SOUNDTRACK COMPOSITION, and Effects: Amyr.
On the seventh day of Creation, God created man in his image: “in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27). Such a categorical statement is a denial of the more widespread version: that man was created before woman. At this point, there are different interpretations. The first is that Adam would be an androgynous being (male and female) and that the separation of Eve represented the splitting of the original androgynous creature into two (Unterman, 1992:25). Adam’s androgyny is explained in some rabbinic texts, such as the Sepher Ha-Zohar, which contain the statement of Rabbi Abba: “The first man was male and female at the same time, for scripture says: And Elohim said: let us make man in our image and likeness (Genesis 1:26). It is precisely so that man would resemble God that he was created male and female at the same time.”
PS: Elohim are “creative forces” and their sum would be the divine monad, or God. Unknown cosmic forces, but acting like gravity. Some consider the text a “group of extraterrestrial entities.” In any case, they would be the “creators.”
However, there is another interpretation, which seems more fascinating to us: that, as was done with the animals, God would have created a couple: Adam and a woman who preceded Eve. This primordial woman would have been Lilith, a figure well known in ancient Jewish tradition. Lilith did not submit to male domination. Her way of demanding equality was to refuse the sexual position where the man is on top. Because of this, she fled to the Red Sea. Adam complained to the Creator, who sent three angels in search of the rebellious bride. The three angels were Sanvi, Sansavi, and Samangelaf. The emissaries of the Lord tried to convince her. They threatened to drown her in the sea. Lilith, however, replied: “Leave me, do you not know that I was not created in vain and that it is my destiny to slaughter newborns; while it is a boy I have power over him until the eighth day, if it is a girl, until the twentieth.” However, she swore to the angels, in the name of the living God, that whenever she saw the figures or even the names of God’s messengers, she would leave the child in peace. She also accepted that one hundred of her own children would perish daily.” (Gorion, :53).
Lilith was transformed into a female demon, the queen of the night, who became the bride of Samael, the Lord of the forces of evil. According to an old tradition, Lilith would be a seductive figure, with long hair, who flies at night like an owl, to attack men who sleep alone. Male nocturnal emissions can signify an act of union with the demoness, capable of generating demonic offspring. Newborn children are her main victims. The belief in Lilith, for a long time, served to justify unexplained deaths of newborns. One way to protect children against the fury of the beautiful demoness is to write on the bedroom door the names of the three angels sent by the Lord. Another way is to place three ribbons on the newborn’s cradle, each bearing the name of one of the three angels. According to Unterman, on the eve of Shabbat and the New Moon, when a child smiles it is because Lilith is playing with it. To protect the child, one must gently tap the child’s nose three times, pronouncing a protective formula against Lilith.
The same author states that, in the Middle Ages, it was considered dangerous to drink water during solstices and equinoxes, periods in which Lilith’s menstrual blood drips into exposed liquids. Finally, another Jewish tradition states that the legendary Queen of Sheba who visited Solomon was none other than Lilith. The wise king, however, discovered the trick by lifting the queen’s skirt and noticing that her legs were hairy.
According to a Jewish legend, after the expulsion from paradise, Adam, in order to mortify himself, stayed separated from Eve for one hundred and thirty years. Since he was sleeping alone, Lilith found him and lay beside him and conceived countless demons from him. Those who encountered them were tortured and killed (Gorion, :54).
There is also the belief that Lilith transformed into a serpent to tempt Eve and avenge herself against Adam. A third interpretation belongs to a Jewish tradition: “the biblical serpent was a cunning animal, which walked upright on two legs, spoke and ate the same food as man. When it saw how the angels honored Adam, it became jealous of him, and the sight of the first couple having sexual relations awakened in the serpent a desire for Eve. By instigation of Satan or Samael, or, according to some versions, possessed by him, the serpent persuaded Eve to eat the forbidden fruit and seduced her. As punishment, its hands and legs were cut off and it had to crawl on its belly; all food it ate tasted like dust, and it became the eternal enemy of man.(...) When it had sexual relations with Eve, it injected its venom into her and into all her descendants.”
