posted October 03, 2004 11:08 AM              

Here is something i spiraled upon the other day...

ADAM AND EVE

A MAD MAN
AMANDA
A DAMNED MAN
A DAME MADE MAN MAD
ADAM NAMED EVE
ADAM DEMANDED EVE
ADAM DEMEAN(E)D EVE
EVE MADE ADAM MAD
DAMN ADAM
DAMN EVE
EDEN DAMNED ADAM AND EVE

Heres the other bit

ADAM AND LILITH

A MAD MAN
AMANDA
I DAMN MAN
I DAMN ADAM
I AM NI(G)HT
I AM LI(G)HT
I HIT ADAM
I HIT MAN
LILIM (Supposedly thats what her offsprings were known as)
ADAM HAD A TAIL
I HAD A TAIL
I AM A DAMN(E)D MAID(E)N
ILL DAMN ALL M(E)N
HAIL LILITH TH(E) DAMN(E)D MAID(E)N

what do you all think?

and who is this amanda???
is there any myth about an amanda???

and

posted October 11, 2004 12:05 PM            

(taken from- The Witches' Goddess by Janet and Stewart Farrar)

LILITH and EVE

The disturbing Lilith... being the most dangerous and subversive threat to the established male order, was buried in the furthest depths of the Hebrew unconscious. -Jean Markale

Nowhere is the vigorous determination of patriarchy to suppress memories of the Primordial Mother more evident that in the Biblical Garden of Eden.

The Genesis story is a patriarchal revision of earlier Middle Eastern Creation myths, and also of Hebrew tradition itself.
According to that tradition, as recorded in the Talmud, Adam's first wife was Lilith. Yahweh (or was it Elohim, that curious God-name which is feminine with a masculine plural ending?) created them both at the same time. But Lilith refused to subordinate herself to Adam, or to the male God - even physically: when Adam insisted that she must always lie beneath him during intercourse, she quarrelled with him, flew up into the air and vanished. Adam appealed to Yahweh to bring her back, and Yahweh sent the three angels Senoi, Sansenoi and Samagloph to find her.

The angels caught her on the shores of the Red Sea (at the place where the Egyptians pursuing the Children of Israel were later engulfted) coupling with lascivisous demons and giving birth to demonic children called lilim or liliot at the rate of over a hundred a day. She refused to reurn to Adam and was told that, if she did not, she would lose a hundred of her own children every day. She still refused, and the angels tried unsuccessfully to drown her. She was finally allowed to live on condition that she would never harm a newborn child on which she could see the angels' names written. Yahweh gave her to Samael (Satan) as the first of his four wives, and she bacame a persecutor of the newborn (presumably the unmarked ones).

Significantly, she was seen as most dangerous to male babies, who were vulnerable to her till they were eight years old, while baby girls were out of danger after twenty days.

According to the Zohar, Lilith later took part in the Fall, seducing Adam while Satan, as the Tempter, seduced Eve.

Lilith was not her original name, which appears to have been lost. She acquired it by identification with the Sumerian 'night hag' Lilitu. As such, she is the 'screech-owl' (Authorized Version) or 'night monster' (Revised Version) of Isaiah xxiv:14. Incidentally, the word 'lullaby' is said to be a corruption of 'Lilla, abi!' - a Jewish banishing spell meaning 'Lilith, avaunt!'

So much for the blackening process. Lilith (whatever her own name was) is clearly a concept much older than Eve. Whether she was the First Woman, co-equal with the First Man - or farther back than that, the uncreated Primordial Mother who gave birth to the First Man (or first Male God) and then mated with him - she was totally unacceptable to emerging Hebrew patriarchalism. So Eve was invented - created by a male God out of Adam's male body, as complete a reversal of the natural ordar as Zeus's giving birth to Athene by swallowing her pregnant mother Metis.
The kind of First Woman that patriarchy required is grimly summed up in another passage from the Talmud:

quote:

---

The Lord considered from what part of the man he should form woman; not from the head, lest she should be proud; not from the eyes, lest she should wish to see everything; not from the mouth, lest she might be talkative; not from the ear, lest she should wish to hear everything; nor from the heart, lest she should be jealous; nor from the hand, lest she should wish to find out everything; nor from the feet, in order that she might not be a wanderer; only from the most hidden place, that is covered even when a man is naked - namely, the rib.

