The sort of thing I wonder on a Thursday afternoon — call me what you like — reflecting on the shift of my outlook over all these years. Perhaps I don’t look very Lilithian in the carnal sense, in the way other people imagine it. But it is because if one cannot taste the flesh, it is better to have nothing.
What is Lilith sacrally but the body of desire, flayed of all its skin and standing bleeding before you?
A sinking confrontation with the corpse of the corporeal, one of the few charnel grounds we cannot fully paper over in our sanitized world? This is what we die for? What we debase and obsess and lie for?
As always, there’s a mirth at the bottom of the gory confrontation with truth.
The truth is, the gap between the ecstacy of lust and the madness of digging one’s fingers into warm flesh is as thin as a blade of grass — as thin as a single neutral pathway in the mind that grounds us in the dichotomy of desiring to nurture as much as to consume.
But Lilith, as ever, smiles. This body is fleeting. It hums and screams to the tempo of our heartbeats, cuts and is cut, and then melts into nothingness. It is so absurd and yet so stunning, the sharpness of feeling it can achieve. The craving for fingers in warm flesh is to the unconscious what the tidy dinner party hides behind social mores.
Lilith in her sexual aspect is gristle in teeth, eyes hazed red, and the intrusive thoughts that whisper at the sight of another’s most vulnerable aspects of their warm and abiding soon-to-be corpse.
She is ecstacy and menstrual and all of the things we like to say that are easier to swallow, taboo but only in the least challenging possible way, but it is deeper than that. In the throws of ecstacy is a vibration of rage. In the lavish gush of menstruation is the smell of blood. She is predatory teeth against the shaft and eyes held steady as ribs creak beneath pressing hands and flattened lungs, the terror of the night.
And she will have nothing at all if she cannot taste the flesh.
In a world where sex has become mindless, often merely pantomiming the flatly unarousing tropes of porn, Lilith is absent, regardless of how often her effigy is invoked to attempt to give life to such hollow capitalized shadows.
She does not appear where there is not mad reverence for the temporality of this flesh, the absurdity of the destructive dance we do, and the love of the senseless embarkment into ecstacy.
Lilith laughs and licks the gristle from her teeth.
This is super interesting. However, I’m not sure I understand the connection between lust and consumption to the point of death (if I’m understanding this article correctly, which there’s a chance that I’m not, lol) or its connection to rage. I’ve often seen this connection made, and it reminds me of vampire lore – desiring/lusting for something so much that one becomes a predator in a sense. But is that because people allow their lusts to overpower them? Is it over-attachment? Why exactly does lust transform into “madness” or a kind of rage? Is it merely due to the intensity that raw desire tends to produce in people?
I think that I finally came to understand the connection between Lilith and raw (unsanitized) desire. I had always heard it, but I don’t think I fully understood it until recently. It’s hard for me to put into words, but it’s the difference between understanding something in one’s mind vs. understanding it within or in the body. However, I apologize if I’m misunderstanding this entire post. It’s brought up some themes that I’ve been thinking about myself, so I wanted to engage with it a bit.
I love your work here + your comments on Reddit so just wanted to stop by and see what new postings you had!
At first read several months back I was at a different stage, like I wouldn’t accept the truth. I read this article and it might as well as been gibberish to me. I couldn’t see, or didn’t want to see the truth staring me in the face about why I kept impulsively invoking her energies. I kept reading about her and doing magic blindly in hopes of understanding, why Lilith and no one else. She in turn offering me light, in exchange for me to open myself to darkness. Am I supposed to like darkness?
Do I really need to taste what is out of reach? Why am I obsessing over this instead of enjoying the moment with my loved ones. I happen to wonder if I am treating it like I used to treat pornography, back when I was under its spell. I was always onto the next transgression, getting off more on the “what would my Dad think?”, haha how pathetic. To what end am I pursuing this if I am ready to let go of desire, and is letting it go even possible?? Is there character growth in it for me when invoking this darkness, or is it just going to warp me permanantly? I think that depends on how strong I am, which I believe mentally is a choice. Past work was a confusing experience, but it improved my character dramatically. I am more disciplined, stronger, kinder. So I suppose I answered my own question. See my ego is literally at odds and in battle with my heart, my ego wants to quit, but my heart desires more… So on the taste of flesh for you, but what is my must have for existence?
So I read your article again today and now I think I understand it more. It confirms it, this is what my heart wants, to have various experiences that are beyond my reach while I am in a stale passionless marriage. Not that I hate my wife, I love her and cherish her, she just gets these cluster migraines and so spends a lot of time sleeping, and I get up to no good when she isn’t around heheheh.
Try again in a few months.