 In this video we will talk about Lilith, who is the second pillar of the temple's current, next to Lucifer, and they are both equally important in our ritual system. We have already discussed the origins of Lucifer and took a brief glimpse into his role in the Draconian tradition. Here we will do the same with Lilith. I'll go through her history and mythology, discuss some common misconceptions, and talk about her role in the temple. All this information is derived from our anthology, Lilith Dark Feminine Archetype, and if you'd like to read more about her, go ahead and check out the book itself. Let's start with the origins of the Lilith legend. The earliest mention of an entity with a name similar to that of Lilith is found in the Sumerian Kinglist from the 3rd century BCE, which states that the father of the famous Sumerian hero Gilgamesh was a Lilu demon, a kind of an incubus. Lilu is one of several types of spirits connected with sexual activities in Mesopotamian mythology. The others were Lilithu or Lily, and there was also a spirit called Ardad Lily, and another one known as Irdu Lily. Lilu was believed to wander through deserts and in open areas, and was especially dangerous to pregnant women and infants. Lilithu was his female counterpart, and Ardad Lily was a young girl, incapable of normal sexual activity, and aggressive toward young men. Irdu Lily was her male counterpart. Today these spirits are often questioned, and many scholars say that these spirits were originally storm and wind demons, and their associations with Medieval Saccubi and Incubi was caused by a wrong translation and misinterpretation of the role. Lilith, as we meet her later in the Jewish lore, doesn't appear in Mesopotamia at all. There is no entity with this name in any known source from those times, and the spirit that is usually identified with her is a female being inhabiting a tree described in the legends of Gilgamesh. Again, however, this spirit shows very little connection to Lilith as we meet her in the later sources. In other words, all fear is about Lilith originating in ancient Mesopotamia maybe completely wrong, and up to this day there is no source that would even confirm or reject them. In this picture we see the well-known terracotta relief from Babylonian times, commonly identified with Lilith. It's known as the Barney relief, deriving its name from the antique dealer Sydney Barney. It was first displayed in 1946, but it wasn't archaeologically excavated, so there's no information where it came from, or in which context it was discovered. Today we know it as the Queen of the Night depiction, and over the last few decades it has served as a source of numerous talismans, statues and posters attributed to Lilith. The relief shows a female entity with wings and owl feet, standing on two reclining lions and flanked by owls. While owls are connected with Lilith in many myths and folklore, lions don't really belong to her lore, and today the image is revered identified with Ishtar or Erashkigal. If this is true, again we are left with no clear origins of the Lilith character, and all occur depictions that a lot of us have in our temples are wrong and should be attributed to another deity. Another source believed to refer to Lilith, which is also highly questionable, is the Bible. In the book of Isaiah we find a passage which is thought to be the only possible reference to Lilith in the entire Bible. The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the Satter shall cry out to his fellow, and Lilith also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest. The word Lilith, however, doesn't appear in this passage as a name, but in most versions of the Bible it is simply translated as Screech Owl, which was thought to be one of the unclean animals. As we see, this leaves us with no valuable reference that would give us an insight into the roots of the goddess. Other sources often quoted in literature discussing Lilith include Mendee and Gnosticism, Dead Sea Scrolls, and numerous emulates and depictions. Most of them are connected to the Hebrew lore, where the goddess most likely originated, as hermaphology and role is there the most prominent of all other accounts. Among the earliest sources of the Lilith myth, we find the Talmud, Midrashapkir, and medieval sources such as the Treaties of the Left emanation, and the Zohar. The Talmud contains the most famous story of Lilith, according to which she was the first wife of Adam, the one before Eve. In this legend, Lilith and Adam were created together, from the soil of the earth. They were equal in their creation, but could find no happiness or understanding together. When Adam wished to lie with her, she refused to lie beneath him, and since he was still trying to overpower her, she left him and fled the Garden of Eden. This happened in a rather dramatic way. She rose into the air with fury, screaming the secret name of God, and flew away to settle on the shore of the Red Sea, where she started to mate with demons and gave birth to hundreds of Demonic Spirits each day. Seeing this, God sent three angels to find her, and to either fetch her back or drown her in the water. Neither of this happened, though. Instead, they made an agreement, according to which Lilith promised to spare the life of newborn children of Adam, if they were protected with the emulates bearing the names of the three angels. She also gave consent to the death of 100 of her own children every day. In return, the angels left her alone, and she became the Queen and Mother of Old Demonic Spirits on the earth, from that moment until the present day. In the Hebrew lore, Lilith is the mother of all evil in the world. In the Kabbalah, she is the Queen of Sitra Ara, the other side, the kingdom of demons and all abominations in the world, the Clephoth. It is also believed that it was either Lilith or Samal, her demonic spouse, who came to Adam and Eve in the form of the serpent, tempting them to taste the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Then Samal as the serpent lay with Eve and conceived Cain, the first murderer, and sometimes it is felt that Eve was at that time possessed by Lilith, and thus she and her demonic spouse are the true parents of the first man in the line of the devil's descendants. Here she is no longer a minor demonic spirit, but the Queen of Hell, the mother of all demons, and what is curious, also the messenger and concept of God himself. According to Kabbalistic lore, God sends away the matronate, his wife, and takes the slave woman in her place. This slave woman is believed to be Lilith. This relationship with God is one of the most mysterious