Ewwww, too damn serious vampire topic
Brian Dare
spammers-...@my-deja.com (paghat) wrote:
> The best known horror authors frequently discussed as Golden Dawn
members
> are Dion Fortune, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany,
Doyle,
> Stevenson, Sax Rohmer & Bram Stoker, & many others. In fact not all
were
> members (Stoker & Rohmer are not likely ever to have donated
membership
> funds & the idea that either would become initiates strikes me as
absurd,
> though perhaps someone else can show it happened). But all these,
> including Bram, were often enough in the same room when Golden Dawn
stuff
> was happening that they might as well have been official members. The
> lasting influence of the Golden Dawn on Stoker is hard to diminish,
but it
> may have been Les's mistake to assume he was a dues-paying enrollee.
I can't, sadly speak for Stoker, but there is stronger evidence in the
case of Rohmer, while there is no documented proof (although I will
look - I have one rare book with membership lists,
_The_Sword_of_Wisdom_ by Ithell Colquhoun.
Rohmer did write one NON-fictional book on the occult,
_The_Romance_of_Sorcery_, which coincidentally is due to come out in
reprint this April (see Amazon if you care to). Not proof, but strong
evidence that his interest extended beyond mere research for novels.
Take it for what you will.
--
Brian Dare
Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/
paghat
THE ARCHDEMONESS SHIDA = LAMASHTU
Lamashtu was a Babylonian Demon-goddess, daughter of Anu & the Earthmother
Aruru. She was called Lamme, Lama, or Lamassu in Sumer. She was not always
purely demonic, for as Lamassu she was a winged cow who served as a
guardian of royalty. In the Babylonian creation myth, Lahamu and her
brother-consort Lahmu were born of Tiamat & Apsu, & were the elder
siblings of Anshar & Kishar. Lahamu ruled the far reaches of creation. In
the same myth, she occurs in a list of monsters, alongside monstrous
serpents, though in this list the Lahamu seems not necessarily to be the
same as the Goddess of that name, but a dragon resembling her. Lamashtu is
the same as the Graeco-Byzantine demonesses Gello, the ancient Greek
Lamia, and the Semitic Lilith. The Jews in Babylon generally equated
Lilith with Lamashtu as one and the same, but they were elsetimes
distinct, occurring as companions in Jewish magical amulets.
A typical Babylonian text says of Lamashtu, "Dreadful is she, headstrong
is she, she is a Goddess, she is terrible"; and, "She forces entry through
the window, she slides in like a snake," reminiscent of "Death is come up
into our window" [Jeremiah 9:21]. She brought plagues to the world,
causing the Great Mother Aruru-belit-ili to weep with her husband Anu over
the cruelty of their powerful daughter. She was sometimes depicted with
the head of a bird of prey, & was called "Wolf-daughter of Anu," to whom
black dogs & white dogs were sacred (as also to Hecate & to the
earthmother Gula or Bau). In a pictorial amulet with Canaanite legend, the
She-wolf & Lilith the Flying Demon Woman were depicted together as two
distinct demonesses, the She-wolf being called the Robber-woman & the
Slayer. In another myth, Lamashtu killed children by putting her poisonous
teat in their mouths. She lingered close to pregnant women, causing the
pain of labor & hoping to snatch the newborns. The comb, spindle, oil bag,
traveling sandles & water-pot were offerings to Lamashtu, with the hope
that with these objects she would travel on her way and not linger
(similar traveler-offerings are given the plague-bringing Pot-mothers of
India). Marduk was her enemy, for an Akkadian text honoring Marduk says,
"He overthrew Lamashtu, sending her back to her Mountain."
She dwelt in swampy reedbeds as well as upon mountains, & often took a
more horrible form than the wolf. Now we get back to specifically vampiric
legends as the swamp Lamashtu was a bloodsucking, flesh-eating composite
monster. She had the face of a leopard or lion white as clay, the body of
a she-ass, bear-breasted, feathers of a bird, feet of the Anzu bird (a
beast that dwelt with Lilith in the Halupa Tree legend), howled like a
jackal (another beast commonly associated with Lilith), & had wild long
hair (again, one of Lilith's key traits). One incantation text advocates
making an image of Lamashtu & placing it near a suffering victim of
illness for three days, by which time the gloomy divinity will have
removed herself from the sufferer & entered into the idol, which was then
to be smashed with a sword on sanctified ground. Many similar practices
are outlined in other texts, such as offering her black & white dog
sacrifices on a small boat so that she would go away with the boat on the
river.
In a kabbalistic myth, Lamashtu took the form of an Ass, at which time her
consort was a Mule [Zohar II:192b]. She once tried to poison Jannai, a
scholar versed in demonic lore. He met a woman at a wayside inn who
offered him something to drink. Because she was muttering under her
breath, Jannai suspected she was trying to put him under a spell. He
spilled a drop from the cup, & the drop instantly became a serpent &
crawled away. He then offered her a concoction of his own, which she
accepted, & she turned into an ass [b.talmud Sanhedrin 67b]. Midrash
supposes the Ass-demoness had been with Israel in Egypt & again in Babylon
[Ezek 22:17-18], where "She increased her harlotry, remembering the days
of her youth, when she played the harlot in the land of Egypt & doted upon
her paramours there, whose penises were like those of asses" [22:18-20].
It was Misraim in the form of a seductive She-ass who tempted Israel to
worship the Golden Calf [Nm-R 4:5; 9:14, 47].
Her lion-headed form was sometimes called Lamme-Lamashtu, combining her
older Sumerian name with her Akkadian aspect. Lamme-Lamashtu suckled a dog
on her right breast, a pig on her left -- both these animals being sacred
to the Great Goddess Bau (Gula). Lamme-Lamashtu was sometimes represented
as having a sword driven into her skull, for this was an amulet against
her. Such an image turned one of her chief attributes against her, for she
was called "the head-splitter," & seems to have been embodied in the sword
possessed by Irnini, an exceedingly violent form of Ishtar.
Lamashtu ruled centipedes & scorpions &, when taking a more womanly form,
rode a she-ass at a gallop inside a sacred boat. She was accompanied by a
pack of bitches, akin to Hecate. She was called mighty, raging, angry,
controller of winds, high-dwelling, mountain-dwelling, terrible commander
of the four regions, and devastatress of the beautiful hills. Seven demons
served her, these being fox-headed, sheep-headed, antelope-headed,
bird-headed, ram-headed, serpent-headed, and panther-headed.
II. LAMASHTU = LAMME
Lamme, Lama or Lamassu, was the Sumerian original of the Babylonian
demoness Lamashtu or Lamme-Lamashtu. In Assyrian myth, Lamme was Goddess
of decapitating swords & of fever. She was the guiding hand of Irnina (an
Assyrian Ishtar) in battle, or was Irnina's head-splitting dagger. She
occured also in the form of seven demonesses from the sea; they bound
youths & murdered maidens, exactly paralleling the seven savage daughters
of Mariamme, the Pox-mother of India.
Lamassu had the form of a winged cow, in contrast to Babylon's Lamashtu
who was lion-faced with the body of an ass. Lamassu's consort was Shedu, a
winged bull. They were palace-gate & throne guardians for the rulers of
Sumer & Assyria, the same as King Jeroboam's Golden Calves, having their
Jewish cult chiefly among the Danites [2 Ki 10:29; Hos 10:5]. "They
sacrificed unto Shedim, not-gods" [Dt 32:17] is a clear statement that the
Israelites worshipped the children of Shedu & Lamassu, considered
"not-gods" because they were made from molten metal [2 Ki 17:16]. "They
sacrificed their sons & daughters to the Shedim; they poured out innocent
blood, the blood of their sons & daughters, whom they sacrificed to the
idols of Canaan" [Ps 106:37; 2 Ki 17:17]. Although this strong language
suggests the Israelites made human offerings to Shedu & Lamassu, the
psalmist may have resorted to hyperbole while criticizing the practice of
children being consecrated, in their young adulthood,to alien divinities.
Anath, worshipped at Bethel where Jeroboam established Calf-worship, was
mother of cattle, & in her raging form must have been identified with
Lamassu, & Yahweh with Shedu. Their children the Shedim were demonically
(or divinely) related to cattle, like the buffalo-devils of India, whom
Durga defeated in battle. Shedim were closely related to the Seirim
("Children of Seir," that is, the god Dushara, togethre with his consort
Allat or Atargatis). The Seirim were demonically (or divinely) related to
goats, much as Satyrs. Azazel the scapegoat was one of the Seirim
[Leviticus 16:8ff], upon whose shoulders the sins of the Israelites were
carried away into the desert. Seirim as well as Shedim were worshipped by
Jews in the wilderness, who made legal offerings to the scapegoat &
illegal ones to the Golden Calf [Ex 32:4ff]. Seirim & Shedim worship
reached its peak in the time of Jeroboam & his sons, when Jeroboam
established priests "for the Seirim & for the calves which he had made" [2
Chr 11:15].
Seirim & Shedim were in some cases akin to Satyrs & Nymphs. The idea that
worshippers ran after Seirim like harlots [Lv 17:7] indicates their
sensuality. Lilith was herself one of the Shedim, & she is found in
Babylonian magical texts alongside Lamashtu, while scripture makes her a
companion of the Seirim. "The Satyr shall cry to his companion, yeh, there
shall Lilith alight" [Isa 34:14]. When worshippers who "kissed the calves"
[Hos 13:3] & "rendered their lips unto the bullocks" [14:2], this went
much further than a mere kiss of the golden idols, but indicated sacred
orgies, or devotional encounters with male and female sacred prostitutes.
Of the Seirim, children of the Great She-Goat Seirah, more can be said, &
as I'm on a role tonight, more will be said.
© paghat the ratgirl
paghat
The name of Seirah or Seirath means "The She-goat," "The Shaggy Woman" or
"Her Tempestuousness," an epithet for Atargatis or Allat as the consort of
the Nabatean & Edomite god Dushara, known to the Israelites as Seir [Gn
32:3; 36:21; &c]. Seirah's "shagginess" were the forests on the sides of
the Seir Mountains, hence by extension Seirah meant "Forests," Atargatis
having rule of wild beasts of the wood, akin to Artemis. Seirah the
She-goat bears a relationship to Athena who wore a goat-skin aegis, taken
as a sacrifice. So too was an unblemished Seirah or She-goat sacred to
Yahweh as a sin offering [Lv 4:28; 5:6], as was the Sair or He-goat
[4:24]. Seirah had an Emphraimite cult center which bore her name [Jg
3:26].
The plural Seirim can indicate "Seir divinities," "goat-people (fauns),"
or "children of Seir," and indicates both male & female Seirim. King
Jeroboam ordained priests for high places, for the Seirim & for the golden
calves [2 Chr 11:15]; and the Zurich Bible suggests there was a shrine to
the Seirim even in Jerusalem [2 Ki 23:8]. Even yahwists had at some
earlier date considered God to be "Lord of Seir" [Gn 33:12] suggesting
Dushara & Atargatis (Seir & Seirah) impacted upon archaic Judaism.
The Seirim may have been worhsipped in the form of a pair of goat-idols
very similar to King Jeroboam's Golden Calves, for we are told Jeroboam
established priesthoods "for the Seirim & for the calves" [2 Chr 11:15],
indicating a parallel in the cult of the goat-divinities & the
cattle-divinities. "They sacrifice to the Seirim in Gilgal" [Hos 12:11]
places this cult near Jericho. Though worship of the Seirim is criticized
in these verses, it seems to have been the norm during the wilderness
wandering, for the scapegoat Azazel, chief among the Seirim, received an
offering equal to the sin-offering given to Yahweh. "Aaron shall cast lots
upon the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel" [Lv
16:8]. The latter was let loose in the wilderness, to carry away the sins
of the Israelites [16:10]. This rite was clearly approved of, & even
required, despite that it was thought to bear some relationship to cult
prostitution. For this reason sacrifices could not be made in an open
field, so that "they shall no more slay their sacrifices to Seirim, after
whom they play the harlot" [17:7].
