inanna, to whom the High Priestess composed several heartfelt and moving prayers – now among the oldest surviving writings in existence.
This ancient religious landscape already looks fundamentally different from our Holy Trinity of today, for God is only 'God the Father' in those patriarchal traditions which had - and still have - a vested interest in preserving their own power. But as Yogi Bhajan points out, the Creative Force is both initiating and sustaining: it is the Mother of all, the Divine Ground of all being.
Artwork: The Healing Women by Michael Malm
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