Lilith

Lilith is one of those terms where tradition and astrological practice have blurred into each other to the point where pulling them apart is worth the trouble. The figure has a history, and in astrology the name refers to three different things.

Where the figure comes from

In the Hebrew text of the Bible, lilit occurs exactly once, at Isaiah 34:14, in a list of animals and creatures that inhabit a devastated landscape. Luther renders it “goblin”, other translations “night spectre”, or they leave the name as it stands. Nothing more is said there.

The story of Lilith as Adam’s first wife, who refuses to submit and leaves the garden, comes from the Alphabet of Ben Sira, an early medieval text whose character — satirical or edifying — is disputed to this day. Older roots lead back to the Mesopotamian lilītu, demons of wind and night.

So there is neither a biblical taboo nor a suppressed tradition. There is a figure with a traceable, well documented development over some two and a half millennia.

Three points, one name

In astrology three different things are called Lilith, and they sit at different places in the chart:

• Black Moon Lilith — the apogee of the Moon’s orbit, that is, the point furthest from the Earth. This is the most usual meaning. It is not a body but a calculated point.
• True Lilith — the same point, but calculated as osculating rather than mean. The two values can lie several degrees apart; which one is meant should be settled before any reading.
• The asteroid Lilith — minor planet 1181, a body in its own right, unrelated to the first two.

Anyone reading about “Lilith in Scorpio” should therefore ask first which of the three is meant. The same birth has three different Lilith positions.

What this means for interpretation

None of the three points appears in classical astrology. That is not a value judgement but a matter of dating: the interpretation of Black Moon Lilith is a twentieth-century development.

Anyone working with it should settle two things before looking at the chart: which of the three points applies, and what meaning is assigned to it. Otherwise the familiar pattern sets in — the point is brought in only when the rest of the chart does not give what was expected.

See also: the planets, the Part of Fortune — another calculated point, with a considerably older tradition.