Lilith

Patriarchy, Longing, and the Distortion of Separation

Few figures in mythology have been as misunderstood and deliberately twisted as Lilith. In the earliest stories, she appears not as a demon or seductress, but as Adam’s equal — created from the same earth, standing on the same ground. When Adam demanded to be “above” her, Lilith refused. She walked away rather than accept a bond built on domination.

But Lilith does not emerge in isolation. She carries echoes of far older Mesopotamian figures — Lilitu, the storm-spirit dwelling in Inanna’s huluppu tree, driven out alongside the serpent and bird when order was imposed. These stories, rooted in rivers and raging waters, preserved the memory that creation begins with turbulence: the split of unity, the ache of longing, the refusal to be bound.

Later generations could not leave that refusal untouched. In Jewish folklore, Lilith was recast as a night-demon who preyed on infants and men, a shadow figure invoked to explain fear and loss. What had once been a symbol of equality and freedom became a cautionary tale against them.

This rewriting is not an isolated curiosity of ancient religion. It reveals how patriarchy works at its roots: by reshaping stories to sanctify domination and demonize dissent. Myths are not just tales; they are structures of memory and power. And Lilith’s story shows how the memory of separation — the ache that is part of creation itself — was twisted into suspicion and control.

To see this clearly, we have to return to the beginning: to the law of separation, the ache of longing, and the choice between trust and domination that shaped not only Lilith’s fate, but the course of human history.

I. The Law of Separation

Creation begins with division. The waters are parted, sky pulled from sea, light distinguished from darkness. This act is not punishment but necessity: without separation, there is only stillness, an unbroken unity where nothing can move, grow, or become. Creation requires the cut.

But every cut also leaves an ache. The memory of unity lingers as longing. Light strains toward darkness, earth hungers for sky, waters seek to mingle again. What was once whole now carries the wound of being divided.

This longing is powerful: it fuels life’s reaching, but it also tempts distortion. Loss can turn into grief, grief into anger, anger into the urge to control what has slipped away.

It is within this law of separation that the figure of Lilith first appears. She carries not only the story of equality and refusal, but also the weight of this ache: the reminder that becoming may cost us unity, and that to mistake longing for possession is to collapse creation back into bondage.

II. Lilith’s Refusal

In later Jewish folklore, Lilith is introduced as Adam’s first companion, formed from the same earth as him. From the start, their union carried the tension of equality. She insisted: “We are both from the soil; why should I lie beneath you?” Adam, in turn, demanded superiority.

The quarrel between them was never about lust alone, but about the deeper law of creation: can two beings share life as equals, or will one always claim to rule? When no agreement was possible, Lilith called upon God and took flight. In the Alphabet of Ben Sira she is said to have flown into the air, leaving Eden altogether.

Later versions describe the angels pursuing her and finding her not in paradise but in the depths of the sea, in raging waters — the same waters remembered in other myths as the site of chaos and beginning. This imagery binds Lilith to the oldest patterns: flight into the sky, descent into the ocean. She does not simply vanish; she crosses thresholds, into the elements from which creation itself emerged.

The detail of flight also links her to older Mesopotamian echoes. In Inanna’s huluppu-tree myth, the spirit Lilitu takes wing when Gilgamesh drives out the serpent and storm-bird. Both stories preserve the same image: a female figure who, rather than submit, departs in flight — carrying with her the memory of turbulence, longing, and refusal.

Her departure has often been told as rebellion, exile, or fall into demonhood. But another reading is compelling: Lilith’s leaving preserved the split. Without her refusal, unity would have frozen into false hierarchy. Life would have collapsed into domination — a sterile stillness mistaken for order. By leaving, Lilith ensured that becoming could continue.

III. Longing as Engine

The story of Lilith is not only about equality refused. It is also about what happens when longing is misread.

Longing is built into creation. The moment separation occurs, each half feels the pull of the other. This ache is not a flaw — it is the very engine of becoming. Without longing, there would be no return, no movement, no unfolding of life.

But longing is fragile. It can bend in two directions:

• Trusted, it becomes the force that draws halves into new forms of balance.
• Distorted, it hardens into possession — the demand that the other return, not freely, but under control.

