Copyright Eliza Fegley, 2003.
 
 Lilith dates back to the bird-serpent goddess
 of antiquity. In Sumeria,
 she was portrayed as having both the wings and
 claws of a bird. Some
 reliefs show her lower half as being the body
 of a serpent or she is
 shown as a serpent with the head and breasts of
 a woman.
 
 There are many possibilities as to her early
 goddess names: Belil-ili,
 Belili, Lillake [7], or Ninlil [12].
 
 She was a goddess of agriculture as well as the
 "hand of Inanna". She
 was said to dwell in the trunk of the
 Huluppu-tree:
 
 "Then a serpent who could not be charmed
 Made its nest in the roots of the huluppu-tree.
 The Anzu-bird set his young in the branches of
 the tree. And the dark maid Lilith built her home in the
 trunk." [11]
 
Lilith also helped women in childbirth and nursed infants.
 
 Recent translations of her name are varied andrange from "screech owl"[13], lilah which is darkness or night in
Hebrew, to Lilitu which is
said to be the Babylonian word for "evil
night-spirit."
 
Her symbols are the crossroad, owl, serpent, tree, and dark moon.
 

Lilith and Sexuality
 Copyright Eliza Fegley, 2003.
 
 Lilith, as "hand of Inanna," would gather men
 from the streets and lead
 them to the temples of the sacred prostitutes.
 Later, as the first wife
 of Adam, she refused to lie beneath Adam and be
 his submissive. Instead
 she chose to have sex with "evil" spirits and
 beget more demons. (Who
 could blame her?)
 
 Lilith was comfortable with her sexuality,
 something that frightened the
 Jewish patriarch who believed that merely
 having sex for pleasure was a
 form of abortion.
 
 In recent times, Lilith has morphed into the
 succubus and incubus or the
 night hag who sits on the chests of men and
 causes them to have perverse
 dreams so that they will ejaculate. She could
 take the form of either a
 man or a woman:
 
 ". . .who appear to mankind, to men in the
 likeness of women, and to
 women in the likeness of men, and with men they
 lie by night and by day."[10]
 
 Men fear Lilith because she knows the power of
 her sexuality and she
 knows that her sexuality has power over men.
 Like Circe, she turns men
 into beasts or pigs by opening the doorways to
 their deep and primal
 sexual desires. Such desires are forbidden by
 the Jewish and Christian cults.
 
 Women, who are like the submissive Eve, also
 fear Lilith because of the
 power she holds. But, as has been shown in the
 myth of the garden of
 Eden, Lilith is not an enemy of womankind. She
 holds the ancient fruit
 of knowledge, the secrets of our deepest sexual
 nature, and she is willing to offer this fruit to us.

 Lilith as Vampire
 Copyright Eliza Fegley, 2003.
 
 As the mother of all demons, Lilith has
 recently been linked to either
 giving birth to the first vampires or being the
 first vampire.
 
 This fallacy is linked to past Jewish
 superstitions in that Lilith drank
 the blood of children while in the form of an
 owl.
 
 In the Rabbi's frenzy to drive Lilith's
 worshippers away from the
 goddess, they made up lies such as this which
 contradicted her earlier functions as a protectress and helper of birthing mothers and infants.