---

As Markale puts it (Women of the Celts, p.145): 'Eve, the mother of mankind, is merely the castrated version of Adam'
Even her name reflects her status: 'She shall be called Woman' (Hebrew, Isha), 'because she was taken out of Man' (Ish', Genesis ii:23.
Graves, (The White Goddess, p.257) has an interesting theory about the rib story - that it 'seems an anecdote based on a picture of the naked goddess Anatha of Ugarit watching while Alyn, alias Baal, drives a curved knife under the fifth rib of his twin Mot: this murder has been iconotropically misread as Jehovah's removal of a sixth rib, which turns into Eve. The twins, who fought for her favors, were gods of the Waxing and the Waning Year.' ('Iconotropically misread' here means that the intended meaning of the symbols has been misinterpreted.) He maintains that, 'Jehovah did not figure in the original myth. It is the Mother of All Living, conversing in triad, who casts Adam out of her fertile riverine dominions because he has usurped some perogative of hers.'

Eve, like Blodeuwedd in Welsh legend, is a man-created image of woman as patriarchy would like her to be: subordinate, obedient, excluded from all positions of real power, and her sexuality confined to procreation.
But even this image, this shadow-woman, cannot be completely tamed. Eve and Blodeuwedd rebel against dictatorship; Blodeuwedd refuses to be told whom she may love, and Eve refuses to be told what fruits of knowledge she may not eat.

Both are damned for it, of course, by the male masters, to whom they have been allotted, and by patriarchal dogma (whether pagan, Hebrew or Christian). In Eve's case, the rebel is in fact Lilith herself, the real female principal, man's true but banished partner, bursting through the artificial stereotype. So she is branded the cause of all humanity's troubles - i.e., as the saboteur of the patriarchal structure.
It is significant that both Blodeuwedd and Lilith are condemned to become night-owls - a perfect symbol for the dark-side magic of the feminine principle, of which patriarchy is terrified.

Lilith's demotion to demoness betrays that terror, for even as demoness, haunting men's dreams - the succubus who mounts them astride - she retains her dangerous appeal. The Talmud describes her as a charming woman with long wavy hair. Doreen Valiente (An ABC of Witchcraft, pp.225-6) sums up the accepted picture of her as 'the archetypal seductress, the personification of the dangerous glamour of the moon. Like Hecate, she is a patroness of witches; but where Hecate is visualized as an old crone, Lilith is instead the inticing sorceress, the beautiful vampire, the femme fatale. Her loveliness is more than human; but her beauty has one strange blemish. Her feet are great claws, like those of a giant bird of prey.' (In this image, she has a medival French equivalent in La Reine Pedauque.)
Truths banished to the unconscious do acquire talons -representing both our fear of them and their ability to tear a way through the veils of hypocricy and distortion with which we have tried to surround them. Only when we come to terms with them and integrate them with consciousness is their loveliness restored, so that their talons become feet again. Only when the night-owl is admitted to this sunlight can we appreciate the beauty of her plumage.

posted November 16, 2004 01:45 AM              

Lilith and Mary Magdalena.

Archetypal female figures. Both representing the feminine as powerful. There is a sufi and gnostic tradition that it was Mary who received the real lineage transfer from Isa, that it was she who was his appointed successor and deputy. Amongst other things.

But she lost the political power play. Or, more likely, retreated to where she could do more good.

In Mark 16:9 it says: Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils.

Seven nafs, seven chakras...mmm and first appeared. There are no coincidences.

Lilith similarly seems to have been stitched up by a patriarchy gone wild. First woman becomes first vampire-demon-***** ? Because she wanted to go on top? Ever get the feeling someone lost the war somewhere?

At least in the Quran both Adam and Eve are tempted. Though according to one Hebrew myth it is Lilith who tempts Adam. Similarly it is Satan that tempts Eve. Somehow I think our myths have been corrupted.

Preferable is Vasumitra and Sudhana...Vasumitra is externally controversial but internally consistent. An enlightening being of superlative capacity and tantric adeptrix. To the externalist she seems to tarnish the purity and virtue of the Buddhist adept. But to the adept she is the paragon of integrated spirituality.

She is, you might say, finishing school for Buddhists. But a school that seems to break all conventional notions of purity

But, presumably, there was a time when Vasumitra was not established in "ultimate dispassion". According to legend she was "inspired to seek supreme perfect enlightenment by Manjusri, the supernal bodhisattva who represents both wisdom and knowledge, transcendental insight into emptiness, as well as formal mastery of art and science."

I always think of Manjusri as the exemplar of clarity. The vajra-sword that seperates true from false in one hand and the lighning bolt of inspiration in the other.

