Notes about Sexuality and Religion

Dr Justin Sledge

Transcript

Since the romantic rehabilitation of
Lilith, from child murderer and
nocturnal seducer of men to symbol of
feminine power and defiance, Lilith has
become easily one of the most
recognizable of all contemporary demons.
But her origin, first in ancient
Mesopotamia and then in early Jewish
medieval literature, are marked by
curious historical accidents. Curiously
enough, Lilith may have emerged as a
linguistic mistake and a text meant to
actually parody rabbitic legends. Let’s
explore the historical vicissitudes of
Shei of the Night of Lilith. Make sure
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the origins of Lilith in language,
parody, and myth. I’m Dr. Justin Sledge,
and welcome to Esoterica, where we
explore the arcane in history,
philosophy, and religion.
[Music]
This episode is part of an ongoing
series I’ve been doing here on the
channel about Lilith. And in this
episode, I want to dig a bit deeper into
a couple of points that I only
superficially made previously. These
will mostly focus in on the origins of
Lilith as a kind of series of
interesting historical accidents. The
first has to do with how Lilith
represents not only a fusion of several
different ancient Mesopotamian spirits,
demons, and gods, as much as those were
ever really distinct, but also a kind of
linguistic mishap that gave rise to her
name as such. It seems that an
etmological mistake between the
linguistic isolate Sumerian and the
Semitic language Acadian, those two
languages aren’t linguistically
connected at all, would eventually cause
a fusion between the subdivine beings of
the Leelu or the Lily family and the
daughter of Anu and thus a goddess
herself proper, the goddess Lamashtu.
This can be seen in how the Leelu or the
lily spirits aren’t written with the
divine determinative sign, the dinger
sign like lamash to. What seems to have
happened is a kind of assimilation where
some of the malevolent activity of the
lily or the ardat lily especially are
fused with the explicitly anti-natal
evil of lamashtu who was known to kill
children either by tapping on their
mother’s stomach seven times murdering
babies through crib death or even just
kidnapping the infants from their wet
nurse. Lamashtu’s infamy is well
attested in the amulet literature and
spells against her which deploy the
iconography of the leader of the wind
lulu Pazuzu. But of course Pazuzu gets a
pretty bad rap in contemporary times for
possessing Reagan and the Exorcist
movies. But that’s pretty ironic
considering that he was widely invoked
precisely as a protector of young
children and mothers. So, The Exorcist,
you did Pazuzu dirty, and we’re not
going to forget about it. But pazuzu
aside, what appears to have happened is
that some of the characteristics and
some of the functions of the Lily or
Lilu spirits, including that of Ardilly,
who I’ll come back to in just a minute,
seem to have been fused with those
explicit anti-natal evil of Lamashtube,
with a kind of false friend relationship
between the etmologically unrelated
Sumerian term for these beings, the leil
spirits, and the cemetic Aadian word for
night, lieloom or lilatum.
thus seeming to give rise to a pan
Mesopotamian demoness later attested in
Phoenician, Israelite, Jewish, Persian,
Mandian, etc. sources again largely
responsible for crib death or seducing
young men in their sleep. Though again,
we’ll see that’s the result of this
fusion which gives rise to Lilith. And
we see the result of this process in
some of the many god lists which do tell
the Sumerian names or spellings of a
specific god with their equivalent in
the Seemetic Acadian language. Think of
Sumerian is kind of the Latin of the
Mesopotamian world. Specifically, at the
end of some of those lists, there’s
something an appendix where various
non-God spirits, again, they lack that
dingier determinative. And that’s where
you find versions of this linguistic
collapse between the two linguistically
unrelated languages of the isolate
language Sumerian and the Semitic
language Acadium. Now, exactly how this
process developed isn’t totally
understood, but it’s likely that a
partially through a kind of linguistic
mishap and a bit of a divine demonic
association and assimilation, Lilith
probably came into being as something of
a false friend linguistic mistake.
However, this process of the
solidification of Lilith into a singular
demonst that we all know and many of you
love wasn’t even totally complete during
the period of the incantation bowl
literature which were produced during
the 6th through the 8th centuries of the
common era. You can check out a whole
episode I have on the incantation bowls.