Adam’s grief at Lilith’s leaving was real. But instead of trusting the split, he mistook the ache as proof that she must come back. He cried out, doubting God’s wisdom in letting her go.

That doubt resembles the refusal of Iblis, who would not bow to Adam. Both moments share the same root: the belief that one’s own perspective outranks God’s command. what begins as ache can harden into ideology, and ideology into rule — the conviction that order must be enforced through domination.

The myth preserves this turn. From the simple truth — that separation and longing are integral to creation — grew the rewritten lesson: that equality is dangerous, that obedience must be imposed, that patriarchal hierarchy is divine will. Lilith’s departure, once the opening of possibility, was recast as the birth of rebellion.

IV. Patriarchal Rewriting

What happened after Lilith left is just as revealing as her refusal itself. Her choice was not erased but rewritten. Instead of admitting the ache of separation as part of life, patriarchy turned it into a fault to be blamed on women.

Lilith was no longer remembered as the woman who claimed equality and walked away. She was recast as a night-demon — dangerous to men, murderous to children, a seductress to be feared. This was no accident. Patriarchy does not only use armies or laws to enforce its order; it rewrites the stories through which people understand the world.

The new Lilith served as a warning: women who do not submit will be vilified, and the ache of separation itself will be laid at their feet. Her name became a vessel for everything that could not be faced directly — infant death, miscarriage, lust — anything that could be projected outward instead of owned. In this way, grief and longing were not trusted as part of creation’s rhythm but twisted into suspicion and control.

This is how patriarchy works at its root: not just through power, but through narrative. It takes what threatens hierarchy and casts it as evil. Equality becomes rebellion. Departure becomes betrayal. Trust in God’s wisdom is replaced with stories that sanctify domination.

V. Why the Distortion Endures

Uncertainty demands trust — and that is what patriarchy refused to give.

Trusting separation means accepting that the other may not return, that the ache may remain unresolved. It requires faith that creation itself knows what it is doing.

Patriarchy offered an alternative: a story that turned longing into control. Instead of waiting in trust, Adam’s doubt hardened into a structure — the belief that uncertainty must be eliminated at all costs. In this frame, freedom and equality are replaced by obedience and control, a substitute that promises stability but only by shutting down the open space where becoming unfolds.

Instead of being patient and letting longing move creation in its own time, patriarchy tries to enforce reunion — by tying down the other to prevent loss. But in twisting the other into shape, the loss is already ensured.

This is why the distortion endures. Uncertainty is difficult to bear. Trust is not passive; it asks for reflection, for gratitude, for the willingness to see beyond what may be lost to what might yet emerge. It asks for courage too — but a courage rooted in understanding that creation also moves through separation, not around it.

Patriarchy offered a shortcut, even if false: By replacing freedom with obedience and equality with control, it promised stability. But what it delivered was stagnation. Instead of letting the ache of separation keep creation moving, the distortion froze it into domination. Life no longer flowed; it was hoarded, contained, policed.

VI. Lilith Remembered

When we return to Lilith’s story without the distortion, something shifts.
She is not demon, not monster, not thief of children. She is the figure who refused to mistake equality for subordination, who chose the risk of separation over the false safety of domination.

Her leaving was not rebellion against God, but alignment with God’s deeper law: creation requires difference, and difference requires trust. Without trust, longing curdles into possession; with trust, it becomes the engine of becoming.

Remembering Lilith is more than reclaiming a forgotten woman. It is remembering a truth buried at the root of myth: that life does not grow from control, but from the courage to let the other be free. The task now is not to demonize those who left, nor to cling to those who remain. It is to unlearn the distortion — to see longing not as a wound to be patched with hierarchy, but as a force to be trusted.

Lilith’s story marks the first distortion of equality into hierarchy. But it also carries the memory of a choice we still face: whether to repeat the doubt that hardened into domination, or to trust separation as the space through which new life is born.

Her leaving was not a failure but an act of courage — the courage to step into the unknown, so that balance could be restored. To remember Lilith is to remember that creation moves forward not by binding what we fear to lose, but by trusting what is free to return.