Time to dig out the Flower Ornament Sutra.

"To gods, in accord with their inclinations and interests, I appear in the form of a goddess of surpassing splendor and perfection; and to all other beings I accordingly appear in the form of a female of their species, of surpassing splendor and perfection. And all who come to me with a mind full of passion, I teach them so that they become free of passion. Those who have heard my teaching and attain dispassion achieve an enlightening concentration called "realm of nonattachment""

--Vasumitra in Entry into the Realm of Reality, Avatamsaka Sutra.

So, basically she was a shapeshifting witch. At least to the casual observer, the superficialist. Which reminds me:

When are the witches to be trusted? Never! The dark side of the magic universe belongs to the Bene Gesserit and we must reject them.
--Tylwyth Waff, Master of Masters

All of which returns me to Lilith and, eventually, Mary. Lilith is obviously the dark side of the feminine. I say dark in the sense of the unknowable, of the ultimately creative Left-Hand Path (not to be confused with anything as crass as self-indulgent tantra or satanism).

The Left-Hand Path falls outside of convention. The Right-Hand tends to work within it whereever possible. Again, this is not to be confused with a shallow excuse for sociopathic behaviour. It's much more akin to the Path of Blame (Malamiyya).

The dark side of the magical universe refers to the Luminous Night of the Absolute. That Void that is the source of Light. The Darkness from which sprang the Word, the command: "Be!".

Frank Herbert again:"There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place within himself where the taking force dwells, but it's almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than a man. For a woman, the situation is reversed...
These things are so ancient within us that they're ground into each seperate cell of our bodies. We're shaped by such forces. You can say to yourself, "Yes, I see how such a thing may be." But when you look inward and confront the raw force of your life unshielded, you see your peril. You see that this could overwhelm you. The greatest peril to the Giver is the force that takes. The greatest peril to the Taker is the force that gives. It's as easy to be overwhelmed by giving as by taking."

Similarly, and somewhat later in the series, Sayyadina Herbert details two ways of awakening a human. One male and one female. One via pain and one via pleasure. In both cases, the maintenance of some sort of essential identity determines success. Both, in their own way, strip false from true. One by taking away the false, the other by giving the true. Each is a question of reflection, of mirroring and, ultimately, of transmission. And both may be necessary for completeness.

Now it seems clear to me, that at some point someone seperated the elements of the feminine. Keeping the right-hand side of the mother, wife etc. but rejecting the lover and witch. To reject either is to err.

Eve and Lilith are one thing but Eve is Lilith as man would make her. Note that she's made from Adam's rib i.e. out of the male. She is, therefore, incomplete, a masculine conception of the feminine. She conforms to a superficial notion of purity and her fall, in Judeo-Christian myth, is seen as occurring when she accesses her sexuality(sex being related to power). Which is puritanism not purity.

Mary, then, is Lilith restored to Eve. The two married once more. Dark and light in perfect harmony. After the politics she is referred to as the "repentant ***** ". Perhaps...

I think it is more subtle than that. It has to do with the higher level uses of sexual energy, of affectional alchemy, of sex as a healing force in the hands of an adept (of either gender).
Mary was, no doubt, repentant. Any sensible adept is continuously repentant. It really only means to turn one's eye to God with the self in submission.

As to ***** , well, I am increasingly suspicious that this would have been better transmitted as "unconditional lover". And that is the threatening force that gives. For it cuts deeply into the male psyche and it's need to possess, to take and to own.

posted November 01, 2006 01:47 AM              

quote:

---

ADAM HAD A TAIL

---

------------------
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

posted November 05, 2006 07:59 PM              

The Devil in the Tarot
the man and woman have a tail

The Wheel of Fortune

Taurus-Venus-LOve and Leo-Sun-Ray-Light

what a tale. ...

above virgo woman virgin
scorpio pheonix-eagle-scorpion-sting

posted November 06, 2006 03:56 AM              

Lotus, good analysis! But the Adam had a tail thing goes back deeper than that, remember? From the beginning of time!! Actually, the Serpent Circle of Time has a connection, also. I believe this is what Linda was going to write about in Twelfth Night Secrets.

Clues everywhere in the Bible, in Carlos Castenada's, The teachings of Don Juan, Linda Goodman's Star Sings and Gooberz and Davis Icke's, The Biggest Secret, Love is the only answer--Everything else is an illusion, Children of the Matrix

Cheers
Silverstone

------------------
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.