As it was the habit of Yahwists to demonize "foreign" gods,
Allat/Atargatis/Seira and Dushara/Dagon/Seir become evil parents of
devils. But myths being layered & most puzzling, we also find that the
Seirim have a Jewish heritage. Esau, whose name means "Hairy," was the
father of the Seirim. Very likely Esau was once a cult name for Dushara,
"Lord of Seir." Because he sold his Jewish birthright for a bowl of red
pottage (which earned him the name Edom) he became father as well of one
of the enemy races of the Jews, the Edomites.
Now Esau was a horny guy (goat gods always are) & had many wives & many
demonic children. But the nastiest of his wives, the one we must most
closely identify with Seirah, is Mahalath bat-Ishmael, the only Jewish
wife of Esau. She was the daughter of Abraham & Hagar.
Mahalath was also known as Bashemath [Gn 36:3-4] & Esau's father Isaac had
a great affection for her [Josephus Antiquities I 18:8]. All of Esau's
wives had double-names: Oholibamah/Judith, Bashemath/Adah, and
Mahalath/Bashemath, lending to some slight confusion and a plethora of
midrashim. Considered as a Goddess, the double-name of Mahalath indicates
two aspects, Mahalath being a demoness, while her positive aspect was
Bashemath, the Fragrant Maid.
Mahalath's name means "Dancer," & her dance was like that of Kali of
India. She stamped & gyrated across the desert, leading a demonic host.
Her name also means "Illness," likewise a Kali-like allusion to the
Destroying Mother. Legends regard the demonic Mahalath variously as
Samael's concubine; the ruler of Crete; or the Queen of Night. She is
forever warring with Queen Lilith for sovereignty in the world of demons.
Pseudo-Philo went so far as to rename her Manem the daughter of Samael
[PsPh 8:5]. She was supported in her battles by her daughter Agrath [b.
talmud. Pessahim 112b], with whom she led hosts of destroying angels
against an equal host led by Lilith & Naamah, especially on Yom Kippur
(Day of Atonement). Some said she was the mother of Romulus & Remus whom
she suckled while in the form of a She-wolf [Ester Rabbah 3:5]. As High
Queen among the Angels of Destruction, Mahaleth is sometimes called
Mechaleh or Mekaleh, the Annihilatrice, obedient to the hypostatic
divinity Justice (i.e., Gevurah, female sephirah of Judgment -- a supernal
form of Lilith who embodies all God's cruelest traits), with five other
high-ranking dark angels joining the archangel Gabriel to utterly
annihilate the unrighteous within Jerusalem [b.talmud. Shabbath 55a].
By her name Mahalah (Mother of Infirmity) we can find the biblical root
for the legends of Mahalath & her daughter Agrath. Whenever there was
famine, pestilence, blight, mildew or insects devouring crops, then "the
enemy" besieged the cities with "whatever Nega, whatever Mahalah there is"
[1 Ki 8:37; 2 Chr 6:28]. Here Nega (Plague) is the Hebrew name of
Mahalath's daughter, for Agrath is her Persian name meaning "The Bad,"
while both Nega and Agrath can mean "to beat" or "strike," as to strike
the ground with their dancing feet. "A man's spirit can endure Mahalah"
[Pr 18:14] but one who has done wrong cannot endure her, as when she set
herself against King Ahab, who was told, "The Lord will bring Great Nega
upon our people, your children, your wives, & all your possessions. You
yourself will have a severe sickness with Mahalah in your bowls, until
your bowels come out" [2 Chr 21:14-15].
Because she was the granddaughter of Abraham as well as of Hagar, Mahalath
was considered a superior wife even with her demonic capacity, at least in
contrast to the Canaanite wives, & Esau married her essentially to please
his father [Gn 28:8]. She was noted for her forgiving nature, reflected in
a pun on her name, mahal, "forgive" [Genesis Rabbah 67:13]. So while she
might in a moment of anger induce miscarriages or infertility, she was
quick to repent, & brought about blessings, so that the Shekhinah said to
Israel, "I will bless your bread & your water & I will take Mahalah away
from you; none shall miscarry or be barren in your land" [Ex 23:25-26], &
this is why Mahalah dwelt not in Israel but in Seir.
© paghat the ratgirl
paghat
Agrath, "Beating" or (in Persian) "Bad," is also rendered Agirath, Igrath,
Iggereth, or Ograth (Ogeress), the daughter of Mahalath & Esau,
grandaughter of Hagar & Abraham. Mahalath bore Agrath alone, & raised her
in the desert. Mahalath's daughter stalks her victims in the bright
moonlight, hence it is dangerous to sleep under the moon [Zohar I:55a,
III:115a].
According to Nathan Spira's "Tuv haAvetz" (Venice, 1655), the four
concubines of Samael were Lilith, Naamah, Even'maskith & Igrath who ruled
the kingdoms of Damascus, Tyre, Malta & Granada the country of the
Ishmaelites. The fourteenth century Kabbalist Bahya ben Asher ibn Halawa
said Samael's four concubines ruled the solstices & equinoxes, though he
gives a slightly different list: Agrath, Pelonith, Naamah, and Nega,
dwelling together in the desert. These demonesses are for practical
purposes immortal, for they will cease to exist only at the end of all
days when evil is swept away. As an antedeluvian demoness of lust & war,
seductress of demons & men, she is often (though not invariably)
identified as the daughter of Zillah and the sister of Naamah & her father
was Tubal Cain, identified sometimes with the brother-slaying Cain.
Igrath bat-Mahalath attacks whoever goes out alone by night on Wednesdays
& Sabbaths. At such times she travels in a chariot, & is alluded to in a
psalm as "the Terror (Pahad) of the night" [Ps 91:5; Numbers Rabbah 12:3].
She is queen over 180,000 destroying angels, having empowered each to
wreck destruction. Originally, Igrath went about by day or night, any time
she pleased. One day she met the talmudic sage Rabbi Hanina b. Dosa &
said, "Had not heaven praised your learning, I would have put you in
danger." He considered a moment, then said, "By the power heaven confers
to me on account of my learning, I command you never to go near inhabited
places." Igrath's haughtiness languished as she pleaded, "Rabbi, leave me
a little room." Therefore he permitted her the nights of Wednesday &
Sabbaths. On another occasion she ran into the great sage Rabbi Abaye &
said, "But that heaven has praised your learning, I would endanger you."
He said, "If I am of such account in heaven, I order you away from settled
regions." Thereafter she had rule only of the wild places in the world,
which makes her a danger to travelers. It is Igrath who causes horses to
bolt on lonely paths [b.talmud Pesahim 112b-113a].
Although her usual identity is demonic, Agrat or Agirath occasionally
occurs in lists of angels. A silver-sheet amulet found at Tekoa, now in
the Museum of the Flagellation Convent in Jerusalem, calls Agrath "My
Lady" and assumes her to be the angel invoked for protection against the
demoness Marten, whose name can mean "Their Lady."
Agrath & her armies served a remarkable service for the world-to-come
during the reign of Queen Salome Alexandra, one of the mightieset of all
the Jewish monarchs in history, called also Shalomzion with great
affection by the people. People never went out on Wednesday nights, as
this night belonged to Agrath. While Shalomzion ruled, rain fell late on
Wednesdays, since that way nobody would be caught in the storm, no one
being out then anyway. These rains had magical properties causing grains
of wheat to grow as large as kidney beans, barley seeds to be the size of
olive pits, & lentils to grow as large as golden denarii. These were
gathered in the night by Agrath's legion to be stored for future
generations. This was prophesized in verses about the excellent grain
withheld because "Your iniquities have turned away these things & your
sins have withheld good from you" [Jr 5:25; b.talmud Taanith 23a]. This
meant Agrath & her thousands of dark angels were the sins & iniquities who
carried these things away for the meal of the Righteous in the Messiah
age.
-------
A footnote about the demon queen Even-maskith. It took me a while to find
out who the devil this was, as only the seventeenth century kabbalist
Nathan Spira names her one of the queens of darkness & I did not know
another source about her.
Even-maskith means "A Stone of Adoration" or "Stone of Devotion."
Even-maskith had some role in midwifery, as did Lilith, for the word for
"stone," eben, can be rendered "birthing stool," oben, reminiscent of the
"birthstone" which the Akkadian goddess Nintu leaned across in the
creation of humanity (in the Babylonian flood myth). Nathan Spira names
Even-maskith the Queen of Malta & one of the four consorts of Samael, the
others being Lilith, Queen of Damascus, Sheba, and Zemargad; Naamah, Queen
of Tyre opposite Israel; & Igrath (Agrath), Queen of Granata, the country
of Ishmael.
I finally found her in scripture, where all Jewish myths eventually refer,
& where her name in translated "stone image," "standing image" or "figured
stone." Numerous ancient goddesses were worshipped in the form of a
monolith, either a shaped or unshaped Rock, & the oldest still-extant form
of Goddess worship is among aborginal (pre-Aryan) Indic peoples who
worship "village mothers" in the form of terrifying demonesses who become
"tamed" by devotion form the specific village the given village-mother
protects. These village mothers invariably are worshipped in the form of a
boulder -- this form of worship predates even the human capacity to shape
rocks into idols. One of her key offerings is red paint -- you will spot
big rocks with streaks of red paint dripping off the top near many
villages of India. Seems fairly obvious they are still propitiating her
demonic desire for blood, though she loves them dearly & if you mess her
her viillages she'll give you a tummy ache until you die, or something
bad.
Of course Yahwists forbade Even-maskith's worship. "Neither shall ye set
up Even-maskith in your land & bow down" [Lv 26:1], or "Ye shall drive out
all the inhabitants, & destroy their Even-maskith" [Nm 33:52]. She was
associated with orgiastic worship, "Hast thou seen what the ancients of
the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the chambers of Maskith?"
[Ezek 8:12].
© paghat the ratgirl is going to bed now
RHight2565
..not unlike that between life and undeath.
...to be more logical and rational....maybe
it comes from the realization, from the earliest times that two basic ways to
cause death are by preventing breath...or causing blood loss. (( medically,
pretty much the same in the results.)) Before modern times, the link between
the two, oxygen transport, would have been unknown, and mysterious. The other
necessities of life, food and water, are
very much linked to basic drives, somehow
removed from the "magic" of blood and
breath.
.......I'm suddenly very intrigued by all this.
To the Hebrews, and by extension Jews,
Christians and Western Civilization in general, it seems a creature can be
given
life through blood...but a life without the "breath" of the creator....a life
that did not
start with aleph, in Kabbalistic terms, ( the breath of God, the frist letter
of the alphabet) .. which could be seen as wrong...twisted..perverse...not real
life at all.
It's like the vampire is crouching ((hehe))
just beyond the fringe of mainstream belief.
Or, was there once, almost as the classic
nosferatu...but has somehow went away.
long before being driven out by science. I want to know where it went if
so..and why.
RHight2565
>And certainly it goes
>>way back to the time of the Inquisition that Jews used the blood of
>>Christian babies in evil secret rituals of the Kabbalah, & ass holes like
>>Willie love to believe it's so.
>That particular story goes back further than the Inquisition, I think.
>It was trotted out by any medieval ruler who wanted to kick the Jews out
>of his kingdom (
....Doubtless it's been used most often and with the most bloody and tragic
results against the Jews. But various similar stories go back at least to to
Ancient Rome when they were used against the Christians..(( whom the Romes
thought of
for quite some time as being a Jewish sect )) Then, Philip Le Bel's
accusations against the Templars were copied nearly
word for word from his earlier indictment
of the Jews, ( and..if I'm not mistaken, Italian bankers got the same
treatment).
...We can add Maleus Malficarum and anti
FreeMason propoganda to the list also.
