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Angels, blood, fantasy, folklore, Garden of Eden, gods, Hebrew, horror, incubus, Legend, Lilith, myth, paranormal, succubus, urban fantasy, vampire, vampires, writing
One of the most famous figures in Hebrew folklore, Lilith was once synonymous with storms but can now be deeply seated in the darkness. Once one of the Sumerian vampire demons, she appeared in the Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic (approx. 2000 AD) as a barren vampire concubine, who was depicted as a beautiful young girl with owl’s feet—to indicate her nocturnal life).
However, she is most widely known as Adam’s first wife in the Bible. They had a disagreement on who should have the dominant position during intercourse, but when Adam insisted on being on top, Lilith used her divine knowledge to fly into the Red Sea, an abode for demons, where she took many lovers and had many offspring. In the Red Sea, she met three angels sent by God—Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangeolf—with whom she made an agreement to possess vampiric powers over babies, not otherwise protected by an amulet bearing the names of these three angels.
Attracted to Adam once more, Lilith returned to haunt him after he and Eve (his second wife) were banished from the Garden of Eden. In the form of incubus/succubus, her and her cohorts attacked the couple, causing Adam to father many demons and Eve to mother many more. Lilith, however, harbored an extreme amount of hate for both normal sexual mating as well as normal human offspring, so much so that she drank the blood of and strangled the children. And she also brought as many complications to women’s pregnancies, such as barrenness, miscarriages, and so forth.
Lilith has transformed over time with multitudes of backgrounds and powers, but that’s another post.
If you want to learn more, check this link and this one.
Sources:
Melton, J. Gordon. The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead. Canton, Michigan: Visible Ink Press, 1999.
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