While some of the iconographic elements
seem to have come together by this point
in the form of a voluuptuous young woman
with scandaly loose wild hair often
depicted bound in chains. The features
of Lilith as centrally responsible for
crib death weren’t yet dialed in in that
literature. In the incantation bowl
literature, she’s most often associated
with the nocturnal assault of men. In
fact, some of the bowls, the
incantation, will take the form of a
ritual divorce or a get between the man
in question and Lilith. You drive her
out by basically divorcing her. In this
mode, Lilith is much more akin to the
then already ancient spirit of the Ardot
Lily or the phantom bride to be. These
are said to be the ghosts of young women
who die before becoming married and thus
their unfulfilled sexual urges drive
them to nocturnally seduce men. So think
of something like a Mesopotamian
succubus. Though while mostly attested
on in this literature as female, there
actually are mentions of etal lily or
phantom bridegrooms as well. And
unsurprisingly, not only do we see
mentions of Lilith in the feminine
singular in the incantation bowls, but
we find Liliths, Lilith, Lilot in both
the masculine and feminine plural forms.
Again in the incantation bowl literature
we do see Lilith in the feminine
singular but also masculine and female
liliths. So again not yet a Lilith
singular yet. That image first emerges
in the pseudapographic work the alphabet
of Ben Siak composed end in what is now
Iraq sometime between 700 and 900 of the
common era. So just after the period of
the incantation bowls and it would be
there that the myth of Lilith as we all
recognize her would be formally
developed and in that text Lilith
appears as the first time as the first
partner of Adam made from the same clay
as he and thus equal to him by all
rights. Famously she asserts this
equality by insisting on being on top
during the act of sexual intercourse for
which Adam refuses. In defiance, Lilith
pronounces the ineffitable name of God
and disappears into the air. There’s
that air spirit association, wind
spirits. Adam, for his part, cries out
to God to bring her back. And God, for
God’s part, sends three angels to do
just that. These are going to be
important in just a minute. The deal
would be simple. She can come back. All
is forgiven. Or she can stay, but 100 of
her children must die every day. These
three angels corner her over the sea of
reeds where a feronic army would one day
be drowned and threaten her again. But
defiant, Lilith counter offers. She’ll
accept the death of 100 of her brood
each day, but she’ll be able to stalk
the children of human beings, for 8 days
after a boy’s birth, and for 20 days
after the birth of a girl. However,
she’ll be forever deterred by those
three powerful angels who we’ll come
back into in a minute. Cinoi, Sansenoi,
and Samangalof such that if she sees the
names of those angels over a child,
she’ll relent and the child will
recover. And in this brief tale,
thousands of years of mythological
strands are fused together into what has
become a truly enduring narrative.
Lilith, the defiant first wife of Adam,
becomes the murderer of infants in her
fury, which can only be repulsed through
angel magic. And indeed, it’s around the
time of the production of the alphabet
or alfbet of bench that the first
Aramaic amulets and first Aramaic
incrantations begin to appear with the
now commonplace Adam
Lilit. Adam and Eve, go away, Lilith.
Again, featuring those talismanic angel
names, Sinoi, Sansenoi, and Samangalof.
A formula that’s still reprinted down to
this day in handbooks of Jewish magic,
as we’ll see. But isolating this story
from the larger context of the text can
perhaps lead to a bit of a misreading of
this very famous and very important
Lilith narratives. Specifically, one has
to keep in mind that the alphabet of Ben
Sarak is a work of parody. Specifically,
a parody of rabbitical literature,
rabbitical law, and just rabbitical
wisdom more generally. In fact, it’s
such a scathing parody filled with body
and uncouthed tales that one scholar
urged that if if you find a copy, it
should be burned. Even if you have to
burn it on the Sabbath that falls on a
yum kipur. So burn it anytime you find
it. That’s how horrifying this text was
in some ways. And to be honest, it is
absolutely hilarious of a book if you’re
acquainted with rabbitical literature.
To give you a sense of what to expect
from this book, let me just summarize
the opening. The prophet Jeremiah went
to a bath house only to find a bunch of
wicked Ephromites masturbating together.
Horrified by this wanting goonery, he
tries to flee but is seized by said
Ephromites and worried that Jeremiah
will tuttle on them. He promises that
he’ll keep their secret, but they don’t
believe him. So they basically threaten
to assault him as those in Sodom did
unless he masturbates with them. You
can’t beat him. Join them. Beat him.