Yet...aside from Italian bankers and "witches", all these groups have some
sort
of link to Judeism. Probably inevitable given that they had a spiritual
leaning, and
were part of Judeo-Christian civilization,
but food for thought.
paghat
A hypostatic figure, adestroying angel of Jewish folklore, is Hemah,
"Fury," & resembles one of the Furies of Greek myth, in that Hemah is a
female destroying angel. A Proverb asserts, "Hemah of the King resembles
angels" [Pr 16:14]. Her name is the feminine form of Ham, the son of Noah,
& she is related both by a pun & in some shared mythology to the
Sun-mother Hammah, the Hebrew word for "female sun" which is the same as
Shapash the Sun-mother of the Canaanites, she that was simultaneously
Queen of Sheol, the underworld where the Sun-mother resides by night.
In sundry midrashim, there are named five great angels of punishment.
Besides Hemah, the others are Aph (Anger), Keseph (Displeasure), Hashmed
(Destruction), Hashheth (Annihilation), & just one besides Hemmah that is
female, Hemah's sister Mashhit (Destruction) [Midrash Tehillim 7:11].
Their onrush can be halted by calling the names of the patriarchs Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob [Exodus Rabbah 44:8; Eccl-Rabbah 4:3]. As Aph and Hemah
are regarded as mightiest [Deut-Rabbah 3:11], they go forth together,
mutual consorts, resembling Sumerian Nergal and Ereshkigal, King and Queen
of the land of death, or Samael & Lilith. We are told "Great is Hemah" [2
Ki 22:13; 34:21], hence Aph and Great Hemah might alone destroy the earth,
if not for the fact that God "restrained Aph many times, and did not cause
Hemah to stir," for God takes pity, remembering humanity is mere "wind
that traverses and comes never again" [Ps 78:38-39].
Hemah went forth from God like a fire [Ps 89:46; Jr 4:4; 21:12; Lm 2:4;
Midrash Tehillim 7:6] to punish in His name, akin to Kali going forth from
Siva. In times of punishment, this Fury manifested as "Hemah of serpents"
[Dt 32:24, 33; Ps 58:4; 140:3], for she bears a close relationship to the
serpent Lilith, and sometimes has the form of a snake called Zoheleth [1
Ki 1:9]; or she emanated from the mouth of the Dragon-mother Tannin, for
she was derived from Tannin's venomous slaverings, reminding us of Isis
who was the mother of poisonous snakes. When God wanted to kill Moses [Ex
4:24], he sent the destroying angels Hemah the female serpent and Aph the
male serpent. Zipporah saw Moses devoured, with only his lower body
sticking out of her mouth, for she was swallowing him as a snake swallows
a mouse [Babylonian Talmud. Nedarim 32a]. Zipporah hurried to saved him by
circumcising their son [Ex 4:25], calling to God, "Cease from Aph and
forsake Hemah!" [Ps 37:8]. When Moses was coughed out [Ex 4:26], he said,
"I was afraid of the anger of Hemah" [Dt 9:19] which may also be read, "I
was afraid of Aph and Hemah."
Now this "blooding" of Moses's feet has an elaborate mythology attached,
but for the sake of this discussion we need only note that blood calmed
Hemah, in common with Lilith who was said to dwell as a great serpent in
the Sea of Blood. Due to her this blood-drinking qualities, Hemah is
especially associated with wine. She bore in one hand the Sword of
Punishment, hence it is said, "Be ye afraid of the sword, for Hemah
bringeth punishments of the sword, that ye may know judgment" [Job 19:29]
whereas in the other hand a cup of wine [Isa 51:17,22; Jr 25:15].
Hemah's wine inspired maenadic excesses of retribution [Isa 63:6], and the
Winepress, in which humanity was trampled, belonged to Hemah [63:3], so
there is no question but that this "wine" is human blood [Ezek 16:38]. She
delighted in her vampirish drink, as when she took on the aspect of "the
arrows of the Almighty," and, as Job lamented, these arrows pierced his
flesh and, "Hemah drinketh my soul" [Job 6:4].
Her cup of human blood is always full [Isa 51:20; Jer 6:11], for which
reason we read that Hemah continously "pours forth" [42:18; 44:6; Ezek
7:8; 9:8; 14:19; 20:8, 13, 21, 33; 36:18; Sirach 16:11; &c], by which we
recognize her as a dark form of the Supernal Mother who similarly pours
forth into every generation [Pr 1:23; Wisdom of Solomon 7:27; Sirach 1:9].
There is an interesting ancient Egyptian parallel in a key myth of Hathor,
who as Eye of the Sun-god Ra is to some extent a Sun-mother. As Hemah is
sent forth by God to punish the world & drink human blood, so too Ra
instructed Hathor to go forth & destroy all of humanity. Though ordinarily
a loving & caring mother (as Hemah is also Ammah or Mah), under Ra's
instruction she began slaying the world. Ra was aghast at the depth of her
capacity for violence & had a sudden pity for humanity & instructed Hathor
to stop. She would not stop, for the bloodlust was on her now, & nothing
could stop her. So the gods hastened to brew Red Beer, that she would
mistake it for blood, & begin drinking the beer until she was so drunk she
passed out, & when she awakened, the bloodlust had passed.
There are demonic vampires in Jewish lore, but Hemah is rather special, as
she is not demonic. She is a manifestation of a Celestial Lilith,
comparable to the sephirah of harsh judgement, Gevurah, whose name is a
Hebrew pun for Maiden, & out of whose side Furies (or Crowns) are said to
issue forth like dark angels punishing the world. Hemah, like Gevurah, is
the Sun-mother who cup of blood in fact is a nourishing fluid without
which nothing lives, but the vast empty deserts are evidence of her
ability, & her willingness, to restore her private vintage to her own
storehouse.
APPENDIX: ON HEMAH'S SISTER DESTROYING ANGEL MASHHITH.
Mashhith is not QUITE so obsessed with blood but her shared "angel/demon"
nature is worthy of discussion in a vampiric context; for she was placated
with a mark of blood on the first Passover. Mashhit was among the angels
of the Plague of the Death of the First Borns, including the first-born of
all the animals of Egypt, "And when I see the blood, I will pass over you,
and no plague shall fall upon you to Destroy (Mashhit) you, when I smite
the land of Egypt" [Ex 12:13].
A work called BETH HA-MIDRASH tells of Kezeph the angel of wrath, Aph the
angel of anger, Hemah the angel of the death of domestic animals, Mashhit
the angel of the death of children, and Meshabber the angel of the death
of wild animals the last also known as Hashheth (or Hashmed) the angel of
Annihilation [Midrash Tehillim 7:6]. Of these, Mashhit is evidently
identified with Artemis, who decides which children will live and which
die, this being also a trait of Lilith.
So these are the ones called the "company of destroying angels" [Ps 78:49]
awhose onrush can be halted by calling the names of the three patriarchs
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob [Ex-R 44:8; Eccl-R 4:3] much as vampires
Christian vampires are stopped by the cross of Jesus.
Mashhit served Babylon when Yahweh was angry at Israel, hence Jeremiah
calls Babylon "Mashhit's Mountain," but when God forgave Israel, Mashhit's
mountain was turned into a burnt mountain [Jr 51:25]. In this legend
Mashit is certainly demonic, or perhaps a Great Goddess demonized by the
rival cult of Yahweh.
Justice is frequently a hypostatic, fully independent being in Jewish
myth, accompanied by the six destroying angels, namely Kezeph, Aph, Hemah,
Mashhith, Meshabber (Breaker) and Mekaleh ("Annihilator" or "Pestilance",
same as Mahaleth, "Disease", Maheleth being said to be the daughter in law
of Hagar) [babylonian talmud Shabbath 55a]. Kabbalists reformed this to
indicate Gevurah, the sephirah of Justice, who sends forth furies from her
side to punish the earth, and Gevurah's furies include Emah the
Cannibal-hag, Yirah the Awesome Terror, and others such regarded as female
furies. In the Talmudic myth derived from Ezekiel 9:1-11, Gabriel, clad in
linen and with an inkwell in his hand, led the six destroying angels to
punish the guilty, each holding a terrifying weapon. Gabriel went before
them, writing the letter Tau (made like an X) on the foreheads of all who
were saddened by abominations. When the destroying angels saw this mark,
they passed by those who were not guilty. As for the rest, whether they
were old men, virgins, matrons, youths, or little children, the destroying
angels spread out from Yahweh's sanctuary and slew all of them without
hint of mercy [Ezek 9:2-6].
Mashhit, Aph and Hemah are also called the three chief demons of Gehinnom
[Zohar I:27b]. They are like dark forms of Sarah, Abraham, & Hagar. These
three destroying angels were the judges of Doeg the Edomite, who betrayed
David [1 Sm 21:7; 22:9] and committed atrocities in service of Saul, as
when he murdered the priests of Nob together with their wives and children
[22:18-22]. Psalm 52 derides Doeg at length, having been a man of great
learning who misused his wisdom. This gave rise to the legend that Masshit
came forth and made Doeg forget all his wisdom; then Hemah burned his
soul; and Aph scattered his ashes in synogogues and schools [babylonian
talmud. Sanhedrin 106b].
The three chief Angels of Destructions each headed their own companies of
destroying angels. Righteous souls are greeted by three orders of
ministering angels, but when the wicked die, their souls are confronted by
the three orders of destroying angels [b. Kethuboth 104a]. Mashhith's
group destroys any hope of rest, for "There is no peace, saith the Lord,
for the wicked" [Isa 48:22]. Hemah's group burns away all hope for
happiness, saying, "Ye shall lie down in sorrow" [50:11]. Aph's group
casts the sinner into a pit [Ezek 32:18], saying, "Go down and be thou
with the uncircumcised" [32:19]. In this myth we see that the Destroying
Angels, though of heavenly origin & not the same as "fallen" angels, do
nevertheless have authority over the Pit that is Sheol.
-paghat the ratgirl
paghat
and her twin daughters
Aluka, a feminine name which means "She that Sucks" or "The Horseleech" is
one of the Queens of Dark Sheol in Jewish mythology. She is encountered in
scripture in the Proverb, "Alukah hath two daughters, Give and Give" [Pr
30:15]. The "two daughters" motif recurs & recurs in folklore as such
figures as Lilith the Younger & Naamah daughters of Lilith the Elder. Or
the daughters are called Nega and Naga, i.e., personified Plague, and
Venereal Disease resembling the Indic plague-mother Sitala. The Egyptian
twin-sister vulture-goddesses Isis and Nepthys, who raised Osiris from the
dead, save only for his penis which they could not locate.
The "Two Daughters" are also called the "Two Gates," for "Sheol hath two
gates, an inner and outer" [Pesikta Rabbati 24:1]. One provides passage
into Sheol, the other releases -- vis, though demonic in most of their
mythology they are in fact cthonic goddesses of Death and of Life, of
Reward as well as Punishments. Give and Give most closely resembled the
Egyptian twin Maati, or double Maat symbolized by the scale of justice
(the same as held also by Dike, Greek Goddess of Justice). Like the Maati,
the horseleech's daughters are judges; the one recognizes the righteous,
the other recognizes the wicked [Exodus Rabbah 7:4]. This type of division
makes them also a personification of the two-edged sword weilded by the
Shekhinah in Jewish myth & by Mohammad's daughter in Islamic myths.
Mohammad's daughter is said to sit in judgement at the final banquet at
the end of time, & with her two-edged sword of fire divided the righteous
from the unrighteous so that only the righteous might feast.
Mother Aluka, the Bloodsucking Queen, is perhaps related to the Babylonian
demoness Alu. On a Babylonian amulet to ward off demones & demonesses,
eight are named, four of which are female: Alu, Galu, Ahhazu and Lamashtu
are the evident females, while Uttuku, Ilu, Labashtu and Etimmu (or
Ekimmu) are the probable males. Lamashtu has a very elaborate mythology &
among her behaviors, too, is bloodsucking & the devouring of corrupt
flesh.