and ambiguous roles of Lilith in her entire mythology. Smith gets developed further in medieval folklore. It is here that we fully meet her as the Queen of all Sakyubai and Incubai, the taunt-sleeping people at night, cause erotic dreams, and steal the sperm to use it to conceive even more demonic spirits. At the same time she and her wicked cohorts, haunt-pregnant women, cause children to be stillborn, or kill newborns in their groups. There are many findings from the early Middle Ages containing incantations and charms against her or Liliths, which also points at the fact that Lilith is not a single being, but a name for a group of spirits. This data is included, for example, in Aramaic incantation texts found on bows containing magical texts, inscribed on amulets, and carved in other items that were meant to protect the owner, his house and his family. It was believed that once Liliths, or Lilin, which is the masculine plural of Lilith, succeeded in attaching themselves to a man or woman, they acquired the right of cohabitation, and had to be given a formal letter of divorce to be expelled. Jealous of their lover's spouse, they attacked the children born of the normal human wedlock, plagued and strangled them, and also prevented the birth of children by causing miscarriages, barrenness, or complications doing childbirth. The medieval lore is full of superstition and prejudice against Lilith, and certainly doesn't show her in any good light. This view, however, begins to change in the following centuries. The best known renaissance source about the goddess is Liber Lilith. Well, we don't really know how old it is, but the only copy that has made its way into the Westman aesthetic tradition was printed in 1563. Liber Lilith is a text discovered by a German occultist, Karstiger, in 1919 in an antique shop in Berlin, which includes an elaborate treatise about Lilith and her powers, and seems to belong to the Gnostic tradition. The copy he obtained was possibly a part of John Dee's personal library at his house in Malthank. Revised and prepared for print by Donald Tyson, it was first published in 2006, and that's revealed to the world after being glossed for over four centuries. The text containing numerous references to Gnostic terms and concepts of late antiquity, early Middle Ages, is believed to be either a corrupt Gnostic work or an early Jewish occult text influenced by Gnostic ideas. What is interesting about it is that it's the only known source dedicated solely to Lilith, presenting the origin of her myth, and providing instructions on how to summon her and her concept-summel through rise of magic. Here we are faced with a completely different view of Lilith than ever before. Also, it doesn't refer to her as a female demon, minor spirit, or child-eating monster, as it is in the majority of Jewish sources. Instead, we see her for the first time as a goddess with multiplicity of faces, a complex archetype of the dark feminine. The rituals and incantations presented in the text are not meant to overpower or drive her away either. Instead, they summon her for the sake of knowledge and power that she can trust the Magician who approaches her with an open heart and a curious mind. This is a unique view of Lilith, not encountered in any other text of that time or later. It's also my favorite text about Lilith, which I always recommend to everyone who wants to walk with the goddess in a practical way. Today, Lilith is present not only in demonology, but also in feminist ideology, psychology, art, literature, movies, video games, and in the Western esoteric tradition, she's a part of complex occult philosophies and ritual systems. In the temple of ascending flame, Lilith is the female counterpart of Lucifer, and the second main pillar of the temple's current. Just to make it clear, this connection is not made up for the purpose of the temple's philosophy. There are actual sources dating to Renaissance times, which mention Lilith alongside Lucifer, not Samuel, and even more sources that identify Lucifer with Samuel, claiming that they are one and the same being. In this paradigm, Lucifer's Samuel is the gateway to the current of the dragon and the symbol of the Deified Soul, the patron god of the draconian self-initiatory path. He is the solar illuminating force that has been fueling the evolution of human consciousness since the birth of mankind. He is force, fire, and fury. He empowers and elevates the initiate through his fiery pillar of ascent. His primal solar energy empowers the subtle body of the initiate, feeling it with his timeless essence, the flame that powers out the human desire of transcendence, the vehicle of all evolution. His female counterpart in the draconian initiatory magic is Lilith. She is passion, desire, and seduction. She seduces souls and lures them from light into the night side, the averse side of the tree, awakens lust and hunger for knowledge and power that only grows with each step on the path, and ignites the spark of divinity, which progressively becomes the flame of ascent. It is the fire of transformation, the very essence of Godhood. Together they rule the whole Clepholic tree, Samuel Lucifer from his throne in Thamel, and Lilith appearing at each level of the tree, acting as a guide and initiator on the top of the night side, and seducing the initiate to release the serpent force. Like the fire snake that awakens consciousness and liberates it from bonds of ignorance, Lilith liberates the soul from illusions of the flesh, and awakens the desire of transcendence. The image of their union and encircling force is Leviathan, known in the Kabbalistic and Laura Staninevaire, the principle of continuity and timeless existence. He is the outer darkness of Gnostic scriptures, the primordial ocean of the world from ancient mythologies, the dragon of the void in the Drakoian tradition, and the primal source of all manifestation. This is a short presentation of Lilith. Of course there is a lot to be added, but I will leave this to your own research. Here you can see the list of recommended reading, which is used in the temple, and some of these books are also my personal favorites. Check them out, read as much as you can, and if you like how we view Lilith in the temple and would like to work with us, read about our affiliation procedures on our website. I hope this gives you a better picture of what you are dealing with, and I wish you all the best in your own study and practical work with these beautiful gods. Here is the contact information for the temple of sending flame. Feel free to email us if you have any questions about our work, membership, or this video.