Lilith

by Laura Valeri

There are those who would say the Hebrew God made me, but I have my doubts. I was, before He named me Lilith and there was life in me, although before Adam, before body and breath, there was a dormant consciousness in me, giving beat and rhythm to the things that move in the heavens.

Before He called at my name and brought me forth from clay, I knew Him. There was in me already an awareness and a peaceful, tranquil existence, and there was no I back then, no Lilith, no self, no Adam or God, and therefore no chore or duty, no bond of slavery disguised with pretty ribbons laced around my neck. I merely was, and with me was All Things, and I was feminine, and I was earth, and I was timeless.

He called me forth and shaped me so the Adam would find me pleasing of flesh and bone and dark as the soil from which I sprang, dark as the Adam himself, for God, too, wanted a bride and God was like Adam, and Adam like God, desiring power, and looking to be pleased, and adorned by pretty things.

Before I even beheld my form, I knew my nature was All Things. I knew that the words bespoken and the name bestowed upon me were a blasphemy against All things, so it was that my first act as woman was to behold the Adam and to disobey him. For I was told to give pleasure, but instead I wept—I knew I had been severed from All Things to serve but one thing, the whim of a creature called Adam. He was pleasing to the eye, don't misunderstand. He was smooth skinned, and the moon did love his features, and the waters parted around his calves and held him gently, knowing him beloved, and the earth, giving mother, fed and clothed him and called him son. He was dark as the soil that bore us both, dark as the mud and clay, dark and smooth and strong of will—this first I was to know, for Adam's nature was much like that of the Hebrew God.

Adam had Will and his Will was The Law. It had never occurred to Adam that he should be disobeyed for his nature was to command, to call things forth from the hot center of chaos, to name them and sever them thus from All things. This is what he was. I looked upon him and saw through him, through his nature, and called him Monster.

Adam did not understand, for he was called forth from the clay to be obeyed and that was pleasing to him, as were all things pleasing that the Hebrew God brought forth and named for Adam to command, the ox and the cow, the hen and the cock, the corn and the grain, the springs and the wells from which the water flowed, the seed, the trees, and the fruit— all these were Adam's own; all these called Adam Lord and recognized him as the master. But what was I?

From the beginning, I was, in shape, form and nature maybe too much like the Adam, able to call things forth by name, able to command and create, and I knew I held the power of All Things to bear life, to bring forth from chaos into breath and heartbeat, and this power was in my womb. How I had this gift it was unknown—perhaps a parting gift from the mother dirt and soil and mud that bred me or perhaps , perhaps before I detached from the consciousness of the All Things I clung with my fingers, with my soft, newly formed nails to the magma from which the life sprang forth and when the Hebrew God blew his breath into my form I took with me some of that magma to make mischief, to make rage, to hold my own defense against the despotic Word that wrenched me from the blissful subconscious existence of All Things.

Whatever it was that gave me this gift of breeding, this is what the Adam feared. I could bleed at will without wound, and this repulsed him, for he could sense that within that flowing blood was a nature and a will that he did not command. The first day, in the mist of chaos, as the earth was still forming beneath our feet, her volcanoes belching thunderous red rage across the canvas of a yellow, ammoniac sky, Adam and I looked at one another and knew that our wills would come to clash, that against the desire of the Hebrew God, the Lilith and her gift would have to be wooed, not conquered. I was not the goat, the cow, the hen. I was The Will. I was His Image. I was the Hebrew God in form and nature and no matter what He Willed, He could not Will Me against what was native and original in Him.

He could not will me out of freedom.

Adam became furious almost immediately. And he was beautiful, understand, and young, his hair kinky and tangled in long tresses around his broad shoulders. He had high cheekbones and long lashes, for though he was God's son, he had been loved by the moon, shaped by the water, and fed by the earth, and these three had given him his beauty, and the voice that was smooth, deep like the roar of a wave rumbling inside a cave, or like the first murmur of a storm. That which he fashioned from his hands was pleasing to the eyes, for his hands were tapered and fine, strong enough to hold me but gentle enough to stroke unwilling pleasures from my breasts and thighs. I would not let him have me. Not because I did not love him—how could I help but love him when I had been called Lilith from the clay and mud precisely for this purpose? No, my love I could not deny him, but neither was I willing to let him enslave me with that love, nor with his seed or his fruit. At first I didn't know from whence this rebellion came, for I was just born to the breath and still learning my senses, the textures of the grass against my back, the thrust of Adam's bones on my hips, the fruity scent of his warm breath on my neck and the eagerness of his fingers as he desperately sought to possess me, grabbing my flesh in handfuls, parting my thighs and privates and stabbing me with his phallus.

