Lilith

Lilith is a character in Abrahamic folklore who is interesting for having been poofed into existence due to a misunderstanding.
Since that misunderstanding, though, Lilith has become quite popular^A) and has had a habit of popping up all over the place.
It really isn’t hard to see why Lilith is so popular. Even ignoring the very loose adaptations…well, there’s a lot of mystique surrounding her in the Biblical narrative: What’s the deal with her and Adam? What about her and Eve? Why did she leave? Did she leave of her own will? Is there some drama? Etc.
It should be noted that Lilith isn’t really ‘canon’ to any major/mainstream Christian beliefs…which is completely reasonable.^B) Among the other Abrahamic faiths…well, Jews don’t really do ‘canon’ in a Christian sense, so she’s either taken seriously or not…I can’t really comment on how much each position is believed however. Islam and the others appear to not know what a Lilith is.

The origin here is concerned with Lilith the character rather than the original original ‘Lilith’ which was a monster. That Lilith is basically ‘just a succubus’…so if you want to read that, then that link will take you to the section that very very briefly explains that.
The character, Lilith, was created due to a misunderstanding, which I mentioned in the opening text. That misunderstanding is related to how the Bible is written.
The Bible was originally composed of multiple texts that were smushed together for some reason - not relevant to what we’re talking about. However, people eventually just…forgot this.
The part of the Bible where the smushing is most evident is in Genesis and, by some miracle, there are two separate depictions of the first woman (Eve) being created. One of those is the ‘from rib’ creation and the other is an ex nihilo creation, similar to Adam’s creation. The ‘from rib’ one is the second one.
Since people forgot that the Bible was compiled from multiple texts, they looked at this and started asking…why were there two women? This eventually transformed into ‘first woman left, so God made another one’ and then that ‘first woman’ was identified as Lilith…a name used later in the Bible to refer to a monster.
Honestly I…don’t understand the logic behind identifying the first woman with Lilith, but that’s what ended up happening.
So that’s the origin of Lilith.

Oh boy.

Besides writing ‘oh boy’, I don’t remember what else I intended to put here, so I’m just going to leave that there and not elaborate. Wicca shouldn’t be taken seriously.
I might write about Lilith in Wicca later when I decide to actually write something about Wicca.

This is a very small note in the grand scheme of things, since I’ve chosen to ignore her ‘basically a Succubus’ originator.
That and this have been identified with a few other creatures, which I’m gonna list here:

• Onocentaur
• Lamia
• An owl

I got most of these from the video listed below. Of those three, the most sensible one is the Lamia, which is ‘basically a Succubus’ as well.

Since the original monster that Lilith is derived from is ‘just a Succubus’, you should not be surprised to find that that monster is a succubus.
However, what I find more interesting is how Lilith is connected to succubi nowadays.
This varies a lot, of course, but there’s a general thread of Lilith being the progenitor or Queen of the succubi…which isn’t that surprising, as she’s sometimes just identified as the progenitor of demons in general.
I think that this is interesting because it’s a connection to her origin point, in a way. Her status as the mother of demons is something that, to my knowledge, came after she became a distinct character, which then got connected to succubi in general.
Obviously, though, Lilith is also sometimes just a name for a succubus.

I originally had waaaaay more written here, but I realized it really derailed the article, so I moved it over to the Evangelion article where it fits far better.
A summary would be that Lilith is the progenitor of mankind and, perhaps surprisingly, her Abrahamic folklore is way more thematically relevant to Evangelion than may initially be apparent.

