Theos-Talk Archives (January 1997 Message tl00011)

Kym,

Reading some of the highly intriguing stuff about Lilith set my mind to
wondering if it might contain a buried psychological interpretation or
"truth". But I'll recap a bit of the discussion first:

[Kym]
Lilith was Adam's "first" wife.  She was not created from his rib, but made
of the same material and at the same time as Adam.
...
God went into His wrathful mode, and decreed that one hundred of
her demon children were to die per day (more than one hundred a day were
born to Lilith while she lived with the demons).
...
Myth has morphed Lilith into a destroyer of children; a whore; the wife of
Satan (after she left Adam); the archetypal bad woman; and the seducer of
men and boys while they sleep. She has even been blamed as being the serpent
itself and of being the "father," along with Eve, of Cain. It's too weird, I
know.

[Tom]
>Lilith _does_ sound like the typical woman!

[Kym]
Does she now!  Well, on behalf of typical women everywhere - thank you!


Tom in guise of troublemaker supremo! :-)

As a representation of a lot of male thinking, it is, of course, too true to
be good!

In fact, that line set me thinking about how we are said to create and
project the reality we perceive around us, from out of the preconceptions
and other stuff we keep in our personal subconscious collection.

This happens whenever a man looks at or otherwise interacts with a woman.
What he perceives (thought & feeling levels as well as physical) is strongly
conditioned by his anima-like store within, I believe.

A man who rapes or carries out other violence upon a woman, IMO projects
from his negative internal store of shit about women and the world in
general, and sees an image that "justifies" his striking and destroying etc
etc. An image that includes his being "powerful" in these pathological ways.

And even in much less pathological and destructive behaviours, is not this
kind of projection the cause of so many problems, so much pain and
disillusionment?

Verily a pack of demons. Lilith - the evil seen without when it really lies
within.

I suspect the hunger of attraction in the male for the female arises, too,
from a deep sense of separation from that opposite, which occurs sometime in
the growth from child to adult. It comes to be seen as *other*, outside
oneself; the missing element that is needed for completion. Ironic and
deeply mysterious, then, that it is in some way right within him all the
time. And again, a fruiful source of trouble. (But not *just* trouble!)

And perhaps, one of the major themes in the drama of the liberation of woman
will be the transformation and lightening of this part of the anima within
man. In turn, man may find release from the pangs of the endless search for
the magnetic "other" when he realises it exists so much within himself.

And perhaps man's role in this context is to perfect his ability to *see*
the feminine in all its beauty and power when he encounters one of its
embodiments, and act accordingly. To see it *accurately* in its potential,
as well as the degree of its realisation in the individual human being.

I've been talking about man sofar, but we can transpose these ideas,
male-for-female, to a considerable extent. As appropriate, because there are
some things that are specific to each side.

The sense of hunger for completion has a wider manifestation, too - in the
search for the divine. Again, something buried deep within and initially
sought without, then finally realised to be everywhere, as self and Self are
seen to merge. But that's another theos-l discussion.

Murray