Expelled from paradise, Adam and Eve had, according to the canonical version, two sons: Cain and Abel (Genesis 4:1–2). The causes of the fratricide committed by Cain are well known, so we move directly to another version: “in a paroxysm of jealousy due to the rejection of his offering and because of a twin sister whom Abel married, Cain killed his brother.” We draw attention to a new element that appears here: the existence of a twin sister who had been married to Abel. Later, we will return to this subject. For now, what interests us more is the version that Cain was not actually the son of Adam, but of the serpent that had seduced Eve. Moreover, when he was banished to the east of Eden, God gave him horns to scare away animals that might attack him. His punishment consisted of wandering the earth without rest, without anyone being able to kill him.
“THE SHADOW MOTHER IN THE LAND OF NOD”
In the Bible, the main female archetypes are Eve, the woman who brought sin into humanity; and Mary, the woman who brought into the world the one who would save all men from sin. However, in Semitic mythology, there is a third woman whose trajectory is directly linked to the fate of humanity: Lilith, Adam’s first wife, the serpent that deceived Eve, the demon of lust. Lilith was born from stardust and moonlight. She was not made from the dust of the Earth like Eve. She was a kind of primordial spirit incarnated and had sexual relations with Adam.
After the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden (primordial Earth), they went to the desert regions of Nod, mentioned as the border of the Garden of Eden in several ancient manuscripts. There are some different versions of the Lilith legend. In the most accepted one among scholars of myth and based on the Talmud (one of the books considered a source of rabbinic wisdom), Lilith is created by God in the same way as Adam, that is, molded by divine hands, but from mud and feces. Both are the first couple, responsible for caring for Eden. However, over time Lilith rebels for not accepting being in an inferior position to her husband, since both were created in the image and likeness of God.
The submission is also sexual, where Lilith exercises power of seduction and orgasmic entrapment over Adam, and he, in turn, lies continuously on top of her, in a sign of dominance in intercourse and relationship, which Lilith does not accept. Seeking equality, Lilith comes into conflict with her husband, challenges her subordinate position, and also challenges the Creator, having to choose between submission or leaving the Garden. She chooses the latter and goes into exile in the Red Sea, a stronghold of demons. For some time Lilith is compelled by angels to return to the Garden, but she chooses to live as a demon and permanently abandons Adam. He, saddened by the loss of his woman, falls asleep, and from his rib God creates Eve, a woman who came from man, therefore dependent and submissive to him, who would officially be Adam’s first wife, the mother of humanity (*)
(*) Not truly the mother of all humanity as we know it, because when they were expelled from Paradise, they encountered other tribes wandering the Earth of Nod.
After her exile to the Red Sea, Lilith returns to the Garden of Eden as a demon, and in the form of a serpent is responsible for the temptation of Eve, which led all humanity into sin. With cunning, Lilith confuses Eve and awakens in her the desire for equality, not equality with man, as the first woman once desired, but equality with God himself. Lilith is the serpent already associated with Mesopotamian legends, the demon of lust — who tempted young men sexually at night, causing erotic dreams and “nocturnal emissions” — and later, with the greater systematization of Israelite beliefs, the legend was incorporated into the idea of the Devil and his hosts.
On the other hand, the myth of Lilith, originally present in Babylonian and Assyrian culture, also persisted in the oral tradition of the Hebrews and in books of wisdom considered apocryphal by Christian culture. In addition, the legend has been revisited by the study of religions, comparative mythology, psychology, astrology, and mysticism, where Lilith is the Black Moon, the hidden face of the moon.
Lilith (Owl)
When Eve was tempted by the serpent, the Bible does not explicitly reveal whether she was alone or with Adam, but Adam’s lack of intervention in the dialogue between her and the serpent suggests that they were alone. Eve is tempted to be like God, knowing good and evil, if she eats from the fruit of the tree of knowledge; furthermore, she would not face the penalty instituted by God for disobedience, which is death. After analyzing the fruit, the woman decides to eat it and offers it to her husband, who also eats it. Immediately both realize they are naked and hide upon hearing God’s voice (Genesis, chapter II).
It is important to note that when God asks about the disobedience, Adam blames Eve and she blames the serpent. (*) Note that Lucifer was in the Garden, and Lilith was his lover. This appears in apocryphal books in greater detail.
The three are punished: the serpent (Lucifer, here embodied as a lesser angel, Satan) — which according to legends had wings — would crawl forever; man would have to work to sustain himself; woman and serpent would be enemies; woman would suffer childbirth pain and be dominated by man; and finally humanity would be banished from Paradise. There is also mention of the woman’s offspring who would crush the serpent’s head, which for some theologians refers to Christ and Satan (Genesis, chapter III).