Some such demonic beings are genderless in the oldest texts, and when they
came to be gendered, their sex was in flux. Alu in particular originated
as a sexless monster having no mouth, lips, or ears. But she/it must have
leaned toward female even in sexless manifestation, as Alu was said to
cause infections of women's breasts. By the time Alu found her way into
Jewish texts as Ailo, Ajil, or Ayyo, she was definitively female.
By her name Ailo she is a name so similar to the Greek Harpy Aello
("Windstorm") a connection must be assumed. The name probably entered the
Jewish Demon lists because her name puns with the Hebrew "oyyah" "Woe!"
which occurs at Pr 23:29 in a list that can be taken to indicate forms of
Lilith called Woe, Sorrow, Strife, Complaining, and so on, in the context
of the Harlot of the Pit, the Adventurous in the Well, and the female
robber who induces adultery [23:27-28], as well as a demoness who bites
like a serpent (again, an allusion to Aluka) and poisons like an adder
[23:32]. Oyyah occurs one other time in the pslam "Woe (Oyyah) is me that
I soujourn with Meshech, that I dwell among the tents of Kedar" [Ps
120:5]. Meschech, who Ezekiel considered a daughter of the netherworld
[Ezek 32:18, 26], represents evil society; and Kedar a barren place
alludes to the violent and erotic pagan-semitic goddess Shulamanitu whose
is alluded to in the Song of Solomon as being black as the tents of Kedar
[Song 1:5].
Ailo was one of the secret names of Lilith which Elijah caused her to
reveal, in a myth preserved on an Aramaic incantation bowl from Nippur.
The other names she revealed are Abiqar, Abitar, Amorpho, Hakash, Odam,
Kephido, Abnukta, Matrota, Shatriha, Kali, Taltui and Kitsha. In midrashic
work called the "Emeq haMelekh," Ailo is not merely an additional name of
Lilith, but an individual demoness serving in Lilith's legions. In another
magical text, Ailo is a daughter born of Lilith after one of her liaisons
with mortal men. The list occurs again on a silver amulet from Kurdistan,
where Ailo appears as Ayil. In the "Apocryphon of John" is brief mention
of Eilo, one of the many dark angels who created the body of Adam, and
Eilo created Adam's testicals, the function of which was overseen by
another demoness, Bathinoth (whose name means "Daughter of Mortality" or
"Daughter of All Illuminations"). The sexual connotations of Ailo seem to
be basic to Ailo as one of the liloth & as a succubus, even in the
Apocryphon of John which follows a Gnostic delight in giving positive
meaning to dismal things & places Eilo and Bathinoth among the Seven
Queens of Seven Heavens.
Aluka's more common name is Rimmah ("Female Worm"), frequently referred to
in scripture as Rimmah of Sheol. By the name Rimmah, this demonic goddess
of darkness has so many elaborate myths that I will discuss them later
under the heading Rimmah of Sheol.
© paghat the ratgirl
paghat
Arch Queen of Darkness
Rimmah of Sheol, or "Worm of the Pit," also called Alukah the Horseleech,
or Tolah the Crimson Worm, or simply Sheol, is the Pit personified as a
devouring, bloodsucking Dragon-mother. Sheol has been translated more by
tradition than certainty as "The Grave" and "The Pit," and the literal
meaning may be "To Be Hollow." The name Rimmah is definitively female &
all allusions to the personified Pit are to a dark queen or a sinister
harlot. "The strange woman is a deep pit" [Pr 23:27] personifies the one
that is "the barren Womb, the Earth ever thirsty for water" [30:16], the
one who never says, "Enough." Despite her presumed barrenness, she had two
daughters, "Give" and "Give" [30:15], and Sheol gave birth to calamities
"Just as a woman with child" [2 Esdra 16:38], foremost among whom was the
demoness Nega (Plague).
Sheol additionally has a mouth, and swallows [Nm 16:30]. We may
justifiably view her as a ravenous Goddess akin to Kali, whose mouth is
bloody, hence Sheol and her daughter Nega, having been established by
transgression, are most definitely identified as drinkers of blood [2
Baruch 56:6].
Her purpose is never iniquitous, for Sheol is a dark judge who devours
sinners in the presence of the elect [1 Enoch 56:8; Amos 9:2]. The godly
"shall not be burned in Her flame" [Sirach 28:22]; as for the ungodly,
these "She will burn" for "as a lioness shall She be sent among them, and
as a leopard shall She mutilate them" [28:23].
Rimmah of Sheol is both the Lioness and the Serpent-goddess as Queen of
Hell. Job explicitely identified her as female [Job 17:14], paralleling
the Greek portrait of the Earthmother Ge taking on the form of a gigantic
serpent who peers out from the underworld's forest of black poplars, or
having the form of a coiling labyrinth. Rimmah's name is in fact the
feminine form of the god Rimmon [1 Chron 6:62], related to ramah, "to
beguile or deceive"; ramam, "to exalt"; and rammak, of uncertain meaning
but either a young mare or filly, or a young female camel [Ester 8:10],
this latter because the Worm had four legs before God cursed her to go
upon her belly.
One form of this worm-camel is depicted on the Ishtar gate of Babylon.
These figures are distinctly not male, having scales, horned head,
falcon's hind limbs, lion's forelimbs, and a wormy tail which some have
regarded as a scorpion-whip. This Striding Serpent, called in Babylon the
Mushush, was associated with Moon-cults. A legend of Eve, who rides a
camel that can rise to Paradise (the very camel later deprived of limbs),
and Adam, who rides an angelic flying horse, is related to the Worm of
Sheol as she-camel or as flying mare. The dark Mare-pegasus was called
Shush or Shushan, reminiscent of the Babylonian Mushush, though Shushan is
also the same as El-Susanek of ancient Persia, a Mare-goddess (the modern
name Susan refers to this goddess).
As both Rammak and Shush can mean "Mare," there is a suggestive
relationship to Demeter of the Furies who took the form of a ferocious
mare, and whose mare-daughters were flesh-eaters. Shush the Mare, punned
with Shash the moth larvae, becomes one and the same with Rimmah the Worm.
"For the Worm shall eat them up like a garment, and Shash will eat them
like wool" [Isaiah 51:8].
There seems also to be an association between Rimmah of the Pit with
romah, "Spear." In the excavated royal burial pits of the Moon-city of Ur,
spears were thrown at the roof of the vault before the pit was filled in,
or spears were set upright inside the tombs. In at least one case, such a
pit-spear was inscribed with the name of a tomb's occupant, Queen Shubad.
The connection between Worm and Spear is not immediately evident, but is
suggested in a Talmudic adage about a gentle scholar, who is pliant as the
Worm while reading Torah, but rigid as the Spear in times of war
[babylonian talmud Moed Katan 16b]. Phinehas took up the Romah spear to
slay the pagan priestess Cozbi and her apostate Jewish husband while they
were in the act of coitus [Nm 25:7], a typical yahwist turn of events with
a symbol of pagan divinity turned against its worshippers. Or Romah was a
yahwist Death-angel who assisted Phinehas.
The Amazonian Romah and Zinnah, "Spear and Shield," were destroying angels
who led the righteous of Judah into battle as assistants to David [1 Chron
12:24; here six thousand eight hundred troops are led by a single Spear
and Shield]. So too Romah and Zinnah assisted King Amaziah [2 Chr 25:5].
In a prophetic passage, Keseth and Romah (the Bow and the Lance) descend
from the North to destroy Babylon [Jr 50:42]. It is no coincidence that
all these weapons bare names of feminine construction, just as on Crete
shields & weaponry were personified as goddesses, & the spear of warlike
Ishtar was itself capable of manifesting as the destroying goddess
Irninni.
The warrior-judge Deborah sang of the warring angels Magen and Roman
(Shield and Spear) withdrawing their assistance from Israel whenever the
nation chose gods other than Yahweh [Jg 5:8]. In each of these cases, two
destroying angels, NEVER JUST ONE, go forth together. These are in fact
Rimmah of Sheol's insatiable daughters [Pr 30:15].
Rimmah of Sheol can be regarded as the Earthmother form of the Sea-mother
Rahab, connections between the underworld and the sea being a commonplace
of myth. Sheol's country was a place of Silence wherein souls dwelt [Ps
94:17]. The lost trees of Eden are presently flourishing in Sheol [Ezek
31:18], so her silent land was sometimes regarded as pleasant. Unlike the
Death-angel Gehenna, Rimmah of Sheol did not annihilate; she was more on
the order of a caretaker for the unrighteous who might yet be saved.
Although those who were not blessed by Chokhmah (the same as Sophia,
hypostatic goddess of wisdom) were doomed to Sheol [Baruch 3:10-12, 19],
yet might they discover Chokhmah in the womb that is Sheol.
Her people the Rephaim (Shades, Giants, Healers) occur in Canaanite myth,
where they are ruled by the Sun-mother Shapash who settled into the
underworld every night. Shapash had no regular consort, hence we are told
"the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her
that is married" [Isa 54:1], alluding to the superiority of women who give
birth to spiritual rather than physical children. Thus Sheol's womb is not
necessarily intended to horrify. Isaiah acknowledges the Earthmother
presiding over death and life when he says, "The Earth shall bring life to
the Rephaim" [Isa 26:19]. "In Sheol the chambers of the souls are like the
womb. For just as a woman who is in travail makes haste to escape the
pangs of birth, so also do these places hasten to give back those things
that were committed to them from the beginning" [2 Esdra 4:41-42; compare
1 Enoch 51:1]. Upon being given life by the womb of Sheol, "the things
that you desire will be disclosed to you" [2 Esd 4:43]. The Worm of Sheol
is herself "the barren womb" and a place not only where Hope remains, but
of continued learning and eventual salvation. In Babylon Shapash was
called Ah, & her nature changes dramatically since she is the wife of the
Sun-god Shamash, but even here she is the Great Attorney and stands before
Shamash speaking for the souls that come before her husband to be judged.
"Sheol is arom before God" [Job 26:6] means "Sheol is half unclad." This
is because God strips (arom) his adulterous wife [Hosiah 2:3]. Sheol is
thus an erotic divinity; and whoever sleeps beside her finds that he is in
the company of God's Presence [Ps 139:7-8]. God's Presence, the Lower
Shekhinah, is inherently pure, but is polluted by the sins of her
children's unrighteousness. She is thus transformed into Lilith or the
Worm of Sheol. Though frequently Sheol is Alone & has no consort, even as
Shapash and Hecate have no consorts, in other myths Rimmah of Sheol is
wedded to Abaddon (Satan, Samael) the king of death [Odes of Solomon
15:9]. Abaddon as well as Sheol is half unclad before God [Pr 15:11], for
Abaddon was once God's favorite, and served as God's catamite (as Zeus was
served by Ganymede, a demi-god of Death, who displaced Hebe, the Greek
Eve, who fell from Olympus as Eve fell from Eden). Or, Abaddon stands
before God's Presence the Shekhinah and is stripped of his iniquity by the
Shekhinah which is the Female Presence of God, while Sheol stands before
Tipherit (God's Beauty) and is stripped of her iniquity -- that is, each
is taken in an erotic embrace and purified of the pollution imposed upon
them by the corruption that is not their own, but humanity's imposition
upon them. Another meaning of, "Sheol is naked before God, and Abaddon has
no covering" [Job 26:6] admits them to be dark aspects of Eve and Adam
whose feasting of the Tree of Knowledge made them sexual and brought them
awareness of the world of death and of their own nakedness.
Sheol's consort Abaddon was the Lord of the Abyss [Job 31:12], possibly
originating as a derogatory pun alluding to a rival cult. The Canaanites
called El, the Great God, by the epithet ab-adm, "Humanity's Father" (if
not "Father Adam)"; and such an epithet was easily lampooned as Abaddon,
"the Beast that ascends from the bottomless Pit" [Revelations 11:7].