Cornered by the rapacious Ephroite
Oninus, he spills his seed into the
bathwater. Well, sometime later, his
daughter visits just that bath house and
becomes pregnant with her father’s seed.
And only 7 months later, 7 months, not 9
months, she gives birth to a baby with a
full set of teeth and capable of not
only speaking, but arguing the finer
points of the origin of his name,
Giggumatria, and even how he’s just like
his father, Jeremiah. In fact, he even
refused to be born until she gave him
his name. Then this weird newborn
decided to further emulate his father,
the prophet Jeremiah, having composed
some poems in acrostic forms. That’s to
say Al if Bad Kimmel Dali. So the baby
the the baby does the same. He he writes
a whole long hence the name of the text,
the alphabet of bin Sarak. The text goes
on to detail letter by letter a series
of wisdom. These apherisms for instance
alf is abstain from worrying in your
heart
for worrying has killed many gibborim
has killed many heroes mighty men. The
teacher then responds with bet and the
child responds by a beautiful woman’s
countenance. Many have been destroyed
and numerous are all her slain ones. But
then we start to learn a bit about this
teacher. Again, a rabbi character. For
instance, after noting that he avoids
worrying, just like the first anecdote
says, he declares that he doesn’t have a
worry in the world, except for that his
wife is ugly. And as the acrostic goes
on, we learn that the teacher has the
hots for a widow who lives down in the
courtyard. The problem, however, is that
she killed her first husband with
witchcraft and uh would probably do the
same to him. Then the text just devolves
into an extended sardonic misogynistic
screed mocking the teacher as basically
idiotic and lustful. Clearly no match
for this vunderin bin Sarak. But the
text takes nothing for sacred. It mocks
women. It mocks prophets. It is
especially mocks rabbis and their
alleged wisdom. You can see why this
text has a reputation in rabbitical
Judaism. That’s yes. If you find it,
burn it. That’s what they argue. It’s
shocking that it survives at all. And
it’s in this bit of biting sarcasm that
we find that famous Lilith story. The
point being that this story certainly
isn’t meant to be taken seriously or is
an authentic myth. And it’s probably
just being told to mock the kind of tall
tales the rabbis made up in literature
like the midrashing which are replete in
this case with all kinds of body sexual
themes of here Adam refusing his first
wife Lilith to be on top during sex.
Even the names of the angels responsible
for dealing with Lilith. So Cinoi,
Sasenoi, and Simangalof may be part of
the joke. They don’t remotely sound like
angel names. And while some strange
angel names do exist, Metatron and
Sandalfon are standouts in their
weirdness, so Cinoi, Sansenoi, and
Samangalof don’t sound remotely like
Hebrew. They lack the typical L the&m,
and they just sound kind of like madeup
gibberish. Again, perhaps mocking how
the rabbis themselves just made up
gibberish angel names sometimes. Though
however some version of these angels
names do show up in a few incantation
bowls and thus maybe have had some kind
of folk currency. Further some scholars
have also argued that their names were
supposed to have a mysterious whispering
incantation-like quality meant to scare
off Lilith. But it may be precisely
these folk traditions that the text is
mocking. And if you’ve ever seen
depictions of Seninoi, Sansenoi, and
Samangalof in the Amulet literature,
they don’t even look like angels. They
look like weird cartoon birds or
something. And in some cases, they’re
just completely abstract objects that I
don’t even know what they look like, a
bush, maybe. I’ve never heard a
satisfying description of what these
more abstract versions of them might be,
but I wouldn’t at all be surprised if
they had their origins in the magical
practices of pre-Islamic Iraq. Also,
it’s worth noting that they kind of
become converted in the Christian
context as well as being various saints
that people used to deal with demons
over in Egypt. So, this may have been a
big folk tradition. But this isn’t the
only such incident in the history of
demons and demonology where a parody and
mockery ended up being taken extremely
seriously in occult practice. Starting
in 1577, the fifth edition of de
prestige east demonum on the trickery of
demons. It’s a book actually meant to
dispel belief in the witch craze.
Johannes Vire began attaching an
appendix which he entitled the false
kingdom of the demons or pseudo
monarchia demonum. This demonological
catalog details scores of being
including demons of the directions,
their appearances, their powers, and
their feudal retinues. 69 in total,
though 72 are actually mentioned.
