Lilith by ladyblackbird13 on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

Here is Lilith … kinda.

This is my first draft of her and it’s looking kinda awful, but I’m going to make a better one some time.

Either way, she’s a vaguely humanoid monstrous owl-looking (I can’t draw owls) demon, because she is sometimes said to derive from an owl goddess in Sumerian mythology and the name Lilith is sometimes translated as “screech-owl”. For some weird reason I couldn’t find a reference of a screech-owl species native to Eurasia (most I found are native to the two Americas).

According to medieval Jewish traditions, she was the first woman, created from the same clay as Adam. But she didn’t want to submit to him, so she flipped him off and left Eden (according to the Alphabet of Ben Sira, she grew a pair of wings by uttering the Ineffable Name of God). When God sent three angels after her, she refused to come back with them. She also threatened to become a demon harming children. Finally God and the angels agreed to leave her be, but a hundred of her children would die every day and whenever the name of the three angels is engraved on an amulet, she would have no power over infants. Lilith agreed to this, and that’s how she became a child-harming demon, who also seduces and drains both men and women along the side.

(This source is sometimes still viewed as satyrical, though it was actually accepted by many Jews in the middle ages - just read the story and you’ll know why someone might find it offensive - so take it with a grain of salt)

Later on, she hooked up with Samael (I still haven’t decided, if Samael is Satan, Lucifer or somebody else entirely, but I’m tending towards Lucifer). But it was short-lived, because God castrated Samael, before they could overrun the world with a myriad of evil demon spawn. So she married Prince Asmodeus instead and now these two produce endless demon spawn (then again, God kills a hundred of Lilith’s children each day, so they probably need to compensate the lost kids). Asmodeus doesn’t seem to have got castrated yet, so I guess God views their offspring as less dangerous or something, I don’t know.

I think there is one source that says that there are two Liliths: the older being married to Samael and the younger to Asmodeus.

Interestingly enough, there are sources stating that Lilith was the Serpent, who tempted Eve and indirectly Adam, probably out of spite (I’m not a fan of that one, but it makes sense in a way).

The bottom line is, Lilith never ate from the tree of knowledge, thus doesn’t have the same concept of good and evil that we do. At the same time, she’s immune to being tempted herself - and she knows God’s Ineffable Name, which gives her immense power.

My headcanon is, that the incubi & succubi are all the offspring of Asmodeus and Lilith. ^^