Which wooden Lilith statue should I consider getting?

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DeathFlowerKing
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09 Dec 2022, 12:04 pm

RiverLad wrote:
DeathFlowerKing wrote:
DeathFlowerKing wrote:

Image


Of all the extra ones I looked at I think I like this one the most because it reminds me of the Burney Relief. :heart:


I’d say this is the most powerful one.


Yeah I like it too. It most closely resembles the Burney Relief. Even though scholars now say that the relief is not a depiction of Lilith but more likely Inanna (or her sister Ereshkigal), I see no reason why Lilith's spirit can't be connected to this relief too. The appearance of the woman on this relief is very similar to how many scholars and occultists have imagined Lilith with bird wings and owls (even her name literally translates to "Screech Owl").



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09 Dec 2022, 10:05 pm

But I dunno... I kinda want something that portrays Lilith as more of a demon than a goddess. Because I view her as a malicious force of nature. Not as a feminist hero.

I want to see her dark nature expressed full and center without trying to link her to Inanna. :twisted:



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10 Dec 2022, 1:10 pm

Was checking out this discussion on Lilith & Inanna and the Burney Relief...

https://enenuru.proboards.com/thread/48


Perhaps using the Burney Relief to represent Lilith is problematic? :?

Edit: Though I did come across this interesting blog too.

https://thetechnowytch.wordpress.com/20 ... ut-lilith/



techstepgenr8tion
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12 Dec 2022, 2:01 pm

I don't know if this will help much since my relationship to her and reasons for it are a bit different (ie. straight and seeing her as a goddess of worldly power as well as sublimating trauma and brushes with evil) but with my own Temple of Ascending Flame shrine I symbolized her with James Ryman's 'Eve Original Sin', which is actually a brass cast:

Image

I also grabbed a Lilith Qliphoth statue from Portland Mary although one bit of warning - her statues don't have bases (yet - I recommended it to her) so I made my own base out of casting clay. Also I just noticed that I don't see this in her store anymore so it could have been a limited time thing:

Image


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12 Dec 2022, 3:09 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I don't know if this will help much since my relationship to her and reasons for it are a bit different (ie. straight and seeing her as a goddess of worldly power as well as sublimating trauma and brushes with evil) but with my own Temple of Ascending Flame shrine I symbolized her with James Ryman's 'Eve Original Sin', which is actually a brass cast:

Image

I also grabbed a Lilith Qliphoth statue from Portland Mary although one bit of warning - her statues don't have bases (yet - I recommended it to her) so I made my own base out of casting clay. Also I just noticed that I don't see this in her store anymore so it could have been a limited time thing:

Image


Thanks! :)

The Eve one is an interesting idea for a statue. Most of the statues I see online are always of Lilith with very little on Eve. And there's this really annoying meme going around that says "Always be Lilith never Eve!" On tshirts and stickers and such.

The people who say that and claim to be feminists are missing an important part of Eve's role as the 'other' first woman. To me Lilith and Eve were like two sides of the same feminine coin and Eve was not the "weak" one. Yes Eve ate the forbidden fruit when she should have known better, but then again so did Adam. That right there is a form of real equality, that contrary to how the patriarchy interprets Genesis both Eve and Adam were guilty of the same sin (at least that's my personal interpretation)

And Eve and Lilith were different kinds of women. Lilith is the kind of independent woman who wants no family or marriage and prefers the freedom to live how she wants. Eve on the other hand loved her husband Adam in a way that Lilith never could and she was the mother to the entire human race.

In a way it's like the women who choose independence and career over the women who choose their family and marriage. There's nothing wrong with either yet you sometimes have people today who are putting the Eves in our society down which I think is highly unfair.

That's my personal analysis of Lilith vs Eve as a metaphor. I know it may be random but I just felt like sharing my thoughts. :)

Also I have seen those Black Madonnas on Etsy and they are very beautiful. I like the Lilith one you shared with the reverse Tree of Life. My personal favorite that I was considering getting was the one called "Sister of the Rose". I just feel a kind of connection to roses for many reasons. Even the Death card (which is one of my twi birth cards in tarot) is drawn with a rose like in my avatar. :flower:



techstepgenr8tion
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12 Dec 2022, 3:18 pm

I'm going to say something a bit controversial here, ie. jumping ahead a few steps, but I almost think Lilith symbolizes nature pre agricultural revolution and Eve symbolizes nature post agricultural revolution (and think about it - biting the apple from the Tree of Knowledge meant toiling in the fields in agony...).