This is referring to the In Nomine role-playing game by Steve Jackson Games (GURPS). It’s reportedly a sandbox-y type game inspired by Abrahamic Mythology where you either join the forces of Hell or the forces of Heaven. Lilith is included as a ‘superior’ of Hell.
Probably one of the more interesting depictions of Lilith, which emphasizes her independence. To be clear, I’ve only read the Superiors splatbook on Lilith which I think I read fully. I got my hands on it due to mysterious circumstances. Besides that, I’m working off of the 1d6chan article on In Nomine.
Basically, Lilith appears to have been part of the Garden of Eden experiment, but she didn’t want to be subservient to Adam, so she left. She is technically part of Hell as one of their Princesses, but is more like a neutral party. The reason being that she really doesn’t seem to care about what everyone else is doing: she’s just focused on that capital F Freedom™. Her whole shtick is that she offers favors in exchange for other favors.^C) So, if you ask her for something, she’ll do it for you as long as you promise to do something for her in the future.
So you could ask her to help you lose your virginity. She’ll help out with that and then later she’ll ask you to burn the holy land. So you should probably think these things through first.
Her Lilim do much the same: offering favors in exchange for favors.
This depiction means she is one of the most chill…anythings in the world of In Nomine, at least relatively speaking.^D) She doesn’t care about the war and is seemingly content.
I think that this depiction is probably the best source of inspiration for a morally neutral or good Lilith, considering her relatively chill attitude towards everything…including morality.

Here I’m referring to the Lucifer TV show, which found its way to Netflix at some point. Lucifer is a crime show about the devil himself helping a police detective solve crimes. Seriously, that’s what the show is about. In addition to all that, there are often supernatural shenanigans happening. I don’t care much for Lucifer since I forgot to keep up with it, though I did enjoy it until then…though Lucifer was insane anyhow. Apparently Eve marries Mazikeen? What?
In Lucifer, Lilith makes a very brief appearance, but is mentioned a couple’a times. She is stated to be the mother of demons, who serve Lucifer in Hell, which includes Mazikeen.^E)
She and Lucifer were friends and Wikipedia states they were ex-lovers. My memory doesn’t say this is wrong, but I don’t remember that being explicitly stated. Ah, well, doesn’t matter.
She had apparently given birth to the Lilim (demons) on her own. There is a question of how she managed to do this, but it doesn’t really matter. Her demonic children were made into super-orphans who lack souls^F) to make them strong and independent like how she is strong and independent. Yes, Lilith is a feminist. And, just like every feminist, she’s a deadbeat mom.
Adam also remains infatuated with her, apparently. Although we only have Eve’s word on this (and she is in the process of cheating on Adam^G;H) and previously cheated on him) so we can’t be sure that’s true. If it is, that infatuation lasted a very long time.
This portrayal makes her look bad, which is kinda important if big G is supposed to be good, or at least neutral, but the show probably doesn’t fully realize that she is bad? I mean, her position of ‘I must be strong and independent’ is a clear feminist ideal, but her children are all aforementioned super-orphans who lack souls. Plus she hasn’t been in their life at all and then she fucked off to live alone for the rest of her life, never meeting any of them. If she is intended to be a pure bad girl, then this is fine…all I’m saying is, that it’s thematically hilarious that the feminist is treated so poorly when the show generally leans progressive.
Lilith’s portrayal in Lucifer is probably the closest to the folklore in that she’s a bad girl who befriended/banged Lucifer at some point, gave birth to all the demons and was the first woman made. Good on you Lucifer. Though…I am suspecting this is accidental. This feels like an attempt at a morally neutral or good Lilith that fumbled the execution big time. Refer to this if you want a hypocritical Lilith, but otherwise refer to In Nomine for a neutral portrayal.

For a summary, read the main article on World of Darkness.

