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Limbo 151
and whom he will have thrown into the wilderness.
Elsewhere in Hebrew scriptures, the dragon
is represented also as a symbol of mourning and
desolation.
One of the most discussed chapters of scripture
is Daniel 7, which reports a dream, alleged to
have occurred in the first year of Belshazzar, king
of Babylon, in which Daniel sees the four winds of
heaven stirring up the great sea. Out of the sea
emerge, one after the other, a series of beasts, four
in number, all of fabulous form. The fourth beast,
in particular, is especially terrible and has ten
horns. The four beasts represent in succession the
Babylonian, Median, Persian, and Hellenistic
empires.
The endtime significance of this creature is
that Yahweh will release Leviathan to wreak havoc
upon the earth shortly before the end of the world.
Then God will finally destroy the beast. There is a
foreshadowing of this scenario in Jonah, where the
prophet is swallowed by—and eventually regurgitated
from—a whale. Jonah then travels to
Ninevah to preach an apocalyptic message.
See also Dragons; Judaism; War in Heaven
For Further Reading:
Davidson, Gustav. A Dictionary of Angels Including the
Fallen Angels. 1967. New York: Free Press, 1971.
Day, John. God’s Conflict with the Dragon and the
Sea. Echoes of a Canaanite Myth in the Old
Testament. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985.
Sykes, Egerton. Who’s Who: Non-Classical Mythology.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Lilith
The night goddess Lilith of Jewish folklore appears
to have originally been a Mesopotamian night
demoness with a penchant for destroying children.
Lilith is the archetypal seductress, and the
personification of the dangerous feminine
glamour of the moon. Lilith was said to search for
newborn children to kidnap or strangle, and to
seduce sleeping men in order to produce demon
sons. She is a patroness of witches, and is usually
depicted as a beautiful vampire, with great claws as
feet. Lilith can be found in Iranian, Babylonian,
Mexican, Greek, Arab, English, German, Oriental,
and North American Indian legends, and is often
associated with other characters, such as the
Queen of Sheba and Helen of Troy.
According to Muslim legend, Lilith slept with
Satan. In the Talmud, she was the first wife of
Adam who refused to accept her subservient role.
Adam then ejected her, and God created Eve as a
more obedient helpmate. Lilith is then said to have
copulated with Lucifer and his demons, producing
hundreds of lilin, demonesses who became the
succubi of both Jewish and medieval Christian
legend. She was regarded as a queen of evil spirits,
from whom the Jews protect themselves by the use
of amulets engraved with the names and images of
the three angels—Sanvi, Sansavi, and
Semangelaf—who God allegedly sent to bring her
back to Eden after she deserted Adam.
During the eighteenth century, a common
practice was protecting new mothers against Lilith
with such amulets, and sometimes magic circles
were drawn around the bed in order to protect the
newborn child. It was believed that if a child
laughed in its sleep, it meant that Lilith was
present. She could be sent away by tapping the
child on the nose. It was further claimed that Lilith
was assisted by succubi and by her demon lover
Sammael, whose name means “left” or “sinister.”
According to The Zohar, the source of the cabala,
Lilith is at the height of her power when the moon
is in its waning phase. Because of her refusal to
accept a one-down position with respect to the
first male, contemporary feminists looking back
on Lilith have reinterpreted her story, seeing in
Lilith a strong-minded woman reacting against
patriarchal oppression.
See also Demons; Incubi and Succubi; Judaism
For Further Reading:
Masello, Robert. Fallen Angels and Spirits of the
Dark. New York: Perigee, 1994.
Sykes, Egerton. Who’s Who: Non-Classical Mythology.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Limbo
With respect to discussions of the afterlife, limbo,
which literally means “borderland” (Latin: limbus,
border), refers to a realm where souls of the
departed who for some reason have not made it to
the other world are “stuck,” usually temporarily.