So they both had trade-offs. With Lilith there were big cats with fangs specialized to puncture ape and human skulls. With Eve when you weren't toiling in the fields you were sent to either slaughter or be slaughtered by neighboring kingdoms. Pretty grim all the way around just that the later system yielded more food for more humans in a way that hunter-gatherer living didn't allow, in hunter-gather situations if the hunt didn't work out everyone starved, in the agrarian situation you were more likely to be killed by your own species.


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12 Dec 2022, 3:30 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I'm going to say something a bit controversial here, ie. jumping ahead a few steps, but I almost think Lilith symbolizes nature pre agricultural revolution and Eve symbolizes nature post agricultural revolution (and think about it - biting the apple from the Tree of Knowledge meant toiling in the fields in agony...).

So they both had trade-offs. With Lilith there were big cats with fangs specialized to puncture ape and human skulls. With Eve when you weren't toiling in the fields you were sent to either slaughter or be slaughtered by neighboring kingdoms. Pretty grim all the way around just that the later system yielded more food for more humans in a way that hunter-gatherer living didn't allow, in hunter-gather situations if the hunt didn't work out everyone starved, in the agrarian situation you were more likely to be killed by your own species.


I had not considered that before. That actually makes sense, it's like Lilith is the wild vs Eve who is the domestic. Human tribes vs Human civilizations.



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12 Dec 2022, 3:47 pm

I'm honestly still trying to calm my erratic thought process and figure out what it is Lilith actually means to me though. I think I've taken too much of a cynical approach with her as mere "population control". I still believe she has a connection to the Sumerian Goddess Lamashtu and the Greek Monster Lamia. It just sounds very plausible the same way Aphrodite evolved from Inanna due to religious syncretism.



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12 Dec 2022, 3:51 pm

Where she's coming back to relevance today - I've heard sociologists say that with nation states, and the current highly mobile situation we're treating our environment more like bands of or even individual hunter-gatherers, ie. mutable job positions, constant changes of career, consumption-oriented living, intense urbanization where something less than 5% of the population actively farms, etc..


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12 Dec 2022, 3:58 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Where she's coming back to relevance today - I've heard sociologists say that with nation states, and the current highly mobile situation we're treating our environment more like bands of or even individual hunter-gatherers, ie. mutable job positions, constant changes of career, consumption-oriented living, intense urbanization where something less than 5% of the population actively farms, etc..



And there's also the women who claim she's a symbol of feminism because they do not look beyond her origins story in The Alphabet of Ben Sira and roll with the idea of her standing up to God and Adam.

But I just don't see her as actual 'feminism'. It's not that I'm against it, but I like to think the gods of our world don't really concern themselves with our petty political squabbles.

Inanna would be a closer symbol to feminism and true female empowerment in my honest opinion. But again the gods do not concern themselves with such ideologies. Their job is to maintain a balance in nature itself.



Last edited by DeathFlowerKing on 12 Dec 2022, 4:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

techstepgenr8tion
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12 Dec 2022, 4:01 pm

TBH one of the best emblems of Lilith that I saw in modern media was the 'Doctor' in Serbian Film, ie. very dark psychopomp role. Then again Lilith is both dark psychopomp and nature red in tooth and nail.


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12 Dec 2022, 4:13 pm

What exactly are you trying to GET from Lilith? Figure that out first and then pick your statue.



There is an ironic twist to your 'population control' theory.

In ancient and medeaval times we had high birth rates so population was kept in check by a high death rate.

Starting in the 1700s (when they started building better sewers) death rates started going down, but birth rates kept high. And medicine progressed and so on. So there was a wave of expanding population around the world, before population growth started to slow. But now we control population the 'soft way' by reducing birth rates since we have triumped in keeping down deaths. And the biggest factor that contributes to lowering birth rates IS the rise in the status of women. So...in the modern era you can view Lilith both ways ( as a feminist and as a population controller in new guise).



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12 Dec 2022, 4:15 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
TBH one of the best emblems of Lilith that I saw in modern media was the 'Doctor' in Serbian Film, ie. very dark psychopomp role. Then again Lilith is both dark psychopomp and nature red in tooth and nail.


