Lilith and Kabbalah

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Permalink Reply by Shane Vedvik on April 4, 2008 at 11:52am

I hate to do this to you, but I think this is going to be a long post, so for now I'm going to beg off, and try to answer over the weekend if there's time. I look forward to the opportunity to share the information you need, but I have a pile of email to get to first :) Thanks for joining, and I promise, no later than sunday night, but if you want more information you can visit http://www.templeoflylyth.org.

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Permalink Reply by Shane Vedvik on April 10, 2008 at 8:23pm

Okay, so Sunday Night turned into Thursday Night, which seems to happen when you're as busy as I have been of late. I'm not terribly familiar with the Kabbalah, beyond a bit of study of the tree and knowing that a few different very famous people have been involved in the practice. One thing I would be interested to understand is the opinion that you have that Lilith - your spelling - is dangerous. Lylythianism sees Lylyth as the force that both creates and consumes, however we see her as being no more dangerous that any other force. Do you have specifics that you would be interested in discussing perhaps? Please, lets not allow this discussion to end, as I am interested in everyone's views and opinions.

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Permalink Reply by Last Knight on April 11, 2008 at 4:41pm

My view of Lylyth (if that's the spelling you prefer... it's all transliterated from Hebrew anyway) as dangerous is less from her capacity to destroy (Elohim are at least as dangerous, certainly) than from my experiance with her as somewhat fickle... she's open to granting favors one moment, and then damands more than she is willing to give the next. Perhaps your experiance with her is different, but that is what she has been like around me.

I suppose I would enjoy learning about your experiances with her, and why you choose her as a primary entity of worship (or whatever).

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Permalink Reply by Shane Vedvik on April 12, 2008 at 1:59am

We see Lilith and Lylyth as two seperate things.

The Lilith spelling is used to refer to the wife of a mortal who went on to become a godess/daemoness. She was very dangerous in the sense that she served as an example of not conforming to the external demands placed on a person.

The Lylyth spelling was used because it relates to the root word we understand her name to come from, Layla - the yod (roughly "y" in English) was pronounced by the only Native Speaker of Hebrew I have met - which we understand to mean night.

We see Lylythians as spiritually separate from the rest of the world, and as Lylyth's children, as she is the mother in myths to hundreds of daemons a day. It ties in with our accepted myths of the origin of humanity and death in the world. While I am not a creationist, my daughter does not understand the big bang yet, and the myth is actually easier to explain. Plus I have learned that a life without some myths is not as fulfilling - at least not for me.

Lylyth is demanding, and harsh as a "parent", since we also do not really believe that the force of nature we call Lylyth has a personality or intelligance like humans - she does not care for us, etc. Magical sacrifice is seen by Lylythians as something that has to come from within the magician, so the concept of her demanding anything seems a bit foreign to me, possibly because I originally came from a LaVeyan tradition.

Lylyth was chosen based on her process of becoming a daemoness, which exhibitted the five qualities we strive for in our lives. This is much better explainied in an essay written by the High Priestess, and available here.

Our experience with Lylyth is more about emulation than worship. She is intriguing to contemplate, but I think that falls short of worship in the classical sense. Let me know if I've been able to answer your questions, or only create more. It's nice to see some discussion going on here now.

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Permalink Reply by Last Knight on April 13, 2008 at 9:47pm

You have certainly raised more questions, but that's not a bad thing. I will need to contemplate this information and process it before I can really ask them, but for now, you have given me much to think on. Thanks.

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