Most of my information comes from 1d6chan, the White Wolf wiki and…yeah, that’s about it. Despite that…
There really isn’t much about Lilith in the grand scheme of things. There is something here, but not much of it.^I)
Here is what’s known for sure about Lilith: she was part of the Garden of Eden, which she left, though we can’t be sure why.^J) At some point during her travels she met Lucifer who taught her magic.^K) She and Lucifer separated and wandered around some more until she met Caine. She took pity on him and decided to be with him. Via her magic, she helped teach Caine stuff about his own supernatural abilities. Unfortunately, Caine was still an asshole, so he eventually left her. Lilith may or may not have ever forgiven him for this. Alone again, Lilith decided to create her own Garden of Eden with a seed she probably received from Lucifer.
The most consistent first-hand characterization we get of her is from her end-time scenario for Vampire, where she wants to kill Caine.^L) The players are tasked by her to help her with this task.
Whether she succeeds or fails is, of course, up to the players but if she succeeds and the players kill Caine…well, the players will not be able to enter Heaven but she’ll be nice and let them stay in her garden. She can also fail catastrophically, though you should read that on 1d6chan instead.
This is where the clear stuff ends and where the crazy stuff begins. The stuff that I have relayed to you, dear reader, is stuff that I would consider ‘unambiguously canon’ while the stuff I will relate to you now is stuff I’d consider ‘absolutely non-canon’ due to the fact this information comes from Revelations of the Dark Mother, which I plan to read at some point to assess the damage. That book was written by Phil Brucato. If you want to know about him well, first, read that 1d6chan page and then consider the fact he is called ‘GoatFucker’.
But, basically, that book is centered around what the worshippers of Lilith believe about Lilith. And those worshippers of Lilith are completely insane. They are BDSM-obsessed misandrists who lean on the S part of BDSM. For example, they believe that Adam attempted to or succeeded in raping Lilith, which is why she left Eden. I find that unlikely, but I digress. They also believe that she had banged Eve (as the snake no less), Lucifer and God himself. If you can figure that out…yeah.
There are some other weird things that come from that…like the fact Lilith is the first woman and Eve is the third.
From a worldbuilding standpoint that’s just really weird no matter how you look at it. Lilith’s whole thing is that she’s the mysterious first woman and Eve is the second woman that everyone else is descended from. Adding a third woman on top of that just…well, at that point why even stop at three? Just make 12 women.
Now, excluding that insanity…we can’t really be sure why Lilith left the Garden of Eden (or got kicked out). We can’t really be sure of anything about her, honestly, she’s a mystery in WoD just like in the folklore…just slightly less of a mystery.
This Lilith is also quite sympathetic, since she gets abandoned (allegedly) by every person she loves. She can even fail her end-time scenario which, granted, is a murder plot…but still.
I don’t have much to say conclusively. This version of Lilith is still mysterious, but does have a more sympathetic edge, so I guess she’s a good source of inspiration in that regard.
Also…I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think Lilith makes an appearance in the Chronicles of Darkness which is unsurprising.

I think that people who include Lilith as an actual character according need to come up with a reasonable explanation as to why Lilith is not explicitly named or referred to in the Bible outside of the single place where she is supposedly created first.^M)
Remember that the Bible remains exactly the same in this scenario^N), so Genesis is still made up of two books smushed together into one narrative. There has to be a reason for why ‘woman created twice’ is unique among all the other incidents of the same thing happening twice.
Here’s a simple solution that I came up with: The Dead Sea Scrolls. It doesn’t necessarily have to be those, but can be if you want them to be. À la Evangelion, let’s suggest that among the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are some of the oldest versions of the Biblical texts, is included a text, or multiple, which explain the whole Lilith situation. This text explicitly explains the creation of woman twice as actually being about two women being created. Then some later evidence suggests (or that text explicitly claims) that disagreements started over why woman was created twice and whether this was a mistake or not. Possibly because it’s not understood why woman #1 left the Garden of Eden or disagreements over how woman was created. Over time, it’s possible that they may start to argue that only one woman was ever created, but disagreed on how.
So, in this version of events, the two versions of the creation story that are smashed together are tellings of the same version of events…just that they disagreed on a number of details. The two each chose a different way for how Lilith was created.
This isn’t an iron-tight view of things, but I think it fits well-enough together.

