Date Thu, November 9, 2006 - 7:45 PM
Subject Lilith etc.
Message Dear Bill,

How are you today? To answer your first question, yes, I’m “technically Jewish” for the simple reason that we don’t choose our parents. But I don’t consider myself anything but an individual soap-bubble (“Dasein” in Heidegger) trying to grow and understand what I can before I “burst.” I once was very religious and received Rabbinic ordination, but now you could say I’m a defrocked Rabbi.

You have asked a number of good questions, which show that you take the subject seriously. The problem is that simple questions sometimes require complex answers (eg., like the child who asks, “Why is the sky blue?” Or: “who made the world?” (we’d say: God). “But who made God?” (now we’re stuck. We might say that in Kabbalistic metaphor Ein Sof created God, but that would just create greater confusion. Answers often do that in this field.

What is Lilith ultimately? An “entity” but more importantly: an experience, a perspective, a gateway. Let’s say for now that Lilith is similar to a Jungian archetype, very real though quite intangible. Neutrinos and photons are real, though they have practically zero mass. Spiritual particles/entities?

That Lilith has a holy counterpart (twin sister) is well documented. Take “Star Wars” as an example (though it’s extremely simplistic). Lilith would be the gateway to the “Dark Side.” This comes from Zoroastrian, Manichean and Gnostic dualism. But I would argue that (with apologies to George Lucas) that both sides must be combined, we must learn how to “make peace” between them for peace to reign on earth. (cf. the “left-hand path” in Tantrism). (war always futile, eg. the war on cancer, war on drugs, war on terror, etc...)

Lilith has her root in the spiritual realm. As she manifests down here, she can take the form of a demoness (But one must understand the nature of Kali in Hinduism to appreciate Lilith and work with her. The writings of Ramakrishna (19th century) are most helpful here).

Cohabitating with Adam: yes, see: Zohar I, pg. 34b.

Some have knowledge of a greater and a lesser Lilith -- the former being the spouse of Samael and the latter the spouse of Asmodeus: see Malakhe Elyon, pg. 237, n. 9. But there are many other variations. It depends greatly on the experiencer himself.

Speaking the ineffable name, yes: see: Malakhe Elyon, pg. 236, n. 4.

As “Sophia” – yes: this is the term used most often by the Gnostics, eg. in Zostrianos and other Nag Hammadi texts (all available online).

As for “the void” – this term was central to the sixteenth century Kabbalah of Isaac Luria (this is the dominant school). It begins with the simple premise: At first there was only the light of the Infinite (Ein Sof). There was literally no cosmological/ontological room for the universe. So It’s first act was to withdraw into Itself (tzimtzum), thus creating a void (halal) for the creation of the worlds (another huge topic).

what is the Ein Sof, the "sigmim;" isn't the Ayn Sof or Ein Sof the ultimate place (state of reality) where GOD dwells? And just what is the "Sigmim?"

As for Ein Sof (the Infinite) being the ultimate level of reality: yes, but it’s “beyond God.” Basically, there are 3 tiers:-

1. the meta-divine realm (Ein Sof, containing sigim according to some traditions).
2. the divine realm (split into light and dark sides, God and Satan, the ten sephirot, etc. etc).
3. the non-divine realm, the physical worlds, including our own universe.

Note the radical switch from Biblical ontology, which knows only two tiers, the divine and the non-divine.

It would take a lot of time to translate and interpret each of these sources. Each question deserves a separate email.

I’m sorry I didn’t get to all your questions. Things are a bit hectic here. I hope to go into more detail in time. My knowledge is very limited and I’m learning all the time.

Please tell me more about your series of books. I can never settle down to write, there’s so much to learn!

Can you tell me how to join a “tribe," make new friends, and post this material on the website?

Please keep in touch,

Mark.

Hi, Mark,

It was a pleasant surprise to receive your e-mail.

I have read many different sources on Lilith, including the writings of a new author, whose last name is Gordon. He claims he is in contact with Lilith -- whom he says we need to call her Layla because she does not like the name Lilith; something about her being offended by a blasphemous name. I never could wrap my mind around how GOD (the ultimate GOD -- not the Gods of organized traditional Earth religions which mankind has created to empower the view and control the masses) could be offended or how we could blaspheme against GOD. This GOD would be beyond any human emotion our other Gods possess that this GOD would not be concerned with us. Of course, I could be wrong.