Eve is then the one responsible for original sin, which, in the collective imagination, spreads to all women. It is interesting that Eve, despite being transgressive, stays with Adam to hear her sentence and fulfills it, carrying the stigma of sin, impurity, fragility, naivety, and redemptive suffering that extends to women in Christian society as something inherent to their nature.
Lilith, in turn, chooses to live alone and wandering, and as a woman does not receive the punishment of motherhood, or motherhood as punishment, in the sense of labor pains and suffering, as we will later see with Mary. Thus, in addition to being blamed for human misfortune, woman (from Eve onward) is also stereotyped as one who listens to the Devil, therefore prone to being deceived by him and following his designs and tricks. This stereotype pursued women especially during the Inquisition, where being born female was already a presumption of accusations of demonic pacts in the form of witchcraft or sorcery.
Lilith – Other Considerations
If Eve denies her ambition and desire to be equal to God, accepting being dominated by her husband, the perfect archetype of the clumsy and submissive woman; and Mary denies her sexuality, being both mother and virgin, the maternal archetype; Lilith, on the other hand, from her creation assumes her convictions, ambitions, and sexuality, and for this reason is even the woman who frightens, dominates, and can destroy.
According to descriptions from Hebrew scriptures (Torah and Midrash), Lilith appeared to Adam covered in blood and saliva. The blood mentioned in the citation above suggests menstruation, a carnal and instinctive characteristic of women, as well as Lilith’s lack of modesty and taboos, appearing freely before man, also willing to experience sexual activity during the menstrual cycle. The saliva reinforces the symbolic sexual character, referring to erotic secretions.
Thus, the sensual and liberated condition within the feminine symbolic universe in Lilith becomes evident; it is this sexual agency that leads man to ecstasy and loss of control, which frightens the masculine symbolic universe expressed in Adam: therefore, he withdraws and seeks a suitable companion — that is, submissive, obedient, who feels inferior.
In any case, Lilith would be a feminine archetype of independence and sensuality. She would represent the woman who is not ashamed of herself, but rather proud of being a woman, and expresses this pride through her sexuality. Lilith also demonstrates this pride by refusing to live in submission to Adam, leaving paradise to live a free life outside the male shadow, paying for it by becoming a demon. It is therefore the opposite of the model of a restrained, submissive, repentant woman whose identity is only linked to a male figure.
“Lilith is the figure of the insubordinate, intellectual, present, warrior woman, feminine in every sense, and sexually active.”
The consequences of the repression of Lilith’s sexuality are, among others, the dissociation between motherhood and sexuality, the double moral standard, and the control of male sexuality. (Lilith – The Black Moon – Roberto Sicuteri)
Psychoanalysis
According to the myth, the relations between Adam and Lilith were marked by urgency, by passion capable of dominating Adam and making him lose reason and surrender to lust. It is believed that the seduction produced by her made him distance himself from his commitments to divinity. Lilith is behind hysterical phenomena, arising from the repression of sexuality, which generates somatizations and illnesses. She is responsible for the disintegration of the family, whether projected as a seductive lover who “takes” and “steals” the husband from the wife, or projected as the rebellion of the wife who cannot tolerate her husband-Adam’s “no.”
However, beyond the sexual issue, which generates many other legends and interpretations about Lilith — such as the idea that she was a demon who populated the dreams of Israelite men, causing erotic dreams and thus being the first succubus, or the mother of succubi — Lilith is also considered a demon that inhabited men’s dreams.
Lilith would have received a punishment equal to her transgressions from the misogynistic Jewish point of view, since the price of her rebellion was to become a demon. Lilith was created as a woman, but her new condition prevented her from living with humanity, and according to the punishment where woman and serpent would forever be enemies, Lilith and her archetype became drastically opposed and even rivals of Eve and the model of woman she suggests.
Another aspect is Lilith’s demonic reference, because if Eve is the woman who yields to the devil’s temptations, Lilith is the devil itself. Represented for centuries in literature as the mother of succubi, the wife of Lucifer, the Black Moon, and her counterparts being Demeter, Hecate, Persephone, all linked to the underworld or “Netherworld.”
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