Another story about Adam and Eve is
that it's not Adam and Eve, but Adam and Lilith and then
Adam and Eve.
That Lilith was created with Adam and not out of dirt
either--
I mean, not out of Adam's side, but out of the same dirt
as Adam was created.
And this being Adam's first marriage as well.
She was then kicked out of the Garden of Eden
by God because Adam complained about her.
He was most unhappy with her.
She had totally her own will.
She would, for instance, according
to some of the varieties of alleged not
sleep under him when they made love, but wanted
to sleep at least part of the time over him.
She also apparently had an uncanny scream when she came
and this terrified Adam.
She would not do all of the things
that he wanted her to do in general and maintaining
the garden and so on.
And so he went to God and complained and said,
this is not a fit helpmate.
And God said, Lilith, what do you
have to do-- what do you have to say for yourself?
And she said, I've already said it.
And that I'm my own person and so on.
And so she was expelled from Eden for pride or whatever.
And went down to the banks of a river, which is named--
in which I can't remember the name of right offhand--
where she consorted with devils and conceived 1,000 demons
daily ever since.
[GIGGLING]
She's also-- this is, by the way,
was omitted from the Old Testament.
It was one of the of the legends that was definitely
around and, like Ecclesiastes, got in by the skin of its teeth
by a good deal of rewriting, of course,
at the end of it to slip it through.
But it's been preserved, for instance,
in a number of old traditional Judaic wedding ceremonies.
There'll be a candle lit in each corner of the room
and it's seldom explained what this is for.
But what it's for is to terrify the spirit of Lilith
because Lilith does not like Eve very much.
Lilith does not very much like the domesticated woman
because the domesticated woman took
from her what she considered to be her rightful place.
And so she will try by various means to lure the husband away.
How she is pictured-- these are the basic parts of the story--
how she is pictured then in various mythologies
will vary widely from a sexual prodigy on the one hand,
to a demon on the other hand, to a savior on the other hand.
"I awakened to the dark figure of a woman coming down upon me.
Eyes wide in her decomposing face.
Dead mouth opening.
Body opening to take my body in.
The seed I cannot hold against the terrible thrilling
of our need.
She turns away.
I wake, as from a dream still vivid in the air."