#lady lilith

Some practitioners (often newer or highly online witches) have picked up a performative model of "ethical practice" that’s more about optics than consistency. “Closed practices” and “cultural appropriation” are real concerns in spiritual work, but they’re also frequently misapplied or weaponized without depth of understanding.

Lilith gets targeted because she’s visibly associated with Jewishness (because people know the name, not the context). She’s been popular among feminists, god-spouses, and witches of marginalized genders, which triggers discomfort for people trying to appear “respectable” or “authentic.”

But Asmodeus, Azazel, Samael, and dozens of other demons from exactly the same textual lineage don’t receive a tenth of the flack because no one’s looking to police male demons with the same audacity. It reveals that it’s not really about respecting Judaism (from a traditional Jewish standpoint, Lilith is peripheral at best, fictional or symbolic at most) —it’s about controlling certain types of practitioners and discouraging certain types of power- specifically female power.

Lilith is the most well-known female demon in Western lore, and she's explicitly connected to sexual freedom, rebellion, female rage, autonomy, violence toward patriarchal norms.

Even within demonology, which already carries heavy cultural baggage, which already accepts the taboo, she's still the one that gets framed as “dangerous,” “too edgy,” “too problematic.” AMONG DEMONS.

Sound familiar? It's the same old historical misogyny, just dressed in spiritual language.

No one says Asmodeus is “too sexual” to work with. No one says Azazel is “too violent” to call on. No one is worried about “appropriating” Samael despite his heavy Jewish roots. But Lilith? She gets singled out. Repeatedly.

The claim that working with Lilith is “appropriating Jewish culture” misunderstands that Lilith is not central to Jewish theology. She is not a religious figure—she’s a minor folkloric and mystical one. Many Jews don’t believe in her, period. Her legend as Adam’s wife comes from a satirical medieval text, The Alphabet of Ben Sira, not Torah or Talmud.

She’s no more “closed” than any other folkloric or mythic figure from ancient religious texts. To say you can’t work with her while summoning Goetic demons (many of whom literally come from Solomonic grimoires rooted in Jewish mysticism) is deeply inconsistent. It's misogyny. I don't care. I'm calling y'all out.

There’s a cultural pressure online to demonstrate moral awareness, especially around appropriation, race, gender, and religion, which can be good. But when that pressure meets limited historical understanding, you get loud declarations that Lilith is “closed” but silence around Azazel, Samael, Asmoday, and the rest.

A lot of people parroting “Lilith is closed” have never read Jewish texts or studied where Lilith actually appears. They’re mimicking what they think is a “correct” stance to appear ethical without being internally consistent.

Lilith is being policed because she is feminine, rebellious, sexual, and powerful, not because of her actual religious status in Judaism. People use “Jewish origins” as a weapon only when it suits a moral panic.

Male demons from the same system? Strangely exempt. No problem!

The outrage is less about Judaism and more about controlling who gets to access power, especially the women, trans people, and other minorities drawn to her.

If you’re noticing the hypocrisy, you’re not imagining it. If it feels misogynistic, it is. If it feels like erasure of spiritual agency, it is. And if it feels like a power play? That’s because it is.

Lady Lilith

Artist: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (English, 1828-1882)

Date: 1867

Medium: Watercolor and gouache

Collection: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, NY, United States

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