I’ve had Lilith on my mind a lot lately. I think it started when I was listening to a Fat Feminist Witch episode in which the host, Paige, was talking about the Black Moon Lilith. In astrology, the Black Moon Lilith is an empty space between the Earth and the Moon’s apogee, and it’s feature that wasn’t well known when I was learning astrology more than 30 years ago. As I was reading about it, I was growing really annoyed at popular websites describing the Black Moon Lilith in purely sexual terms. Nothing wrong with sexuality, but I knew there had to be a lot more to Lilith than her reputation as a temptress or succubus (which was imposed on her by the storytellers of Abrahamic faiths in a smear campaign meant to encourage women to be more like obedient, submissive Eve).
Scratch at the surface of Lilith and a lot more emerges. She embodies a whole cornucopia of earlier myths, and branches out again into many later ones.
Early stories suggest that Lilith emerged as a “husk of evil” after God settled a fight between the Sun and Moon. The two bodies felt they were equals, but God decreed the Moon was the lesser of the two, and that it must derive its light from the Sun. At this point the Moon was also deemed feminine (it’s worth noting that in the Sumerian stories of Inanna, Inanna’s father is the Moon god, Nanna). This is probably the origin of the Black Moon Lilith in astrology.