Abaddon belonged to a woman [17:8], for Abaddon gave obeisance to his
wife, exactly comparable to Persephone and Adonis, between whom Persephone
is mightiest; & so too several myths assert that Lilith came before Samael
& was superior to Samael. The Angel of Death could not touch six who were
righteous in Israel, namely Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron and
Miriam; neither could the Worm of Sheol touch them, plus she could not
touch Benjamin the son of Rachel [babylonian talmud Baba Bathra 17a]. As
king and queen of the underworld, "Abaddon and Sheol say, 'We have heard a
rumor of it with our ears,'" in answer to a query about the Chokhmah [Job
28:22]. They are alluded to as drunkards, for a drunkard "enlargeth his
desire as Sheol, and is like Death who cannot be satisfied" [Habb 2:5].
In The Greater Key of Solomon, Abaddon is the name of God invoked by Moses
to bring a black rain upon Egypt. The Zohar and Talmud call Abaddon by the
name Duma, Angel of Silence [b.talmud Sanhedrin 94a]. The feminine form of
Duma was Demamah ("Mother Silence" -- alluding again to the silence of the
womb that is Rimmah of Sheol). Abaddon's Greek name was Appollyon or
Hyacinthus [Rv 9:11], the adolescent form of Apollo and the fosterling of
Artemis, as well as the chthonic boy lover of both Apollo and Zeus
(echoing Abaddon half-clad before God). Adonis, a Greek God closely
related to Hyacinthus and Ganymede, has a Hebrew name, hence Persephone's
lover Adonis was of Semitic origin with a Semitic name, and Yahweh
himself is frequently called Adonai, which as a plural indicates the
succession of Adonises reborn each year in the grain. Adonis was sacred to
Aphrodite as well as to Aphrodite's dark form, Persephone, explaining the
association of Sheol not merely with death but with lovingkindness and
Abaddon with faithfulness [Ps 88:11].
In summation, vampiric demons & demonesses may look bad, but they they're
ultimately angels or beings of a truer light.
-paghat the ratgirl
paghat
To continue my discussion of Jewish vampire myths, I add a vampire hag,
adapted into Jewish myth due to the diaspora exposing other nations to
Jewish myths, which were frequently Christianized, & then other Jews would
encounter these parallel Lilith myths & end up coopting similar succubi &
bloodsucking demonesses into Jewish lore. The demoness in question right
now is called in German-Jewish legend Astaribo -- actually more of a
destroying angel -- but may be identified with the Italian word for
"witch." By the name Astaribo she was dark angel encountered by Elijah in
a medieval German-Jewish story. Astaribo resembled Lilith, strangling and
devouring children. Astaribo's name, though a corruption of Striga
sometimes rendered Astriga, is also conceivably compounded with Astarte,
hence (unlike Striga) assigned as a heavenly dark angel rather than a
cthonic demoness. Astaribo, Astriga or Striga was believed by Gershom
Scholem to be related to Hystera, a Greek demoness who afflicted wombs.
Striga was the demoness whom Ovid said carried away newborns; in the
plural, strigia were a class of demonesses resembling screech owls,
Lilith's emblematic companions too. Striga is still known in Italy as
Strega, "Night Hag" or "Witch," and as Strigla survived in Byzantine myth
as a name of the demoness Gyllo. Much earlier, in Jewish Aramaic demon
lore, Astaribo occurred as Shatrugah, Shatrina and Shatriha.
It is in Graeco-Byzantine Christian that Striga, corrupted into Strigla,
occurs as the "half-name" of the demoness Gyllo, known in Babylon as
Gallu, originating in a class of devil called galli, which in Sumer served
as constables for Ereshkigal Queen of Night. A parallelling Greek text
list gives the half-name as Petomene, "Winged Memory." This was the
thirteenth and final name of the "twelve and a half names" of the demoness
Gyllo (Gallu), as recounted in this Greek Christian version of an Aramaic
Jewish myth. A "half-name" such as Striga or Petomene was required because
these are essentially calendar demonesses, & Striga represents the
thirteenth moon which does not occur in every year.
Strigla is the same as the Aramaic demoness Shatriha. The French estrie
(vampire monster) or Portuguese estria (witch) indicates her very
widespread distribution. Her name is also a word for Owl because she is a
like a night-flying, predatory bird. In Greek myth the Stringes (Latin
Striges) were child-stealing demonesses that subsisted on infant blood and
flesh, hunting their victims in the form of night-flying birds.
Shatriha, or "Screech Owl," should probably be identified with the
talmudic demoness Shida, feminine form of shad, a demon [babylonian talmud
Gittin 68a]. On an Aramaic incantation bowl from Nippur, Shatriha occurs
among the secret names of Lilith which Elijah caused her to reveal; the
other revealed names are enumerated in a previous post in this thread. In
the "Emeq haMelekh," she is Shatrina or Strine, a demoness distinct from
and in the service of Lilith. A silver amulet from Kurdistan calls her
Shatrugah.
In Sepher Hasidim attributed to Rabbi Judah the Pious, she occurs as
Astriyiah, a vampire hag. Another legend in the same collection notes that
a vampire hag can be kept from returning from death by staking her through
the cheak to the ground. Jewish kabbalistic legend also knows of a
destroying angel called Astaribo.
Since this Strigla or Astaribo is identified in several myths as a name of
Gyllo & hence a direct descendant of Babylon's Gallu, I will continue this
discussion in another post on the demoness Gyllo/Gallu. I'll then decide
whether I still have the energy to present the midrashim on the demoness
Shida, who became the mother of many of the wives of Solomon & corrupted
him irreversibly.
© paghat the ratgirl
paghat
Gallu, the Babylonian demoness, was possibly androgynous or even male in
her origins, having originated in a class of demonic divinities called the
galli, serving as a constabulary to Ereshkigal, Sumerian queen of the
underworld, sometimes restricted to seven in number. Gallu was adopted in
Jewish and Christian demonology as a name of Lilith. Graeco-Byzantine and
Medieval variants of her name include Gelou, Gello, Gylo, Gyllou and
Gilou, related to the Arabic word from which we get "Ghoul." Classical
Greek writers such as Suidas knew Gello as an empousa, a child-snatching
demoness who was once a mortal mother whose grief over the loss of her own
child drove her to snatch the children of other mothers.
In a Sumero-Akkadian myth Gallu was the same as the demoness
Lamme-Lamashtu, while a Babylonian amulet names Gallu alongside other
demonic figures including the signal demoness Lamashtu whose mythology is
quite elaborate. A Babylonian text in the British Museum says Gallu had
seven forms or daughters which performed violent acts against land and
people, a myth also associated with Lamashtu, suggesting a high degree of
interchangeability between Gallu and Lamashtu.
Gallu's Jewish name was Gilu or Gillul which provided yahwists a handy pun
against the Great Mother Gula, a very popular Goddess throughout the
ancient near east, known also as Bau, whose homosexual priesthood
particularly annoyed yahwists. The plural Gillulim, translated in
scripture as "idols," should be read "Gillul's children," and can mean a
pantheon subserviant to Gula (akin to Ereshkigal's original constabulary),
or else Gula's worshippers. Yahweh said, "I will destroy your high places
and cut down your incense altars and cast your dead bodies upon the dead
bodies of Gillul's children" [Lv 26:30; compare Ezek 6:6]. Despite yahwist
threats, all of Israel worshipped the children of Gillul [1 Ki 21:26; 2 Ki
17:12; Ezek 8:10; &c]. Gillulim, a word used most commonly by Ezekiel, may
be a derogatory yahwist pun playing off a Creatrix epithet which
originally meant "Joy," from gila, especially the joy that follows
mourning, or the joy of fertility that follows a period of barrenness.
"Behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a gila" [Isa
65:18]; or "It (the wilderness) shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice,
even with gila" [35:2]. Among Christian Gnostics, this same Joy was a
female aeon or light-being called Chara. In all, the lasting popularity of
Gallu as a primary demoness seems to have come about due to a conscious
and intentional confusion of Gallu for Gula, Goddess of healing. As
medical goddesses were thought to rule both the cause, as well as the
cure, of illnesses, the combining of the demoness with the Goddess was not
a difficult leap.
A Byzantine legend of Saint Michael gives Gilou as the first of the forty
chief names of Abyzu. This is a Greek version of the Semitic myth of
Smamit, whose children were slain by Gyllou. In the Byzantine legend
Gyllou was forced to reveal several of her names: Amorpho, Abyzu,
Karkhous, Briane, Bardellous, Aigyptiane, Barna, Kharkhanistrea, Adikia,
Myia and lastly Petomene which is called "the half-name." Variant
Byzantine lists give other names, Morrha rather than Amorpho, Byza rather
than Abyzu, and the half-name Strigla, the Witch. After Gyllou was forced
to reveal these names, the saints ripped off her left-hand pigtail, so
that the demoness would always be known by the single pigtail on one side
of her head. Gyllou is even today feared by peasants in Greece.
II. GALLU/GYLLO IN MEDIEVAL MYTH OF SMAMIT THE SPIDER-MOTHER
Smamit or Semamith is a Jewish spider-demoness who we know, through a
parrallel Byzantine Christian version that retells the story with Gyllo
instead of Smamit, that Smamit and Gyllo are the same demoness. Because so
much Jewish myth is really midrashic elaboration of individual words,
verses, or scenes in the bible, we find Smamit originates in Leviticus
11:30, where the word letaah is listed among unclean animals, and this is
rendered smamitah in the Jonathan Targum. It is usually assumed to mean
"spider" and rendered such in talmudic Hebrew and Aramaic. The Septuagint
replaces letaah with kalabotes, "spotted lizard," and this may well have
been the original meaning of smamith as well, though by the time of the
Diaspora, spider was the accepted meaning. The derivation is unknown, but
mamit can mean "mother," so a literal meaning of "Spider-mother" is not
improbable, and the spider Smamit was unclean because she was associated
with the Mother Goddess who devoured her fertility daemon or god-consort,
perhaps also her children.
Included among the four things "little on the earth, though wisest of the
wise" [Pr 30:24] was, "The Spider you can catch in your hand, yet it
frequents the palaces of kings." This can be read alternatively "Smamit
taketh hold with Her hands and is in the kings' palaces" [30:28]. This
alludes to Malkhuth, the feminine power of kingship, who dwelt with every
king as a spiritual consort. The spider-Malkhuth was a seed of Chokhmah
(Wisdom), weaving herself an increasingly large palace. The Hebrew name of
this Spider-mother was Akkabah or Akkabish.
Jewish amulets, incantations bowls, and folklore preserve variations of
the legend of Smamit the mother of twelve or thirteen sons slain by the
demon Sideros (Iron) or Sergius. Before the birth of her thirteenth son,
she built for herself a mountain-top palace, fortress, or tower (evidently
of iron and copper, with which she worked magic) and locked herself
therein, lest Sideros take her infant. This type of myth is reflected in
fairy lore, when maidens are trapped against their will in high towers, as
in the case of Rapunzel of the Golden Hair; but originally she built the
tower for her own defense, and the long hair was her spider's web, or the
threads for Creation's tapestry.
Three helpers, relatives, or angels named Swny, Swswny and Snygly came to
visit Smamit, but she said, "I cannot open the door, lest Sideros enter."
As they were insistent, she opened the door for them, and Sideros indeed
slipped in to strangle the thirteenth child. The three helpers chased
after Sideros and nearly killed him in his home in the Sea of Parzela. He
swore an oath never to slay children anywhere that the three helpers'
names were invoked. This myth closely resembles a midrash about Lilith who
was pursued into the sea by three angels, Senoi, Sansenoi and Semangloph
who were identically invoked as defense against Lilith's child-devouring
propensities. There is, indeed, every evidence that Sideros, whose Greek
name obviously supplants a lost Hebrew name, was originally female, since
in an Ethiopian version of the story, Sideros does not occur, and the
demoness Werzelya appears instead, probably derived from the Hebrew Barzel
or Aramaic Parzela ("Iron," the sea in which Sideros was known to dwell --
probably the same as the Lilith that dwelt in the Red Sea, or Sea of
Blood). A Bystantine myth of Melitena overlaps the myth of Smamit.
