This page compresses the origins essay into a single column of dates. Ancient dates are approximate, and every entry is tagged so that a reader can see at a glance what kind of evidence stands behind it.
| Tag | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Attested | Supported by surviving texts or objects that specialists broadly accept. |
| Disputed | Often cited as evidence for Lilith, but the identification is contested or rejected by many scholars. |
| Modern | A development of the last two centuries. Real and meaningful, but not ancient. |
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The wind spirits
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Second and first millennia BCE / Attested
Lilu, lilitu, and ardat lili
Akkadian incantations name a family of restless night and wind spirits and give rituals for driving them out of the house. They are feared, not worshipped.
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About 1800 BCE / Disputed
The winged figure on the terracotta relief
An Old Babylonian plaque shows a winged, taloned woman between two owls. It is widely labeled Lilith in popular sources. Most specialists now read it as a goddess, probably Ishtar or Ereshkigal.
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Early second millennium BCE / Disputed
The spirit in Inanna's tree
A Sumerian Gilgamesh poem places a being called ki-sikil-lil-la-ke in the trunk of a sacred tree. A translation of the 1930s called her Lilith. The identification remains uncertain.
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Scripture and the sages
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Sixth to fifth century BCE / Attested
Isaiah 34:14
The only occurrence of the name in the Hebrew Bible. Lilit finds a resting place among the wild creatures of ruined Edom.
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First century BCE / Attested
The Songs of the Sage
A hymn collection among the Dead Sea Scrolls lists Lilith with other spirits to be frightened away by the praise of God.
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Third to sixth century CE / Attested
The Babylonian Talmud
A few brief mentions fix her long hair, her wings, and her danger to those who sleep alone.
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Fifth to eighth century CE / Attested
Aramaic incantation bowls
Households in Mesopotamia bury inscribed bowls under floors and thresholds. Many name Lilith, and some serve her with a writ of divorce.
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The story and the mystics
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Eighth to tenth century CE / Attested
The Alphabet of Ben Sira
The first connected story of Lilith as Adam's first wife. She claims equality, speaks the Name, and leaves. Three angels pursue her and strike the bargain behind the childbirth amulets.
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Thirteenth century / Attested
Lilith and Samael
A Castilian treatise on the left emanation pairs Lilith with Samael as rulers of an impure realm that mirrors the holy one.
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Late thirteenth century / Attested
The Zohar
The central book of medieval Kabbalah develops Lilith as the feminine face of the Other Side.
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Medieval to early modern period / Attested
Childbirth amulets
Across many Jewish communities, amulets naming Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof are hung in the birthing room to protect mother and child.
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The Romantic turn
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1808 / Modern
Goethe's Faust
Lilith appears in the Walpurgis Night scene as Adam's first wife, dangerous for her hair. European literature takes notice.
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1860s / Modern
Rossetti's painting and sonnet
Lilith becomes a modern beauty at her mirror. The threat shifts from infants to men, and the fatal woman of nineteenth-century art is born.
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Late nineteenth century / Modern
The occult revival
Ceremonial magicians adapt the kabbalistic shells into their own systems and place Lilith among them.
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The archetype
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Early to mid twentieth century / Modern
The shadow and the Black Moon
Depth psychology supplies the idea of the shadow. Astrologers name the lunar apogee after Lilith.
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1972 / Modern
A feminist midrash
A retelling of the Ben Sira story ends with Lilith and Eve as allies. Lilith becomes a symbol of equality claimed.
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Late twentieth century / Modern
The dark goddess
Modern witchcraft and left-hand path currents adopt Lilith as a patron of sovereignty, sexuality, and shadow-work.
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2011 / Modern
The reading circle
Seven readers begin working through the primary sources together. The circle later becomes House Lilitu.
What the timeline shows
Three things stand out when the dates are set in a row. First, the gap between the wind spirits and the first-wife story is more than two thousand years, so nothing in the story can be read back into Mesopotamia. Second, every entry in which Lilith is admired falls after 1800. Third, the two pieces of evidence most often offered as her ancient portrait are the two entries marked disputed.
None of this weakens the archetype. It tells us what kind of thing it is. Continue to the symbols, or see how the House uses this history in the Path.