Lilith Glossary: Terms and Definitions

These are working definitions, written for readers and not for specialists. Words from Akkadian, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Sanskrit are given in simple spellings without accent marks, and other spellings are common. Terms coined by the House are marked as such.

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Forty-two terms, in alphabetical order.

Alphabet of Ben Sira: An anonymous Hebrew and Aramaic work written between about 700 and 1000 CE. It contains the earliest connected story of Lilith as Adam's first wife. Parts of it are widely read as satire.
Amulet: An object worn or displayed for protection. In the Lilith tradition, most often a written charm naming three angels, placed in a room where a child was to be born.
Archetype: A recurring pattern of character or situation that people recognize across stories. The House uses the word for the modern figure of Lilith as a pattern of refusal, autonomy, and exile, without any claim about whether she exists as a being.
Ardat lili: Akkadian, roughly "maiden of the wind." A female night spirit of Mesopotamian belief, pictured as a young woman who died unmarried and childless.
Attested: Supported by a surviving text or object. One of the House's three labels for a claim, with interpreted and personal.
Black Moon: In modern astrology, the lunar apogee: the point in the Moon's orbit farthest from the Earth. Named for Lilith in the twentieth century. It is a mathematical point and not a body, and it is not the same thing as the dark moon.
Charter: The nine articles adopted by the House in 2014. Its only binding text. See the Charter.
Dark moon: The night or nights around the astronomical new moon when no moon is visible. The date of the House's one observance.
Empty time: A House term. The ten minutes of sitting in darkness at the center of the dark moon observance.
Folk etymology: A popular but mistaken explanation of a word's origin. The name Lilith was long linked to the Hebrew word for night, layil. Scholars derive it from the Akkadian lilitu. The link with night is old all the same, and it shaped her image.
Four jurisdictions: A House term. The four areas over which a person holds first authority: body, name, hours, and conscience. See Self-Sovereignty.
Housing: A House term for the fourth movement of shadow-work: giving a formerly disowned part of oneself a recognized and limited place in daily life. Commonly called integration elsewhere.
Incantation bowl: A pottery bowl inscribed with a protective text in Aramaic and buried, usually upside down, under the floor or threshold of a house. Made in Mesopotamia between roughly the fifth and eighth centuries CE. Many name Lilith.
Ineffable Name: The four-letter name of God in the Hebrew Bible, which Jewish tradition does not pronounce. In the Ben Sira story Lilith speaks it in order to leave the garden.
Isaiah 34:14: The single verse of the Hebrew Bible that contains the word lilit. It lists her among the creatures that inhabit a ruined land.
Kabbalah: The main tradition of Jewish mysticism, which took its classic form in medieval Provence and Spain. Later occultists adapted parts of it, often under the spelling Qabalah. The two should not be confused.
Keeper: One of the five people who maintain the House's library. Keepers hold duties and no rank. See the Keepers.
Left emanation: In thirteenth-century Castilian Kabbalah, a realm of impure powers that mirrors the holy realm. Lilith and Samael are its rulers.
Left-hand path: In modern occultism, a spiritual approach that keeps final authority with the individual and treats the rejected and forbidden as sources of knowledge. See Lilith and the Left-Hand Path.
Lil: Sumerian for wind, air, or breath, and by extension a ghost or phantom. The root of the lilu family of names.
Liliths: The plural. Many ancient sources, including incantation bowls and the Dead Sea Scrolls, speak of liliths as a class of spirits and not as one individual.
Lilitu: Akkadian. The female form of the Mesopotamian wind spirit and the linguistic ancestor of the name Lilith. The House takes its name from this oldest layer.
Lilu: Akkadian. The male form of the same class of spirit.
Lunation: One complete cycle of the Moon's phases, from new moon to new moon. On average about twenty-nine and a half days.
Midrash: A Jewish mode of interpretation that fills gaps in scripture with story and argument. Also a single work of this kind. The modern feminist retellings of Lilith were written as midrash.
Mirror work: A timed practice of addressing one's own reflection in order to meet a named piece of shadow material. See Mirror Work.
Night Office: A House term. The short spoken text used at the dark moon observance. See the text.
Other Side: English for the Aramaic sitra achra. In the Zohar, the domain of impurity and harsh judgment that stands over against holiness. Lilith is its chief feminine figure.
Personal gnosis: Knowledge that comes from an individual's own dream, vision, or insight and cannot be checked against a source. Often called unverified personal gnosis. The House treats it as valid for the person concerned and asks that it not be presented as history.
Projection: In psychology, the habit of perceiving one's own disowned qualities in another person. Strong, unexplained dislike is its usual sign.
Qliphoth: Hebrew for shells or husks, also spelled kelipot. In Kabbalah, the coverings that conceal divine light. In later occultism, a "tree" of shadow powers opposite the tree of life. Lilith is commonly the name of its lowest shell.
Right-hand path: In modern occult usage, a spiritual approach that seeks union with something greater than the self and accepts outside authority in doing so. The term is descriptive and not an insult.
Rite of Refusal: A House practice. A short threshold rite for making a single clear refusal. See the Rite of Refusal.
Samael: An angel of severity in Jewish tradition, sometimes identified with the accuser or the angel of death. In medieval Kabbalah, the consort of Lilith.
Self-sovereignty: First authority over one's own body, name, hours, and conscience, together with responsibility for how that authority is used.
Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof: The three angels sent to bring Lilith back in the Ben Sira story. Their names on an amulet were held to protect infants from her.
Shadow: Carl Jung's term for the parts of the personality that the conscious self does not acknowledge as its own. It holds whatever a person was taught to find unacceptable, which is not always something bad.
Shadow-work: The deliberate practice of bringing shadow material into awareness so that it can be lived with consciously. The House sets it out in four movements: naming, meeting, hearing, and housing. See Shadow-Work.
Talmud: The central text of rabbinic Judaism, a vast record of legal discussion and lore. The Babylonian Talmud, completed around the sixth century CE, mentions Lilith a few times in passing.
Vamachara: Sanskrit, "left-handed conduct." A mode of Tantric practice that makes ritual use of what convention forbids. The distant source of the Western phrase "left-hand path," which has since taken on a different meaning.
Writ of divorce: The legal document that ends a marriage in Jewish law. Some incantation bowls serve one on Lilith, formally dismissing her from the household.
Zohar: The principal work of medieval Kabbalah, which appeared in Spain in the late thirteenth century. It contains the fullest mystical portrait of Lilith.