Melitena's seven children were stolen by the demoness Gello or Gyllou.
Melitena's two brothers, saints Sisynios and Synodoros, tracked the
demoness and beat her, until she revealed her secret names, and the
children were restored to Melitena. It is interesting that Smamit and
Melitena are good, motherly women, and not demonesses, in this particular
myth.
Yet another Jewish amulet, found at Tunis, mentions the demoness Zamzumit,
who is probably the same as Smamit. A Greek Christian version changes
Smamit's name to Meletine, which means "bee maiden" hence alluding to a
Bee-goddess rather than Spider-goddess, whose mythology overlaps the
spider, both insects relegating the male of their species to a lower
status. Meletine's children, six in this version, were taken by the
demoness Gyllou, in whom the parallel to Lilith is greatly strengthened.
Meletine's brothers were the saints Sisinios, Sines and Senodoros who
pursued the female demon and forced her to disclose her twelve and a half
names, after which Meletine's children were restored to her. An Arabic
text knows only the brother St. Susiniyus, and his sister, in this
variant, retains the spidery traits that are largely missing from yet
other versions. She slew her infant daughter and sucked out all her blood
-- the vampirism being that of a spider who sucks dry the fly. Thus sated
on her infant's blood, she mated with Satan, and bore a monstrous son.
Susiniyus later slew his own monstrous nephew and his vampire sister.
The sibbilant sound of the names of the angels or saint, in every case,
was likely preserved from far older Mother Goddess cults wherein the
Mother was believed to have serpents encoiled about her protectively,
hence the triad of angels originated as celestial serpents.
III. THE SPIDER-MOTHER AKKABAH
Smammit is the Aramaic name of the Spider-mother known in Hebrew as
Akkabah or Akkabish. The name is of unknown derivation, possibly related
to Acca, an archaic Goddess of vocalization (of the language of the
Akkadians) and a Creatrix who dwindled into the Greek nymph Echo. There
may once have been a Minoan association with Arachne, patroness of weaving
and a form of Athena. Isaiah speaks of lawless people and pagans as those
who weave the webs of Akkabish which ill serve them as clothing [Isa
59:5-6].
"The house of Akkabish" [Job 8:14] is a temple in which the godless live.
Those under her protection thrive in the sun, but such a house cannot long
endure in the garden [8:15]. The fullest meaning of this allusion is lost
to antiquity, but was sufficiently important for Job to strongly
reiterate, "The house which he builds is like a spider's web, like a booth
which a watchman makes. He goes to bed rich, but will do so no more; he
opens his eyes and his wealth is gone. Terrors overtake him like a flood"
[27:18-20]. The "terrors" are the Emim, "children of Emah," Emah being a
cannibal hag. As the spider devoured her mate, so too was Akkabish (in the
yahwist estimation) a spider-demoness who destroys those whom she makes
wealthy. Emah's or Akkabish's offspring were like the Greek Furies, that
hurl the godless headlong from the house of the spider [27:22].
The spider symbolized the power of the Goddess whose web or spirit held
the universe together. Her vampiric tendencies were highlighted by enemies
of the Goddess, which the rival cult of Yahweh certainly became.
Akkabish's presence at the center of the web was like the Earthmother at
the center of the cosmos, or Arachne at the center of the labyrinth that
was Gaea's womb. From her central location she capable of seeing, or
detecting through the vibrations in her webs, in all directions at once;
she was all-seeing and omnipresent. But patristic authors lambasted such a
faith with their insistence that this web was but tissue -- a house easily
knocked to pieces.
The oldest prehistoric "temples" of the Earthmother were natural and
sacred caverns. The tapestries therein were spider webs. A work called The
Alphabet of Ben Sira tells a story of David's flight from King Saul, when
David hid in a cavern that was defended by a spider at the entrance. The
spider parted her web to let David enter, and Saul, seeing that the web
was unbroken, deduced that no one had recently entered the cave, and so
never searched it. By this event, Akkabish, that wee humble spider,
preserved the entirety of the House of David, and all that Israel became.
But the myth has a parallel of Lilith who dwelt in the Sea, & parted the
waters to let Moses lead Israel to safety, but sealed the breach on their
passing & destroyed the armies of Pharaoh.
In all this we can detect an intertwining of bloodsucking demoness &
live-giving Goddess, who are ultimately the same divinity in two
colorations, Darkness and Light.
-paghat the ratgirl
paghat
bits I've posted have been way, way, way above the heads of alt.vampyres
subscribers & probably belongs somewhere else. Well, I'd gotten pooped
anyway & decided not to write up the stuff on the arch demoness Shiddah
after all. I'd avoided writing of Lilith per se as that struck me as too
obvious & easily come by; perhaps it is true I should've started with the
elementary, but I felt no desire to repeat what was so quickly accessible
at the Jewish Vampires web page:
http://www.jewishgothic.com/vampire.html
Bram Stoker of course knew much of this lore. The demonesses who dwelt in
Dracula's castle as his wives were based predominantly on Jewish lore of
the Lilith & Naamah & Agrath. Stoker through association with the Order of
the Golden Dawn had a christianized take on kabbalah & talmudic lore. That
is not to say Stoker was a Golden Dawn member per se, but he hung out with
the same people, & was to some extent a hanger-on.
Some antisemitic groups have spotted the Jewish influence in Stoker's
creation, & concluded that Stoker had actually written not about vampires,
but against Jews. Crackpot antisemite Willie Martin is typical of those
who say Dracula "is the story of the Jew who he [Stoker] calls Vampires.
Bram Stoker received a message from God about Lucifer & the Jews which he
wrote about because God wanted him to do so." That's widly insane, of
course, & the product of Willie's hate-filled thinking, but the
justification such a crazy bastard saying it is the patent Jewishness of
some of the lore Stoker reformulated into his story. And certainly it goes
way back to the time of the Inquisition that Jews used the blood of
Christian babies in evil secret rituals of the Kabbalah, & ass holes like
Willie love to believe it's so.
But of course it was not the voice of some imaginary God who hates Jews
that informed Stoker of this Jewish lore, it was his Golden Dawn
associates who took Jewish lore & through a series of misreadings &
misunderstandings created a neo-hermeticism just for goyim (gentiles).
Many writers besides Stoker were inspired to write weird fiction by Golden
Dawn teachings.
-paghat the ratjew
Lois Tilton
--
LT
www.darkspawn.com
DARKSPAWN: the vampire fantasy
paghat
<lti...@shell-2.enteract.com> wrote:
> What??? No footnotes?
Actually I provided footnotes throughout in brackets, to specific
midrashim, midrash being "sacred lies" i.e. myths told in works like the
Midrash Rabbah and the Babylonian Talmud, great sources of vampire lore,
with a special fondness for demonesses.
-paghat
Arminius
> bits I've posted have been way, way, way above the heads of
alt.vampyres
> subscribers & probably belongs somewhere else.
Who the hell told you that? This is as on-topic as anything we've ever
had over here. The only question that I had about your posts is
documentation. To be honest, this is all new to me, and I'd like some
backup. Now that you've given the hyperlink with said bibliography, I
have even that. Thanks for putting me on to this.
Don't let the anti-intellectual dunderheads get you down.
> Bram Stoker of course knew much of this lore. The demonesses who
dwelt in
> Dracula's castle as his wives were based predominantly on Jewish
lore of
> the Lilith & Naamah & Agrath. Stoker through association with the
Order of
> the Golden Dawn had a christianized take on kabbalah & talmudic lore.
That
> is not to say Stoker was a Golden Dawn member per se, but he hung out
with
> the same people, & was to some extent a hanger-on.
Documentation? A certain Dr. Miller would be _very_ interested in
hearing this:-)
Again, this is highly presumptive, and is not supported by
documentation from Stoker's life. I can be convinced, but the simple
invocation of Crowley and company simply will not do.
--
Arminius
A problem is an opportunity to do your best. --Duke Ellington
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Kitsune
(paghat) wrote:
>An e-mail greeted me this morning, saying the Jewish Vampiric Demoness
>bits I've posted have been way, way, way above the heads of alt.vampyres
>subscribers & probably belongs somewhere else.
<snip the rest>
Obviously some snob wrote to you not to mention the fact that such an
e-mail is insulting to the people who subscribe to this newsgroup.
Kitsune, who 'got it' but wasn't compelled to ooooo and/or aaaaahh
http://www.altvampyres.net/newsgroup/faq
http://www.altvampyres.net/newsgroup - home of alt.vampyres
http://www.altvampyres.com - home of Alt.Vampyres
paghat
I'm a wee speck surprised anyone who closely reads DRACULA would miss the
vast number of rather specific kabbalistic references, though it's a
complex enough work everyone probably takes from it something that
connects to their own viewpoint & background & misses most of everything
else. A single example from Dracula is Scholomance, the esoteric school
which preserves the hermetic teachings of King Solomon. (Most of King
Solomon's reputed magical teachings happened to be on demon lore & methods
of capturing demons & impressing them into servitude -- which most often
boiled down to demoness lore since Solomon was said to have married "700
demonesses very many" who were the daughters of the Great Dark Queen
Shidah.) So too THE LADY OF THE SHROUD, the sensual night-visiting woman
of the tower, is so obviously a kabbalistic demoness as well as a vampire.
The device of telling the tale as a series of documents, beginning with an
article purportedly from an occult magazine, all but lampoons the faux
religions of the various not-so-secret secret societies Stoker was
familiar with. The image of the floating coffin in which stands a woman
clad in white is a variant of the Jewish legend of the Woman in an Ephah.
One of my recent posts on the Worm of Sheol as a vampiric demoness is the
sort of lore which Stoker borrows in creating THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM,
a super-intelligent cthonic worm that can take the form of a highly
sensual woman. You will look long & hard for anyone else but a Jewish sage
telling tales of giant worms that are simultaneously seductive demonesses.
Had Stoker been raised a Jew these themes would've come naturally to him;
& though I can't recall if he had personally Jewish ancestors, I assume
with a name like Abraham he did. But mainly, he had to be influenced
once-removed from mystical judaism, in the gentile equivelant of the Order
of the Golden Dawn, as well as from among his longstanding Swedenborgian
friends with their elaborate lore of angels & dark angels reworked from
Jewish sources.
I'm not sure from your comments if you're actually saying Bram didn't have
Golden Dawners & similar crank mystics as compatriots; as that most
certainly IS well documented about Stoker's life. One of Stoker's best
friends was Julian Hawthorne, the son of Nathaniel. Julian, Bram, & Edwin
Booth would spend long nights together carousing & having a jolly time, &
by dawn poor Edwin would be so deep in his cups he had to be carried by
Julian & Bram to be laid in his cab. Julian was a devout Swedenborgian, &
Swedenborg's religious system borrowed wholesale from kabbalists. Julian's
mom actually learned Hebrew & Aramaic so she could read some untranslated
mystical works when Julian was a child -- Sophia Hawthorne had an
extensive kabbalistic library & arranged home seances -- & in the family's
travels in Europe they frequently stayed with the mystics -- Nathaniel
presumedly cared less for it, though it influences some of his weird
tales. I held in my hands Julian's personally pasted-up notebooks in which
he had saved a kabbalistic essays & drawings. As a grown man, his mother's
influence lingered, & Julian attended Swedenborgian churches the world
over frequently in company with his own daughter Hildegarde. There was
nothing unusual in this pattern; it was true of many authors & artists of
the last half of the 19th century, & to NOT know any of these authors &
artists would require someone to be a veritable outcast from the arts
community, & neither Bram nor Julian were that. Julian though gentile was
also an avowed Zionist & wrote a wildly kabbalistic fairy tale "Calladon,"
which takes place inside a sephirotic sphere, & several kabbalistic weird
tales including "The New Endymion." It is a good piece of speculation that
Julian's vampire novelette "Ken's Mystery" was an influence on his pal's
famous novel of a decade later; they most certainly read each others'
works.