Curiously enough, Lucifer, Beelzebub,
and Satan seem to have driven drop from
the list, perhaps not to overly
scandalize the reader or something. In
addition, Var prohides a an abbreviated
ritual by which these spirits are said
to have been summoned, and he informs
the reader that he censored the ritual.
a bit lest anyone actually try to
attempt this, god forbid, you know,
don’t try this at home kind of thing.
Now, Johannes Ver was a former student
of Cornelius Agria, agria of three books
of occult philosophy fame, and he was
one of the best positioned people at the
time of having a detailed understanding
of necroantic magic as was practiced in
the 16th century. But what was his
actual position on all this? He held
that necromancer attempts to summon
demons represent an evil will on their
part. And while demons can be summoned,
they can only affect illusions and
trickery, thus basically stringing along
the idiot necromancer until their
eventual damnation results. Again, the
demons don’t have any power aside from
just being able to trick gullible
necromancers. So why would Johannes Vire
publish such a demonic list and ritual
in the first place? Well, to mock the
whole business, the whole sorted
business of spirit conjuring. He thought
it was evil and idiotic. While Vy does
believe in demons and possession and
even demonic summoning, he thinks these
cataloges of demons are just silly. And
by showing them to the light of
printing, their mysterious glamour will
evaporate. It’s basically an expose.
After all, the demons of this text
seemed something out of a children’s
fairy tale, and the ritual itself is
just dressed up Catholicish exorcism,
utterly typical of the time. Thus,
publishing the list was meant to
function as an expose on all that super
spooky necromancy of his day, revealing
it to be little more than fairy tales
and Catholic superstition. He was
Protestant after all. But the ironic
outcome of all of this was that via
pseudomarakia demonum probably in a
defective manuscript copy via its
English translation and republication in
regional Scott’s 1584 the discovery of
witchcraft would become the foundation
for the goisha and the lesser key of
Solomon sometime in the mid7th century.
Of course, the lesser key of Solomon is
generally regarded and really the Goisha
specifically has gone on to become the
book of ritual demonology, especially in
English, especially in the contemporary
world of occultism following the
experimentation by folks like Mathers
and Alistister Crowley. Now, I imagine
that this state of affairs must have him
face palming and spinning in his grave.
He literally published the text to
reveal just how silly all of this demon
summoning business was, only to have
that very text become the foundation for
the most popular book of demonic
conjuration in the contemporary occult
world. Now, I’m not really sure who the
joke’s on here, but I just love these
little moments with Lilith and the
pseudo monarchia donum where history
zigs where we think it might zag and the
cunning of history reveals that it
definitely has a sense of humor. If
you’re curious about this whole book,
the pseudo monarchia demon Johannes,
who’s fascinating, he actually argued
that many women convicted of witchcraft
were just suffering from mental illness.
Should check out my episode on him. But
to add that list of parody becoming
reality, we can probably too add Lilith.
Regardless, what was probably meant just
as a sardonic parody by the author of
Ben Sarak became fused with wider
Mesopotamian folk belief and Lilith
spirits such that a singular entity, the
demonic Lilith, seducer of men and
murderer of children, was here to stay.
And along with her came a relatively
stable collection of amulets featuring
Seninoi, Sansenoi, and Samangalof to
ward off from children during these
periods of their vulnerability to her
predation. And those amulets in various
forms would be printed and written all
the way down through the wider Jewish
world from Yemen all the way over North
Africa and into Europe where they would
appear in the most famous Jewish books
of magic. the 17th century Rabbi Mosha
Zakutos, the Ramas in his famous book
Safher Shore House Shimote and then in
the Safer Razio Hamalak first printed in
Amsterdam in 1701 but very likely having
some kind of medieval origins. Indeed,
such amulets are still being made down
to this day and you can even go to an
Orthodox Jewish bookstore and buy them
or at least buy the books that feature
them and they work just the same. But
the history of Lilith is fascinating
because it reveals just how such an
interesting demonic personality can
arise through a series of accidents
through ancient linguistic foibless
mocking parody taken seriously and the
powerful endurance of folk beliefs all
fused together producing Lilith. More on
this in the future. But until next time,
I’m Dr. Justin Sledge and thank you for
watching Esoterica, where we explore the
arcane and history, philosophy, and
religion.
[Music]