I agree. If you have ever played The Elder Scrolls games and heard of the dark deities in this game franchise known as the 'Daedric Princes', to me Lilith reminds me so much of the dark goddess known as Namira. She is associated with rot, decay, disease, the "Ancient Darkness", and unlike Kynareth who is linked to the more pleasant beautiful side of nature Namira is linked to the more gritty and repulsive side. Associated with animals that instinctively fill mortals with disgust and fear like snakes, spiders, slugs, bats, etc.

https://youtu.be/YFVlsz5VJqk




Lilith is like that dark side of nature too.



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12 Dec 2022, 4:26 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
What exactly are you trying to GET from Lilith? Figure that out first and then pick your statue.



There is an ironic twist to your 'population control' theory.

In ancient and medeaval times we had high birth rates so population was kept in check by a high death rate.

Starting in the 1700s (when they started building better sewers) death rates started going down, but birth rates kept high. And medicine progressed and so on. So there was a wave of expanding population around the world, before population growth started to slow. But now we control population the 'soft way' by reducing birth rates since we have triumped in keeping down deaths. And the biggest factor that contributes to lowering birth rates IS the rise in the status of women. So...in the modern era you can view Lilith both ways ( as a feminist and as a population controller in new guise).



My problem with using her as a symbol of feminism is that I have come across many of her supporters who make it clear that they hate men. And I don't hate men because while I do support gender equality and female empowerment (plus a woman's right to choice), I am a man myself. A homosexual man but still a man.

Many of them take the Alphabet of Ben Sira too literally to claim it as proof that all men are evil bastards like Adam the first man and Yawheh/God himself.

Something about that doesnt feel right to me... i agree more with people like the lady who created libraryoflilith.com which explains how Lilith's story and origins transcends mere Abrahamic mythology.

As for what I'm trying to "get" from her, I'm still not quite sure... but she is simply one of my favorite figures in mythology. I have always felt drawn to her. :)



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12 Dec 2022, 4:55 pm

Maybe... what I SHOULD seek from her is independence? I've always wanted to feel independent. She seems she was indeed a very independent spirit with no real attachment to men or to children.

She was indeed an outcast among society in both her Lamashtu form and her Lilith form. Ostracized and rejected... but she did not care what others thought of her. A true non-conformist.

I feel like a non-conformist at heart but without the independent spirit if that makes sense? I need to learn to not care so much about what everyone thinks of me. To quit being a people pleaser and to speak my mind more (and learn tact of course).



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12 Dec 2022, 5:46 pm

DeathFlowerKing wrote:
Maybe... what I SHOULD seek from her is independence? I've always wanted to feel independent. She seems she was indeed a very independent spirit with no real attachment to men or to children.

She was indeed an outcast among society in both her Lamashtu form and her Lilith form. Ostracized and rejected... but she did not care what others thought of her. A true non-conformist.

I feel like a non-conformist at heart but without the independent spirit if that makes sense? I need to learn to not care so much about what everyone thinks of me. To quit being a people pleaser and to speak my mind more (and learn tact of course).

The thing I found particularly important with magick and deity work - you can find yourself at a disadvantage based on what the world around you is and has or hasn't given you. For example an only child that grew up in the country side by themselves, playing by themselves, isn't likely going to scrap well in the school yard when they don't have a brother or sister for early fisticuffs. Similarly if their parents aren't trying to throw them into sports by age four or five they won't have the lead that other children had whose parents did that.

There are all kinds of situations as an adult where you need to be able to grab an opportunity where it's like you're on the second floor fire escape, you need to get up to the fourth floor but the third floor is gone, and in that case you need to bring, possibly even build, your own ladder.

This is where you work with deities to modify yourself, to sort of 'pressurize' and vector your own internal life, even without particularly good or useful external circumstances, to effectively build your own bridges and ladders when other people (whether they're just oblivious to you or are even actively / deliberately hording opportunity for themselves) aren't helping.

Some of what you've been describing with Lilith is applicable, and both she and Hecate watch over the outcaste (Hecate particularly, as I remember, watches over the homeless - we left gifts for them after Hecate rituals in OTO).

That said Lilith very well could be the goddess you should be working with, or there might be other gods or goddesses that would better suit the specific purpose. The key though is the pick whoever, and whatever system of practice with them, that will help pressurize and focus your life in a way that you can get out option paralysis (which happens easily when you don't have any good guideposts in your environment). The key is getting traction with opportunity, IMHO that's a huge part of what this stuff is about.


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