Gordon claims that Lilith is returning in a very levantian like star ship --black star-ship -- -- she is somewhere near the belt of Orion, the constellation of the hunter, and headed toward Earth. When she arrives she is going to wreck havoc upon all those who have offended her. I have a hard time believing any of this man's prattle.

Lilith to me is the archetype mother. In fact, in my dreams and in my imagination Lilith communicates with me as a muse helping me to write the six books which tells the epic story of her and her son Gilgamesh. I know I am mixing mythologies here , but for me it is fun. It is like mixing metaphors -- which we are taught not to do in public school to stifle our imaginations.

I also read that Lilith was, at one point in time, a co-creator with Yahweh, and had been his consort. Later she was demoted to the Adams first wife -- before Eve. But then I also read where Sophia was the co-creator of the Universe with Yahweh and then later she to was demoted to a lesser role as the Patriarchal system and Judaism evolved to become monotheistic.

My question is: Was Lilith and Sophia one and the same?

It is interesting how a lot of alternate religions have both a male and female Godhead as co-creators. Egyptian mythology talks about a God referred to as Nun and from this God came the first Godhead that was both a male and female.

I even remember reading where at one point in time Yahweh and Lucifer where co-creators. But modern Christians deny that this ever was true.

I remember I movie that came out in the early 1980s , "The Dark Crystal" a Jim Henson production, where the crystal had been spit and it caused two races of entities to emerge. The good, wise, positive force ones: the Mystics and their counter part, the evil. dark, negative ones: the Sykes. However, when the crystal shard that had split off at the beginning of the movie was replaced the two entities once again emerged and a new God like race took their place.

So Lilith is a strong mother/matriarchal image representing the fact that their is both duality and co-creation. It takes two gametes, one male sperm cell and one female ovum to create a zygote which will eventually become a human.

She also represents to females that they are just as important as the male principle in the scheme of things. Lilith represents the female principle and a growing number of woman are looking upon her as their new God...so to speak. I even saw a website where Jewish women have published a magazine that they call "Lilith."

To answer some of your questions to publish on this site or to start your own you must join tribes. Once you sign up, and I think it is still free to join, you can start to create your own site and invite people to join your site by sending out invitations. You can post on my site by going there and posting where it says post. I will send you and invitation to join my site all I need is your e-mail address.

I can tell that a lot of the dark and light side of the "Force" as Lucus calls it is an extension of many different mystic tomes. I understand that the "Tree of Life" from the Kabbalah teachings has both a light and dark side and that even Yahweh has his light and dark side.

Have you ever read Stan Gooch's, "Total Man?" Gooch wrote this book in the early 1970s, I still have my original copy. It has been a very interesting spring board to understanding religion, mythology and psychology. However, Gooch wrote his book in a time when neuroscience was still in the Skinnerian and Behaviorism paradigm which limits some of his more scientific ruminations about the brain.

We have learned a lot about how the human brain makes up its mind. However, we have a not even come close to understanding even how a simple dream is created or even how we can create new things, like art, music, writing, and even religion. but what we have learned, is that the human mind does love to create or at least some do.

Another interesting theory is that there are Multi-verses and that we are just one among millions of such Universes. I wonder if GOD is the ultimate source of all these Multiverses. Would the ultimate GOD be Ein/Ayn Soif?

I have a really good friend who is in high energy physics, Dr. Lucian Cremaldi, and he tells me that next year at CERN in Geneva Switzerland, that the new Hadron Collider will go on-line and that they will be creating miniature black holes and creating more anti-matter. I am willing to bet as new technologies stream out of these experiments that we will learn someday that we keep creating reality into what we believe it to be. Hmmm.

Well enough philosophizing for today.

Until next time...I await your kind and timely reply.

bk

I just finished reading your eye-opening e-mail, and I must say -- I liked what I read.