One could do a run-down of late-Victorian gentiles involved in the popular
kabbalah-like movements of the era & find many like Julian hung out with
Bram. The "Isis" Freemasons, Golden Dawners, Rosicrucians &
Swedbenborgians are the lot who borrow dramatically from kabbalah. As for
the Golden Dawn per se, Crowley, whom you mention, was much less at the
head than is popularly believed, there were temples scattered throughout
the world in its heyday & it both pre-dated & outlasted Crowley's
influence. But it's interesting that Crowley was himself a fan of DRACULA
& believed it embodied elements of his own thelemic teachings -- proving
little since he also thought Alice in Wonderland proved his teachings.
A little play called THE GOLDEN DAWN by Jan Henson Dow & Robert Schroeder
has as its three key players Yeats, Crowley, & Stoker, & is based on an
actual meeting & debate between these gents that occurred in the year 1900
in the Isis-Uranian Temple of the Order of the Golden Dawn. Vampire author
& Stoker afficianado Les Daniels in LIVING IN FEAR alleges that Stoker was
in fact an enrolled member of the Golden Dawn. While membership rosters
are imperfectly preserved, I believe Les exaggerates, or copied his
information from some Golden Dawn reference book without looking more
deeply into this issue of Stoker's actual "membership." A half-dozen of
books about the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn do in fact list Stoker
as a member, but it's my belief these lists were compiled on the basis of
who attended some of the events rather than who were actually enrollees or
initiates. What is unquestionable is that the great outburst of horror
writing in the late 19th & early 20th centuries -- by William Marsh,
Stoker, Dion Fortune, Arthur Machen, even Yeats wrote some prose-tales of
fantasy & horror at this time -- was part of a Decadent expression over
which the Golden Dawn reigned significantly throughout the more artistic
quarters, while Blavatsky's Theosophy was more for inartistic
guru-following plebians.
The best known horror authors frequently discussed as Golden Dawn members
are Dion Fortune, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Doyle,
Stevenson, Sax Rohmer & Bram Stoker, & many others. In fact not all were
members (Stoker & Rohmer are not likely ever to have donated membership
funds & the idea that either would become initiates strikes me as absurd,
though perhaps someone else can show it happened). But all these,
including Bram, were often enough in the same room when Golden Dawn stuff
was happening that they might as well have been official members. The
lasting influence of the Golden Dawn on Stoker is hard to diminish, but it
may have been Les's mistake to assume he was a dues-paying enrollee.
-paghat the ratgirl
Mike Kew
>And certainly it goes
>way back to the time of the Inquisition that Jews used the blood of
>Christian babies in evil secret rituals of the Kabbalah, & ass holes like
>Willie love to believe it's so.
That particular story goes back further than the Inquisition, I think.
It was trotted out by any medieval ruler who wanted to kick the Jews out
of his kingdom (usually as a cheaper alternative to repaying what he
owed them...) It was current in England in the 13th century, I'm sure,
and I don't *think* we had an Inquisition. (And interestingly, it was
the arch-Puritan, Oliver Cromwell, who welcomed Jews back into the
country some 400 years later.)
Perhaps you can tell us more about the significance of blood in Jewish
tradition. It gets an awful lot of mentions in the Torah, and
specifically there's a blanket prohibition on 'eating' blood that's
repeated at least half a dozen times - e.g. Leviticus 17:14
For it is the life of all flesh; the blood of it is the life thereof:
therefore I said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall eat the blood
of no manner of flesh: for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof:
whosoever eateth it shall be cut off.
(quoting from the Authorized Version, 'cos I think it's probably most
widely known)
This 'blood is the life' line, which is what _Dracula_ keeps harping on,
is presumably the rationale behind many of the laws on the preparation
of meat.
Yet elsewhere (e.g. Genesis 2:7), 'life' is equated with 'breath' rather
than blood. The reason the Golem of Prague couldn't speak was because
it had no *breath*, because only God could grant that.
So what is the connection between breath and blood?
--
Mike Kew
The Real alt.vampyres FAQ: http://www.kew1.demon.co.uk/vampyres/
** Both From: and Reply-to: are valid addresses; use either, unless **
** you're a spammer, in which case either one will get you nuked. **
Mike Kew
>I'm a wee speck surprised anyone who closely reads DRACULA would miss the
>vast number of rather specific kabbalistic references, though it's a
>complex enough work everyone probably takes from it something that
>connects to their own viewpoint & background & misses most of everything
>else. A single example from Dracula is Scholomance, the esoteric school
>which preserves the hermetic teachings of King Solomon.
I'd taken this as background knowledge - I've never seen any of the
alleged magical writings of Solomon, but I've heard about their
existence without being a member of any hermetic order. Of course, this
sort of knowledge *might* have been less common in the 1880s.
>So too THE LADY OF THE SHROUD, the sensual night-visiting woman
>of the tower, is so obviously a kabbalistic demoness as well as a vampire.
Here I'd agree with Armenius: this is hugely suppositional. What clues
are there in the text of the book that the women are anything more than
'regular' vampires?
>The device of telling the tale as a series of documents, beginning with an
>article purportedly from an occult magazine, all but lampoons the faux
>religions of the various not-so-secret secret societies Stoker was
>familiar with.
According to a former girlfriend of mine who taught literature, this was
quite a common narrative form in late Victorian times, particularly
suited to authors who were obliged to write in relatively short
stretches of spare time.
>The image of the floating coffin in which stands a woman
>clad in white is a variant of the Jewish legend of the Woman in an Ephah.
It's obviously too long since I read the book - where does this occur?
DrLuc
spammers-...@my-deja.com (paghat) writes:
>An e-mail greeted me this morning, saying the Jewish Vampiric Demoness
>bits I've posted have been way, way, way above the heads of alt.vampyres
>subscribers & probably belongs somewhere else.
My only hope is that you fail to take
the E-Mailer's advice!
\{^^^}/
Lucadra
http://altvampyres.com
*********************v^^v***********************
"If you understand, things are as they are.
If you don't understand, things are as they are."
- Zen Proverb -
paghat
<gi...@kew1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Perhaps you can tell us more about the significance of blood in Jewish
> tradition. It gets an awful lot of mentions in the Torah, and
> specifically there's a blanket prohibition on 'eating' blood that's
> repeated at least half a dozen times - e.g. Leviticus 17:14
Blood offerings were the central obsession in the Yahwist cult. If we may
believe the evidence of the blooding of Isaac, who was replaced by a ram
for the sacrifice, the presentation of ANIMAL blood instead of human was
an innovation over cults for such as the primary semitic goddess Anath (at
Bethel, Anath was Yahweh's bride, & Her shrine has been excavated WITHIN
the compound of Bethel's Yahweh temple. The Elephantine Jewish enclave
came from Bethel, was an older community than that of Jerusalem, & still
existed after the fall of the Jerusalem Temple -- at Elephantine Yahweh
had two brides, Anathyahweh and Anathbethel, & in that city Jewish men &
women lived fairly egalitarian lives besides).
For Yahweh, a perfect red heifer was lain over a stone & bled into a pit;
no Jewish document can quite explain the meaning of the red heifer, it is
simply so old a ritual its origins are utterly unknown. The Red Heifer I
believe once represented Adamah, "Red Earth Mother," the Mother of Adam,
who remains a living, speaking, weeping, praying, devouring, wombed mother
figure even in yahwist scripture, & whose personal mythology overlaps that
of the Worm of Sheol. That there is some pre-yahwist & pro-goddess
underpinning to the Red Heifer is evident by the fact that she was the
only burnt offering that was not performed at the Tent of Meeting, but was
restricted to outside the camp [Nm 19:3], even though any other burnt
offering not brought to the door of the Tent of Meeting led to
excommunication [Lv 17:8-9]. As a concession to the Leviticus regulation,
the high priest dipped his hands into the Heifer's blood in order to spray
blood seven times from his fingertips in the direction of the Tent [Nm
19:4], seven being the number of perfection and of Malkhuth the Lower
Shekhinah whose dark side is Lilith. It is interesting that the priest who
made the offering of the Red Heifer was rendered himself polluted, as
though he had touched a menstruant woman, & could not return to the
tabernackle until he had undergone purification rites outside the camp [Nm
19:7].
It is probably no coincidence that the heifer was sacred to Anath &
Asherah, & the ritual predated Yahwism. But also for Anath -- whose
continuing worship was deplored by Yahwists, who probably abandoned the
Bethel temple in part because of Anath's popularity there -- it seems
likely that human blood-sacrifice was at one time the common offering.
Anath drank the blood of her enemies, & washed her hands & feet in the
blood of her enemies. Semitic women who worshipped her hennahed their
hands & feet in emulation of the blood that stained Anath. Many of Anath's
myths survive in Kali worship today, & Kali appears in Jewish amuletic
literature as one of the names of Lilith. The prophet Jeremiah was from a
city wherein Anath was the primary divinity, Anathoth, which means
"Daughters of Anath." This may be why the book of Jeremiah preserves long
passages with women describing the worship among Jewish wives, assisted by
their husbands, in worshipping the Queen of Heaven. To some extent, the
later "rise" of Lilith as a bloodsucking demoness was a Yahwist method of
identifying the more "positive" features of Anath worship with demonism.
Yet animal blood as the key offering to Yahweh remained the central
obsession of Yahweh's priesthood.
> For it is the life of all flesh; the blood of it is the life thereof:
> therefore I said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall eat the blood
> of no manner of flesh: for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof:
> whosoever eateth it shall be cut off.
>
> (quoting from the Authorized Version, 'cos I think it's probably most
> widely known)
>
> This 'blood is the life' line, which is what _Dracula_ keeps harping on,
> is presumably the rationale behind many of the laws on the preparation
> of meat.
>
> Yet elsewhere (e.g. Genesis 2:7), 'life' is equated with 'breath' rather
> than blood. The reason the Golem of Prague couldn't speak was because
> it had no *breath*, because only God could grant that.
>
> So what is the connection between breath and blood?
Ooo, that question is so perfect I suspect you already know part of the
answer & just were givign me an opening.
Life, which is a name of Eve, is identical to Breath (or Spirit) which God
breathed into Adam, & which was removed from Adam later in the form of
Eve. This Breath is in Hebrew called Ruach -- Wind, Spirit, or Soul --
hence Adam named Eve when he saw her first manifestation & said, "Thou art
my Life." To some extent Eve/Ruach as having animated Adam before her
physical manifestation parallels Saktist religion in which Kali is the
empowering soul of Shiva, & when Shiva is alone, he is inert, but when
Kali (or Parvati) is with him, he is a living god (a belief found in
sephirotic kabbalah as well, when Tiphereth, the sephirah identified with
Yahweh, is inert or unknowing except upon the Sabbath when Malkhuth the
Lower Shekhinah rises to level of the nuptial chamber she shares weekly
with Tiphereth, bringing him news of the world). Kali pre-existed Shiva &
is mighty with or without him, but he is nothing without her energizing
sakta or soul, who is Kali. So too Eve is said to be the helpmate of Adam,
but Eve required no helpmate; for though she manifested after Adam, she
pre-existed Adam, & was a wholeness with or without him. She is in fact
the same as Malkhuth the Lower Shekhinah, whose manifestation kabbalists
say was the whole purpose of creation -- & she was last-formed because
that which comes last rules all that comes before. This also explains why,
at the casting out from Eden, Adam is specifically cast out, but nowhere
is Eve said to be cast out. She goes voluntarily with Adam as his helpmate
-- which for gnostics identified her as the Illuminatress whose
pre-existing aeonic name was Zoe, daughter of Sophia. The reason a
whirling sword was placed on the path to Eden was not because the banned
Adam might return, but because Eve could at will return to Eden, hence the
whirling weapon on the path to the Tree of Life, which in essence was the
Tree of Eve, comparable to Inanna's Halupa tree in whose branches a Lilith
dwelt & in whose roots a mighty serpent. In jewish mysticism this same
lifeforce that is Eve the Mother of All passes through every generation as
our souls, & frequently manifests as a companion daughter, bride, or
mother as helpmate to leaders among men.
