An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Lilith

The moon goddess Lilith is the archetypal seductress, the personification of the dangerous feminine glamour of the moon. Like Hecate, she is a patroness of witches; but where Hecate is visualised as an old crone, Lilith is instead the enticing sorceress, the beautiful vampire, the femme fatale. Her loveliness is more than human; but her beauty has one strange blemish. Her feet are great claws, like those of a giant bird of prey.

She is depicted in this way on a terra-cotta relief from Sumer, dating from about 2,000 B.C. The same figure of humanity’s dreams recurred in medieval France, where she was known as La Reine Pedauque, the queen with a bird’s foot, a mysterious figure of legend who flew by night at the head of a crowd of phantoms, something like the Wild Hunt.

The Jewish legends about Lilith say that she was the first wife of Adam, before Eve was given to him. Lilith, however, came to Adam as he lay asleep, and coupled with him in his dreams. By this means, she became the mother of all the uncanny beings who share this planet invisibly with mortals, and are known as the fairy races or the djinn.

The Jews regarded her as a queen of evil spirits, and made amulets to protect themselves against her. She is a personification of the erotic dreams which trouble men; the suppressed desire for forbidden delights.

Charles Godfrey Leland, in his Etruscan-Roman Remains (London, 1892), identifies Lilith with Herodias, or Aradia. He notes that in the old Slavonian spells and charms, Lilith is mentioned, and that she is said to have twelve daughters, who are the twelve kinds of fever. This is another instance of the witches’ thirteen.