I do have one question: are you Hebrew? I want you to know "right up front" -- as they say here in the "Deep South" -- I have not objections what so ever if you are Jewish. In fact, I have been wanting to meet and make friends with a Jewish scholar. I srespect all religions (to a degree) but I am a practinioner of none -- if that makes sense.

I was intrigued by your statement, that Lilith has a holy counterpart. According to some of the Kabbalistic readings I have come across thye have proported that Lilith was a demoness because she consorted with demons after she had left the Adam.

Also did Lilith speak the in/un-affaible (is it unspeakable or unknowable) name of God in order to enpower her? Infact, it enpowered her with enough supernatural/perternatural power, to fly (like an angle or superman) to the Red Sea, where she was preported to have cohabitated with demons -- in partticular with Samiel. Again from the limited sources I have read, it seems that Lilith was created almost equal to God (the God I am reffering to is Yahweh); however, that remains me where I read that Yahweh had created on co-created a sister, her name was Sophia, Can you shed any light on this?

In reference to Lilith as Malkhut, that name seems close to the "Tree of Life" counter part for the planet Earth: Malkuth -- if I spelled it correctly. I have a hard time spelling because I am dyslexic.

Their is a viod between the last upper tier of the tree called the void; what do you know about the void?

Good and bad dwell in all of us, even in God. it is my understanding that there is a dark side to the "Tree of Life" where man must tread with great caution. What do you know about this teaching?

Yes, Mark, any information you have on Lilith, "Dark" or"Light" I would very much like to learn about. For example, what is the Ein Sof, the "sigmim;" isn't the Ayn Sof or Ein Sof the ultimate place (state of reality) where GOD dwells? And just what is the "Sigmim?"

It seems that -- according to some of my research -- that Lilith's name is connected with: Isis in Egypt, Ishtar in the Near East, Astarte in the Chaldean and Assirian culture, and then as Inanna in ancient Sumeria. Of course, in ancient Sumeria she was name as Lilu, Lilutu and a dozen or so other names.

The paramount question remains is who is or was Lilith?

She is truely a fascinating character. I am using her in my series of six books as the main antagonist against the hero, Gilgamesh, not only as his ultimate advisary, but as his mother as well.

So once again welcome to the club, and I hope to hear more from you. You sound like a very knowledgeable inividual.

Until hnext time...I a wait your kind and timely reply,

Finally someone I can talk to! My background is academic (Rabbinic seminary and university). So my Lilith research has remained purely theoretical so far. But I know that I must go further, and I count on your guidance.
One thing at the outset: meditation has always been impossible for me, and books are too easy; intellect too superficial. So I need a "third way."

It is axiomatic in classical Kabbalah that the holy counterpart of Lilith (Malkhut) is the key or gateway to the transcendent dimensions (eg. R. Moshe Hayyim Luzatto, 18th cen., Kla"ch Pitche Hokhma, #11).
This must apply to both Malkhut and Lilith (two sides of the same coin?).

I've been struck by the paradox at the heart of reality (the "coincidentia oppositorum" of Nicholas of Cusa; the “labyrinth and chaos of existence” of Nietzsche, and “War” as the first principle of Heraclitus, and especially the gruesome Kali worshipped by Ramakrishna).

Plutarch puts this all very succinctly:
“The good and bad cannot be kept apart…” (Isis and Osiris, 369B).

So we might formulate a Kabbalistic union ritual (yichud) between the holy sefirot and the “other side” (sitra acharah). Sabbateans tried this, but got repressed. Maybe now is the right time to try again.

But you see all this is merely playing with ideas. I have hundreds of Kabbalistic and Gnostic sources on Lilith, which might produce interesting reading, but nothing transformative. I'm not one step closer to "the edge of Reality."

Let me know if any of this makes sense, and if you’d like source material from the still untranslated Kabbalistic or Sufi sources. (eg. Re: the roots of Lilith in the Ein Sof, the “sigim” / “dinim” submerged in its infinite light (like a drop of wine in the ocean)…

But perhaps you have an entirely different approach to the subject – I’d love to hear it!

Also I have many questions, eg. Why there is no goddess similar to Lilith in either Hermeticism or Sufism, etc….