The idea of Blood is the Life means that blood was the seat of the Ruach
(breath or spirit -- though being a feminine word, Mother-spirit would be
more a apropos translation) which in later Gnostic doctrine came to be
thought of as the substance of the Pistis Sophia which was the source of
all life. Ruach animated beasts as well as men according to Ecclesiastes
[3:21], though in most cases the Ruach spirit animates only humankind &
the animal-spirit is called Nephesh (who has her own kabbalistic mythology
as well). The Ruach was the source of all souls, good or bad, but her
presence within humanity was transitory in that she was also the source of
mortality [Gn 6:3]. Because of her dual nature as source of Life & of
Death, the Ruach had two forms in judaism, the Ruach of Good Counsel who
was the Queen of Angels [Ezek 1:12] & the inspiration of leadership among
humanity [Jg 6:34], & the the Evil Ruach who was Lilith the Worm. In
kabbalistic thinking the Evil Ruach is merely the shadowed, angry face of
Malkhuth the Lower Shekhinah, when she is polluted by humanity's crimes &
becomes Lilith.
Even in Christianity Pneuma, the holy Spirit, is sometimes regarded as the
"mother" of the trinity of Father, Son, & Holy Ghost, Pneuma being (like
Ruach) a feminine construction best translated Mother-Spirit & identified
with the Divine Sophia who infuses blood & semen with her own substance
which animates all life; & this Sophia has harlot forms such as Pruneikos
the Divine Harlot or Fallen Sophia (borrowing liberally from cults of
Celestial Aphrodite who could be warlike & destructive & slew her lovers
on mountain tops). There is also a surviving Christian teaching that Jesus
is the Red Heifer (as well as the passover Lamb) & Paul's letter to the
Romans states quite clearly that the blood of Jesus was delivered unto
Pistis as an act of expiation [3:15]. Gnostics believed quite literally
that Jesus's blood was the pureness of the Pistis Sophia. The Coptic
"Apocalypse of Elias" from the fourth century C.E. gives a version of the
martyrdom of Tabitha or Dorcas (mentioned christian bible at Acts 9:39).
She was pursued by the Shameless One, but she scolded him for his evil
ways, for which reason he angrily sucked out her blood. But according to
this apocalyptic document, upon Tabitha's last words were about how, upon
the day of resurrection, her blood should be "cast upon the temple" due to
the healing properties of her transformed life fluids.
These are transmuted beliefs derived from archaic judaism which preserved
a role for the Feminine Divine alongside Yahweh, & for which
blood-offerings were paramount. The vampiric act of many "normative"
christian churches & cathedrals, when wine is transformed by blessing into
blood for the fellowship, is a great "mystery" only if one has forgotten
that The Blood is the Life. That Jesus's flesh is bread is derived from
his role as a dying-&-reborn fertility daemon like Tamuz, Baal, or Damuzi,
all of whom are slain & reborn in the grain, a myth type especially
important to blood-drinking Anath as reflected in the Ugaritic "Poem of
Baal" a work which has whole passages coopted into the Bible with little
alteration.
Ruach stood before God and spoke with her own voice, promising to seduce
Ahab into battle [1 Ki 22:21-25]. Her dark aspect was sent by God to wreck
havoc on the reign of Abimelech [Jg 9:23], a grim period of history. The
Ruach of Good Counsel abandoned Saul in favor of David [1 Sm 16:23],
whereas the Evil Ruach became Saul's companion [16:14], tormenting him
with madness & paranoia, inducing him twice to throw his spear at David,
who evaded Saul while placidly playing his lyre [18:10-11], for David's
music was believed to subdue the Evil Ruach [Pseudo-Philo 60:1]. In the
Babylonian flood epic, Imhullu, "The Evil Wind," helped destroy humanity,
& was distinct from Sadu, "the east wind" or "the mountain," paralleling
the idea of the Evil Ruach and the Ruach of Good Counsel.
The Evil Ruach together with her demonic angels came into being on the
first day of creation [Jubilees 2:2], or on the second day [2 Enoch 29:1;
Pseudo-Philo 60:2]. Pseudo-Philo said the Evil Ruach dwelt in Tartarus
[60:3] identifying her with the Worm of Sheol. She caused jealousy [Nm
5:14,30]; false prophesy [2 Chr 18:22]; perversity and lies [Pr 15:4];
confusion akin to drunkeness [Isa 19:14]; harlotry [Hos 4:12; 5:4]; and
desolation of the very Earth [Isa 40:7]. She tormented Job for little more
than the jest, and appeared before him in order to make his bones shake
[Job 4:15]. In Mandaean gnosticism, Evil Ruach was transformed into Ruha,
the Dark Mother, source of all evil & hardship, though loving toward her
children in her own way. Since the Good and the Evil Ruach were really the
same life-force in different moods, Habbakuk notes that it is the Ruach
who granted divine approval & was Enoch's spiritual guide & she parted the
Red Sea for Moses with all kinds of other marvels are credited to her [Hb
11:1-39]. The myth of the Ruach parting the sea to let Israel pass, then
to destroy Egypt, is in numerous midrashim a role assigned to Lilith who
dwelt in the sea in the form of a mighty leviathan. The central idea of
this is that even "evil" is a manifestation of God & out of every harmful
act good will somehow arise, & Lilith is ultimately a form of purity no
less than Malkhuth the Lower Shekhinah who is the Perfect Mother of the
final chapter of Proverbs.
-paghat the ratgirl
paghat
<gi...@kew1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Feb 2001, paghat <spammers-...@my-deja.com> wrote
> >I'm a wee speck surprised anyone who closely reads DRACULA would miss the
> >vast number of rather specific kabbalistic references, though it's a
> >complex enough work everyone probably takes from it something that
> >connects to their own viewpoint & background & misses most of everything
> >else. A single example from Dracula is Scholomance, the esoteric school
> >which preserves the hermetic teachings of King Solomon.
>
> I'd taken this as background knowledge - I've never seen any of the
> alleged magical writings of Solomon, but I've heard about their
> existence without being a member of any hermetic order. Of course, this
> sort of knowledge *might* have been less common in the 1880s.
No, it was commonplace "in the air" & even small villages were apt to have
at least Swedenborgian church or Theosophic chapter. But among artists &
painters, the Golden Dawn became something of a fad. One wouldn't need to
be an outright dues-paying member to participate in the social gatherings.
Horror writing became a fad in that era as part of the same decadent mood
that made faux kabbalistic societies like the Golden Dawn bywords.
> >So too THE LADY OF THE SHROUD, the sensual night-visiting woman
> >of the tower, is so obviously a kabbalistic demoness as well as a vampire.
>
> Here I'd agree with Armenius: this is hugely suppositional. What clues
> are there in the text of the book that the women are anything more than
> 'regular' vampires?
>
> >The device of telling the tale as a series of documents, beginning with an
> >article purportedly from an occult magazine, all but lampoons the faux
> >religions of the various not-so-secret secret societies Stoker was
> >familiar with.
>
> According to a former girlfriend of mine who taught literature, this was
> quite a common narrative form in late Victorian times, particularly
> suited to authors who were obliged to write in relatively short
> stretches of spare time.
>
> >The image of the floating coffin in which stands a woman
> >clad in white is a variant of the Jewish legend of the Woman in an Ephah.
>
> It's obviously too long since I read the book - where does this occur?
The Woman in White standing in the floating coffin is part of the "Report"
quoted from a made-up "Journal of Occultism" near the start of the tale.
Unless you mean where is the Woman in an Ephah. She occurs in one of the
visions of the prophet Zechariah, carried through the air by two flying
liliths. The name of the Woman in an Ephah was Risha (Wickedness) & a
temple was built for her in Babylon [Zech 5:8], akin to the castle of the
Lady of the Shroud. Ezekiel admonished Israel to turn to Rishah and die,
or to God and live [Ezek 18:30]. But such demonesses are tests set by
Yahweh on the halfway point to the Road of Sheol. Who perceives them as
harlots continues the downward path; who can view them in purity cleanses
the Divine Skekhinah, or is saved by Mother Wisdom. Hence among
kabbalists, Lilith is called the first rung of Jacob's Ladder, the first
stage to enlightenment, a deadly but essential first stage that is easily
corrupting for whoever approaches Her with ill regard.
-paghat
pag...@my-deja.com
> spammers-...@my-deja.com (paghat) wrote:
> > An e-mail greeted me this morning, saying the Jewish Vampiric Demoness
> > bits I've posted have been way, way, way above the heads of
> alt.vampyres
> > subscribers & probably belongs somewhere else.
>
> Who the hell told you that?
I tried to reply to the e-mail & it had bounced back the next time I
checked my e-mails. Had a fake return e-address. On second thought I may
have misunderstood that mail's purpose; it may have been sent strictly
as an antisemitic act, which I hadn't suspected since the language of
flaming is fundamental to UseNet & I hadn't thought it might have more
to it than generic annoyance with going all eggheady and talmudic.
-paggers
> Don't let the anti-intellectual dunderheads get you down.
>
Mags The Axe
"paghat" <spammers-...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:spammers-die-pagha...@soggy70.drizzle.com...
> An e-mail greeted me this morning, saying the Jewish Vampiric Demoness
> bits I've posted have been way, way, way above the heads of alt.vampyres
> subscribers & probably belongs somewhere else.
[Lurk mode OFF]
WHAT!?!
You're kidding, right? Do you have any idea how much I've enjoyed your
postings? I can't understand why someone would consider them off-topic:
they seem to match perfectly with some of the mythological discussions that
have happened here.
> Well, I'd gotten pooped
> anyway & decided not to write up the stuff on the arch demoness Shiddah
> after all.
Aw, nuts!!! Well, thank you very much for what you've posted so far. It
was fascinating, and I really appreciate your effort.
> I'd avoided writing of Lilith per se as that struck me as too
>obvious & easily come by;
Understood. Lilith has been done to death on this group. (no pun intended)
> perhaps it is true I should've started with the
> elementary,
Pish. And a couple of tushes. You were fine.
> but I felt no desire to repeat what was so quickly accessible
> at the Jewish Vampires web page:
> http://www.jewishgothic.com/vampire.html
Ooooo, interesting! Thank you for the link!
Again, very very informative AND entertaining. I really enjoyed your
postings on these topics, and I'm sorry that someone discouraged you from
making more.
Mags The Axe
paghat
"Mags The Axe" <magst...@yahoo.replacewithcom> wrote:
>
> Again, very very informative AND entertaining. I really enjoyed your
> postings on these topics, and I'm sorry that someone discouraged you from
> making more.
>
> Mags The Axe
Thanks. I later began to suspect I was merely "successfully trolled" by an
e-mailer, whose return e-mail address was a fake, & whose "take it to a
Jew group" may have been intended more insultingly than I bothered to
notice at first. I may get a second wind next week & post stuff on the
demonic wives of King Solomon & their nasty mom, Shiddah. At the moment
though I'm deep into a writing an monograph on Jerome K. Jerome for a
collection of his weird tales to be issued as CITY IN THE SEA AND OTHERS,
& will be spending a couple days (likely Monday & Tuesday) deep in the
Suzallo Library stacks looking up a last few things for my monograph.
After that I may thumb through all my midrash notes again & put together
information on Solomon's "demonesses very many."
-paghat the ratgirl
B J Kuehl
by spammers-...@my-deja.com (paghat):
> An e-mail greeted me this morning, saying the Jewish Vampiric Demoness
> bits I've posted have been way, way, way above the heads of alt.vampyres
> subscribers & probably belongs somewhere else.
Don't believe everything you receive in email. I still have a
copy of the tract you posted about Lailah to alt.mythology, and
would like to read more about these Jewish demoness/goddesses.
^BJ^
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Keeper of the alt.vampyres' VAMPIRE faq & the List of Vampire Websites
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