The widespread depiction of Lilith as demonic has served to exile one of the most essential feminine archetypes from our sacred imagination. Yet through a metaphysical lens, Lilith becomes deeply inspiring- an embodied transmission of a layer of reality too often missing from the Universal story. Perhaps she is the underpinning to the undergarments, the intimate mystery beneath every mystical map. She lies beyond the reach of the realm of mind.
Lilith is an archetype of woman altogether different from Eve. Where Eve is fashioned from Adam’s side, Lilith emerges on her own terms. She is pure feminine, unformed by man, unmediated by the system. She makes love to G-d directly- not to produce anything, not as a means to an end, but for the sake of union itself. The act is not generative in the linear sense- it lives entirely in the now, and is thus purely and radically alive. This wild aliveness, spontaneous creative lifeforce, is Lilith.
In the Alphabet of Ben Sira, a medieval midrashic text, G-d sends angels to retrieve Lilith after she flees Eden, refusing to lie beneath Adam. But He instructs them: she must come only if she wishes. Why?
When the angels arrive, Lilith tells them, “I have already made love to the Great Demon.” My interpretation (meaning, what I find to be self-evident in the text) is that it is because G-d has just made love to her. Her lover- called “the Great Demon” in that text- is none other than G-d cloaked in shadow.
G-d, basking in the afterglow of that union, sends the angels with tenderness, not coercion. He doesn’t want her to go to Adam. He wants her for himself. Yet, needing to continue the story, He creates Eve- formed from Adam, more subservient, more conditioned. Where Eve is subservient, Lilith is submissive, receptive- and entirely fluid in her ability to command. Where love with Lilith is pure transmission, Eve’s is transactional.
The "great demon" is not evil. It is simply G-d (Kind of fun that, playfully, G-D stands for Great Demon) cloaked in a frequency low enough to make love to Lilith. Darkness, in the mystical tradition, is not the opposite of light but its necessary complement- the hidden or less revealed face of G-d. The Achoraim.
Lilith is the lover of G-d.
G-d adores her because she is wild about Him. She submits, not from duty but from divine desire. She welcomes Him wholly, and He, in turn, cherishes her utterly. She is the pulse of radical lifeforce.
And what, then, of the stories that say Lilith kills babies?
Yes, some declare her a demon for this. In the Talmud (Shabbat 151b), she is referenced as a night demon who endangers infants. Amulets bearing the names of angels- Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof- were used to protect newborns from her. These fears were encoded in ritual magic, in folklore, in incantation bowls unearthed in ancient Babylonia.
But there is another truth.
Psychologically, one might say this behavior is born of her rejection- an outcast acting from distortion. But from the metaphysical plane, something else is revealed.
Lilith is the divine feminine in its purest form: present consciousness, infinite fertility, the eternal now. Fertility, in this sense, is not defined by what it produces. It is the state of perpetual creative readiness- moment-to-moment presence, unbound by outcome.
In the linear world, when sperm meets egg, we cross into conception. But Lilith is not linear. She is the fertile void. In her, each moment is creation, and then- immediately- it is gone. The seed is not carried forward, it is consumed by the next moment’s birth. To remain fully in the now, one must allow the last creation to die.
Each moment is so total, it lives a whole life unto itself, and passes away, replaced by the next 100% Now- Totality.
That is what it means that Lilith “kills the babies.” It is not destruction. It is the radical renewal of presence.
It is akin to the Zen teaching: “If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him.” If you cling to the image, you lose the truth. If you cling to the child of creation, you are no longer in the creative pulse.
Lilith gives birth, and then returns to zero. She is entirely vertical.
The divine feminine is a vertical axis.
Not linear, not accumulated. It is the axis mundi- the infinite channel through which the void becomes form, and form returns to void. The Ein Sof, the womb of the world.
It is said she even eats the babies. This sounds the most demonic of all. And yet, seen rightly, it may be the most divine. She does not rely on creation to fulfill her. She is self-sufficient, self-nourishing. As she births, so she devours. This is not grotesque- it is the image of a presence so full that it asks for nothing. It is the ouroboros, the eternal feminine cycle of fullness and dissolution.
Lilith is not here to validate herself through what she produces. She needs no feedback. No approval. No success. She is for her own sake.
The realm of constant creation and the realm of pure presence are one and the same. This is the palpable feminine. This is Lilith.
It is Lilith’s continual activity- her endless birthing and dissolving- that gives consistency to Shechinah, the feminine face of G-d. Without Lilith, Shechinah would have no movement, no pulse. Lilith is the thrum beneath the radiance. She is presence in motion. And this motion is a deathless cycle.
Because in this realm, there is no death. Only reabsorption.
Imagine an apple, blossoming out of the void- one at a time- and being eaten, incessantly. Over and over. This is the nature of the feminine plane. Creation is constant. Birthing is endless. And nothing dies, because everything is consumed. And so, there is always fullness.
That fullness is Presence itself.
That fullness is Abundance.
In this realm, the apple is not planted with the hope that it will grow into a tree. It is eaten at inception.
This is the rhythm of pure presence. This is the law of the vertical. That which is born is also consumed, and that which is consumed is made new again- unceasingly.
In Lilith’s realm, this is how it goes.
She is the radical unbound feminine.
She is what transforms. What creates change- not by forcing, but by being.
She is what sees.
She is what hears.
She is what births anew from the void.
From this view, Lilith is not evil. She is not even good. She is alive- unapologetic, uncompromising, uncomplaining.
She is Life Alive.
How do I know this?
Because I have been her.
At the foundation of our being, we are all her.
I have lived her. And I recognize her when she is spoken of with truth.
Hearing of Lilith is like hearing a description of my essential self. I know her like I know the inner terrain of my own body- its pulse, its truth, its aliveness.
And I feel her now.
In this breath.
This moment.