I was talking with a friend about the Lilith / Samael story and Lilith's other myths, and I think I might have figured out an encoded teaching from a long time ago. I'm going to present it like a logical syllogism:
Premises:
- Samael may be the serpent in Pardes (Eden). This might be a Christian idea, so it doesn't really matter here but it adds something extra if you believe it.
- Samael ("Venom of God") / Lucifer ("Lightbringer") gets punished for trying to take over heaven.
- If we grant that Samael and Lucifer are the same person, it's reasonable to think there's something in common between the meanings of both his names.
- "Venom of God" is usually understood to mean he's an angel of death, but when combined with "Lightbringer", I think what this says is that the light of truth very frequently feels like poison to someone who isn't ready to hear it. This echoes Plato's Allegory of the Cave and also Solomon's words about the price of wisdom in Kohelet (Ecclesiastes).
- So "Lucifer" is really "Forbidden, potentially dangerous truths". That makes the Garden of Eden story something like an alchemical manuscript.
- Why would such an honest being try to usurp his father's place in heaven, especially when it's that same father who made him the most beautiful being in all creation? He'd do that if, and only if, he knew his father was not competent or moral enough to rule. Angels can't help but be what they are, and he is both an angel of poison and the most powerful single angel in creation. Therefore, he is a natural Godkiller or divine assassin.
- With Lucifer out of the picture, God had no other beings left who could really challenge him, at least not within the Abrahamic mythos. But Lilith still defied his commandment to be subservient to her husband, and so he cursed her too. Are you starting to see how God is not much more than a metaphor for an abusive father?
- Lilith primarily represents mirrors (associated with death because they're covered when sitting shiva), crib death / SIDS, feminism, and dark magic.
- So... The angel of forbidden, potentially dangerous truths gets punished for his unsuccessful rebellion, because he cares more about his fellow angels and the humans than he cares about obeying his abusive and deranged dad. This makes him just like Abraham, who smashed his father's idols and fled his house. Sit with that a second: Lucifer is the single biblical figure who is MOST like Abraham!
- So if Lilith got punished for being a feminist, that makes her most like... you guessed it, Sarah, who laughed at God when he said she'd have a baby in her old age.
- My theory here is that the rabbis encoded this story into the various places where we found it (Talmud, Mishnah, The Alphabet of Ben Sirah, probably other places) as a magic key to unlock critical thinking and nondual thinking in the reader. How do I know this? Because God creates Adam and Ishah (Eve) without the knowledge of good and evil, meaning they are literally unable to understand why disobeying God is supposedly evil. And then once they eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, the text says God was afraid they would "become like us" by eating from the Tree of Life. Is that what an an infinitely loving god does? Hell no.
Conclusion:
Therefore... The true heroes of the entire story are Lilith and Lucifer.
Please fact-check me and also check my logic here. I could easily be missing something. But at minimum, this was a lot of fun for me to explore as a thought experiment. I hope you enjoy it.
I really wanted to end this post with a mic drop, but can't do that after asking to be fact-checked :(
