I’ve struggled for a long time with one aspect of Lilith in particular.
That she is so jovial.
It can be hard to see, beneath the blood, the blackness, the crackling of bones grinding slowly into dust. You don’t notice it until you’ve spent some time close enough to her face to feel her breath. Because only when you’re that close can you hear her over the discord of your own mind trying to process the vision of her.
But from the beginning, Lilith is an exceedingly happy warrior.
She is “the maiden with a joyful heart” whose boisterous laughter so infuriated Inanna.
She is the hairy-legged queen pleasantly trading quips with Solomon, despite himself.
She is the smiling apparition with sparkling eyes and a mirthful voice who takes the laughing child in her arms as their heart stops.
There is such an easy lightness to Lilith, in all her pitch-black.
The biggest and easiest to convey reason that I am on this path and can be on no other, is because I am congenitally incapable of lying to myself.
I cannot look out at the landscape and tell myself it is thriving when it is burning. I cannot look within and tell myself I am happy staying in line when in fact I am screaming. It’s not a matter of I prefer not to, it is that I cannot. And yet, denial is such a central part of going along to get along in society, and in nature itself. This glaring incapacity, this broken cog in the wiring of my evolutionary mind, has dictated almost every facet of my life and woven every thread of my fate.
Lilith is the face of unassailable honesty that met me as I fought and crashed through the world as a young child incapable of lying. The only one who would let me struggle against the current of what is, without pushing her hand over my mouth as I named the ship on the horizon truthfully. There was no ugliness she would not allow me to witness, and no depths she would not let me plumb. I’ve seen the endless emptiness of her eyes every time I closed my own for as long as I can remember. I begged for truth, and she answered.
But I’ve paid for this constant exposure to the elements. It is so hard to love this world when you cannot lie.
And yet, Lilith laughs.
In the crushing blackness of her eyes, there is an unbearable lightness.
In the insane cacophony of her domain, there’s a fizzing excitability. Those empty eyes see the world for the first time every time they open, and the truth fills them, unfettered by fear or judgement or time. Just truth, just being, just itself, with no past and no present and no future.
Not only is Lilith a keeper of the unassailably honest, but also of the unconditionally accepting. That all is right. That all is good. Exactly how it is. Even the sound of your home being hacked down around you. Even the glare of an arrogant man across from you. Even the light vanishing from the eyes of those you love. And she laughs in the face of them all — not in spite, but in genuine, mad gaiety and exhilaration for what is.
All is motion. All is disruption from the tyranny of silence. All is vitality. All is ecstasy. All is art. All is expressed. All is good.
The most infuriating thing about Lilith is how much she laughs, and how buoyantly she floats, in all her unbearable lightness.
I haven’t quite learned how to laugh the way she does yet. It’s rather silly honestly, how seriously I take this life sometimes. My disposition has given me no respite of stoicism or of sanguinity, and I am more the mercurial artist than I care to admit.
But just above my head, Lilith opens her empty eyes and laughs, as truth rushes to meet her for the very first time, more times than the universe can count.
This was superb to read and I can feel your emotions. Great way of expressing yourself and how things have been going. I do agree with you she is absolutely jovial and one of the most beautiful and friendly energies I work with. Despite life being life you know lol I find myself laughing more than ever. I think that’s key though in the end of the day. And to absorb truth like when you smell an enchanting scent and to deal with it. If I’m explaining myself right lol I hope so lol.
Thank you, I appreciate that. And yes, I know what you mean.
I keep finding myself shifting between that same jovial feeling between the reality of things and what appears inevitable. I think tbh I’ve gotten to a point where I feel I can do both things and somehow not feel conflicted in doing so, like if I deem a thing a way I don’t enjoy, why shouldn’t I push back? I also have to admit I enjoy subjecting others to the truth of things (never been able to lie to myself or others either, it just feels pointless)
Gotta admit there’s a level of comedy in every bad thing I pointed out to people happening and many of them having to deal with that. Though I still have another ancient feeling voice in the back of my mind that I more feel telling me “its not your job to push things, take a step back.”
I think we as humans inherently want things to ‘make sense.’ To be organized and to have meaning and reason. But it’s all really just chaos. Beautiful enigmatic discordant chaos. The great song of the cosmos. A rhythm that shifts and changes without warning. A primordial current that tugs and pulls without destination, moving ever onward into the unknown.
That’s what the laughters all about. The mockery of control. To make sense of the madness of existence. Like trying to tame the ocean.
I love not knowing, I love the uncertainty. The fear. The excitement. The epiphanies. The darkness. The life. It’s all so perfectly flawed. I’m just along for the ride.
P.s. I do love the myriad of ways Lilith chooses to be perceived by us (perhaps it’s the other way around) on an individual level. For instance, She has always come to me with bright glowing amber eyes. Like distant dying stars. It’s interesting to me that you see them as dead.
All life is ordered. There’s order in every part of nature, just look at its complexity. Look at the birds weaving their nests, look at the bees going about their work, look at the complexity of photosynthesis and all the complicated processes in every plant. Nature maintains a balance.
Yes, there has to be chaos as a balance to order. We are living in a society that has become overly complex, and with too much order and control. In saying that, who here has stepped outside their society, who has just walked out the door and left behind all order. Who has just walked off into the forest with no thoughts of returning to society?
The answer is?
Noone.
Nature is self organising. We are a part of nature nit seperate from it.
We should have constructed a society that closely resembles nature but we haven’t. Because we’ve tried to separate ourselves from “nature”.
We’ve created a hierarchical system that extracts resources and feeds those at the top and grinds those at the bottom into the dirt.
Don’t kid yourself that it’s all chaos when you’re posting a comment through some kind of ridiculously complicated electronic device, and putting it on the internet…how many different factors come into play just so you can do that? And why would you bother if it’s all meaningless chaos?
Order is necessary. It is beautiful. Life is based on order. Too much chaos is just destruction, and living creatures that are horrible mutations…but I suppose that can be beautiful too.
Many things you describe about her, they resonate with my relationship and shadow work i got with her, it’s a strange feeling.
I’m learning now to step out of my comfort zone, in order to embrace deep changes and destroying the insecurities and wrong beliefs about myself that my toxic family put into my head since when i was a teen. To give you an idea of what i seem now, i look like a scared little girl trying to create her own independence in her path.
I think i can understand the “jovial side”, it happens when she “lightens” the heaviness about my whole situation, sometimes she uses just the sarcasm.
I don’t realize that it’s positively contagious, i accept the reality of things more easily and face it with more self-confidence.
(Sorry for my bad english, that’s not my first language)
Hi. so happy to have found your blog. I’ve had a fascination with Lilith since reading “The Last Vampire” as a child. I’m enjoying your perspective and the vast cache of knowledge on Lilith you’ve built. Looking forward to delving in, thank you for taking the time to compile all this.