Walking with the Goddess: Lilith

Lilith’s story is shrouded in the mysteries.  Demon or dark goddess, depending on the stories you read, but no one can deny her.  Period.  Her stories have stood the test of time and have also filtered thru numerous cultures.  The earliest of which seems to be The Epic of Gilgamesh (c.2100 BC, ancient Mesopotamia), where she appears in Inanna's sacred tree to claim it for her own.  She is also hailed as Adam’s first wife in Judaism, who refused to submit to him because she demanded to be treated as his equal.  She was depicted as the snake who tempted Eve or a screech owl, who was said to torment men that slept alone - an ancient succubus.  She was even said to be consort of Lucifer for a time, but proved to be too much for him.  Cast out of Sumeria, forbidden to return to Eden, Lilith, although demonized later on, has an amazingly powerful influence in the spiritualist community, not to mention the Pagan community.  But why?  

Lilith is the catalyst for power and self-love.  She was never humble, never subdued, and she never conformed.  She was confident in who she was and refused to give her power to anyone.  This may sound a bit selfish, but in essence, she stood her ground, unmoving.  She refuses to be inferior for we were all created equal.  She willingly left paradise because of it.  She is strength and power.  She’s untamed and free.  She is her own divine will made manifest.  She has been demonized every way possible, but her power still prevails.  She is the power we are born with, which we often forget we have.  The freedom we have to be ourselves.  

Somewhere along the way, we lost a lot of that.  We tend to give our power away.  We’re taught that others come first; don’t say/do that, you’ll make someone upset; you can’t do that because that’s selfish, etc - you know where I’m coming from.  So, little by little, we give our power away to family, friends, our job, maybe even just fear.  Fear of not being enough, not doing enough, not fitting in or fill in the blank.  We give it to alcohol and drugs as a form of escape.  We give it to people who drain our energy to be polite.  We allow all these things and people to have our power, our energy and our will.

Lilith swoops in, and teaches to take our energy back.  Reclaim it.  You were born with it, and it is imperative, for your well being, to take it back. I’ve had the pleasure of working with her over the past couple weeks in preparation for a ritual.  Meditating with her, she took me back to the source - the very event that I decided I was going to give my power to someone else.  I had forgotten about the incident, it was nearly 20 years ago!  And I continued to give it away, worried about what someone would do to me, say about me… I wore a pretty thick mask, and I still do at times.  But the more I work thru this, the more ‘me’ I find and reclaim.  It matters less and less what others think and say, but it’s still a challenge to step up, be myself and do my thing.  Because in the end, it doesn’t matter what they say or think - Lilith knew and embodied that - and you know it too.  Just think of what you can accomplish mentally, magickally, spiritually, and even physically, by stepping into or reclaiming your own power and living out your divine will.  It was never a second thought to the Goddess - and it shouldn’t be for us, for the Goddess resides within each one of us.