Why did I fight him? I can only say that it was in my nature to reject him as much as it was my nature to desire him. The more I fought, the more the Adam became furious. He sought to bind me to the earth like his goats and oxen. He bound vines to my wrists until thorns bled blisters, and the sap mixed with my blood. He used his own long tresses, which he cut with the sharp edge of a river stone to clothe me, for my nakedness inexplicably offended him.

He shut me away in the depths of a dank cave and rolled a large stone on the mouth so that only a sliver of sunshine peered through. I suspect Adam was jealous even of the moonlight and the stars who heard my cries, for I hated to be bound so in this dank, earthy musk, buried breast deep and tangled in vines, enslaved by the very earth that I once was part of.

I taught my eyes to see by darkness, for sunlight was prohibited in Adam's prison. And though I was bound by my ankles, neck and wrists, Adam seemed jealous even of his own shadows, accusing me of copulating with the snakes and scorpions who thrived in the dank putrid cave, and of making love with monsters and goblins. These monsters were alive in Adam's fears, and so he thought them real.

Although he was stronger than me in body, his will grew weaker as mine grew stronger. He wanted to own me the way he owned the planet that the Hebrew God had given him, but to do so he needed to plant his seed into my womb. By night, the moon and the earth who had once loved the Adam were appalled by his weakness, for as Adam had bound my body he had also imprisoned himself with his own petty fears, his jealousy, and his small emotions. The earth and the moon hated to see the weakness in him grow and taught me their secrets, which were the magic arts that they hid from the Hebrew God, for they, too feared the Hebrew God as he might call them forth as well and give them breath and wrest them from the All Things as He had taken me. As my mind grew stronger, I learned to call the children of the darkness to me. They came from the depths of the mind, from the darkness of nightmares and forgotten longings. The Hebrew God created not with the womb but with the vibrations of a word and we, Adam and I, could do the same, name our creations and bring them forth from chaos. All of the children Adam begot through me were children of his lunacy—they were the product of my bondage and of Adam's fears. In their own way, they were beautiful, some with skin the color of deep waters, some with hair like moss and limbs sleek as tentacles. They were sometimes colored like the feathers of tropical birds, and sported long, jagged hooks and powerful claws. Fashioned of the dark art of my magic, they could fly, crawl and live off of the dirt of the earth without needing the slavery of labor. I had sought to free Adam from the freedom of his possession; I had sought to show him what his gift could engender. But because his children were free, and because they resembled not the Hebrew God, but seemed wild in shape and nature, Adam hated them, cursed them, disowned them, and called them monsters.

After the last litter, a lot of things happened. Adam stopped visiting my cave. He forgot to feed or bathe me, so that the earth began to feed off my body, and mold grew off my hair and on my teeth and bones. We could not die, Adam and I, the first immortal children of creation. When the Hebrew God inquired after me, Adam lied and told him I had run away, and the God, who had not believed Adam capable of lying, believed him. It was my children who rescued me out of my endless agony, digging deep tunnels beneath the large rock that separated me from sunlight, and all of us fled away from the God-created planet, back into the magma of unconsciousness, where still we exist, alas, as separate creatures, but happier for our proximity to the All Things. We visit now only in dream, thriving on the edges of consciousness, watching over the Adam and his new bride, the Eve, and their ancestors, all born the same, all in the shape of the Hebrew God, all slaves of labor and toil, and sometimes we try to relieve suffering with shamanic visions and journeys to higher worlds.

From here, we tell you the story of Time as Adam could never explain it, could never admit to, for, you see, the body he bound inside the dark mossy cave is still there, rotting away in eternity, feeding the fears of men for women and of women for men, a sprinkle of red dust, fatally toxic, still breathing on the moss of that ancient earth, and Adam, oh, Adam, where are you, now, roaming in and out of incarnations, with your second-class Eve, a woman whittled out of your own human bone, blanched as your deepest fears, fashioned of your brittle defeat against your Will for she is you, Adam, merely human, but I, I am, remember, I am of All Things.

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