Thanks and best wishes,

Mark.
(P.S. you can post any of this if you like, I don’t know how to do that).

Tue, April 19, 2005 - 11:33 PM
Re: Which Came First Brain or Mind?
A few years ago I would have answered this question, which seemed to me at that time, to have been a purely esoteric enigma, but after having witnessed first hand, as my dear wife, Joan Lesie, succombed to a very unique and protracted neurological disorder, I have since learned that my answer was to simplistic. Joan had MS superimposed over MD, which most doctors in the neurological sciences were at a loss to explain.

Joan had inherited her MD (Charcot-Marie-Tooth: a form of muscular destrophy that normally attacks only the peripherial nervious system) from her paternial side of her family pedigree; whereas, her genetic contribution of the MS (multiple-sclolriosis) was from her maternial pedigree.

Now what is interesting, i.e., remarkable, about this superposition of neuro-muscular diseases is that: they both cause a major deteration of the mylien sheath (fatty phosio-lipids that insulate the axions in the brain as well as the afferant as well as efferant neurons of the motor-sensory neurons) as well as the break down of the Schawnn cells that act as the insulator in the peripheral nervious system.

Joan was diagnosed with the MD in the early 1980s and, somewhere around 1988, she was diagnosed with the MS by Dr. Fiet in Dallas, Texas. Even back then Dr. Fiet did not understand fully all the ramifications of his findings. Normally, according, to him, the MS usually is found as a singular neuro-muscular disease. However, after running many extensive tests he came to the conclusion that Joan had an anomaly in her genetic pedigree: It seems she suffered, from a very rare -- at the time of its diagnosis -- blood disease: Von Willa Bran's, the disease was named after the German Dr. Von Willa Bran who discovered the blood abnormality in the late 1800s.

Now each neuro-muscular disease, in and of itself, is very dibilitating, and causes the victim to suffer many odd and painful neurological problems. Indeed, Joan had a very unique set of mutated genes. In the case of the blood disease, Joan had clotting factors number eight and nine in depleted quantity. Her bleeding time was abnormal, to say the least, it ran over 15+, i.e., she would continue to bleed after the standard 15 minuets where expired.

I have a deep suspcecion that Joan's unique neurological disease was an extension of the blood disease. One of these diseases, either the Von Willa Bran's or the combination of the neurological disorders, I believe, was a possible canidate as a gentic marker for a more serious disease. It may have even been this disease that lead to Joan's early demise. Joan finially succombed to these diseases, after experiencing total end-stage renal failure and a massive stroke, in April 21, 1999.

Now before I go into even more detail, as I redress the medical ramifications of her genetic diseases, I would like to offer this statement which is actually the crux or premises of this discussion.

Before 1998, I would have argued fervently, that the brain and the mind were two seperate entities, and that they functioned uniquely as autonimius phenomenia. That is, the brain is totally seperate from the manifestation of the human mind. But as Joan's health -- both physically as well as mentally -- begain to decline I was in for a rude awakening.

Since then I have read over two dozen books concerning: the developement of the human brain, the mind, consciousness, and self. I am still researching these topics ardently, and I have not completed my new paradigm on them, nor have I exhausted the volumious research material and data available. However, I do suspect that quantum mechanics is going to play a major role in their interaction and mutual manifestation. I also believe that complexity Theory as well as Emergent Theory is going to be a major contender in this new paradigm.

So if any of you kind people out there in cyber space have any antedotial information or ideas concerning any of these above mentioned topics, please feel free to join in on this discussion.

I will be expanding on this discussion as my paradigm continues to develop.

Briefly, according to evolution the brain evolved first. And then the mind slowly emerged from the interaction of all the complex neuro-chemical feedback systems the brain started to develop. Some neuroscientist think that the mind is an epi-phenomenon, that developed as the human brain evolved into a very complex system of intergrating organs. I do not believe that the mind is just an echo caused by the complex interactions of neurochemicals vs. the stasius of the ambient environment. I believe that their were certain impetuses -- both neurochemical, neuroelectrical, as well as neuroquantum -- that forced the both the brain and mind to start developing simultaniously. The question is why?