One issue that arises with the whole ‘Lilith leaving Eden’ is that this shouldn’t technically be possible. I’m kinda surprised that the people who first speculated about Lilith didn’t notice this.
Humans didn’t really have self-awareness before Adam & Eve ate the Apple of Knowledge. So Lilith leaving of her own free will possibly suggests that something went wrong.
My solution to this is quite simple: Lilith also ate the Apple, but was the first one to do so. She offered it to Adam, who rejected it. Dejected, she leaves the Garden.
Later, when Eve eats the Apple as well^O) she offers it to Adam, just like Lilith. Adam remembers when he rejected Lilith and doesn’t want to repeat his previous mistake, so he eats it as well this time.
Of course, this is assuming Lilith left of her own free will and wasn’t kicked out.

One suggestion for why Lilith was kicked out of Eden was because she was too independent and didn’t want to sleep with Adam. This is the version used by Lucifer and the World of Darkness (probably). So when Eve was made, she was created from Adam to make her naturally more submissive to him. That second part is usually left out for some unknown reason in modern versions, unless you’re a feminist, in which case you emphasize it.^P)
Anyway, this version of it actually adds an interesting angle to things. If this is the order of events why, exactly, would Lilith be a sexy promiscuous demoness and/or the mother of succubi?
Considering this version of events, it would make more sense for Eve to be like that and Lilith to be the opposite.
As far as I know, though, there isn’t a single version of Lilith that takes this approach. Not even WoD…though that goes in the opposite direction if we consider the forbidden book by the goat demon.

One possible explanation for her sexiness (assuming that version of events) is that this is a punishment for her leaving the Garden of Eden or rejecting Adam.
The only issue here is that it clashes with the concept of Chastity as a virtue…this is implying Chastity is a sin.

How moral or immoral Lilith is can vary, but let’s work from a set of assumptions:

• Lilith was created first, separately from Adam.
• Eve was created second, from Adam.
• Lilith left the Garden of Eden.

Based on these, let’s consider a few things.
We’ll start with the easiest: bad girl Lilith.
If Lilith is bad, this immorality should be emphasized. Consider the fact she is sometimes credited as the mother of succubi or mother of all demons…which, y’know, not the best of things.
So a good motivation for her leaving Eden could be the classic feminist ‘I don’t need no man’ with some hubris on the side as well. As a reason to reject Adam, this kinda works. Though I guess you can add some demonic corruption in there as well, just to spice things up.
If Lilith is morally gray or good…then we really should keep a few things in mind as the situation is delicate.
I off-handedly mentioned it in a footnote in the Lucifer section, but if Lilith is not evil, that sorta necessitates something to be bad on the part of Adam. The issue with depicting Adam negatively is that he is the ancestor of every single man.
Thus, depicting him as an abuser or rapist falls into the ‘not a good idea’ box, because you’re implying that all of his descendants may have inherited these traits. This is similar to depicting Eve as a cheater or lesbian or…whatever else. Though I guess depicting Eve as naturally submissive to Adam is also a bad idea, that at least has Biblical precedent.
Thus, my proposal for this situation is mostly to make Adam’s actions a result of a lack of understanding or misunderstanding on his part, rather than malicious intent. He might do something that seems innocuous to him but which Lilith takes as a big deal. Alternatively, he does something by accident to her which she takes as intentional. As long as it’s not malicious or intentional on Adam’s part, you can come up with almost anything. Actually, my Apple example from above can count as a good reason.
You could also go the independence or Freedom™ approach for a neutral Lilith, which is what In Nomine does…in which case Adam’s only sin is an unrequited crush.

Something you could do as well, if you wanted to go the Evangelion route or full-on crazy, is to make it so that humans are the descendants of Lilith and not Adam/Eve. If you do that, you avoid any moral issues in depicting Adam/Eve, though you’d have to come up with a reason why they’re viewed as the progenitors instead of Lilith.
There’s also the question of ‘what about their actual descendants?’ and how Lilith achieved the incredible feat of having children.

• Who is Lilith? Adam’s first wife? - A video by Trey the Explainer about Lilith. A pretty good video about her.
• https://succubus.net/wiki/Lilith