Many pagan & witch spaces online have a constant disdain for Christianity thus I could not wrap my head around them using such an important point of Jesus' & Mary's life as one of their festivals/'sabbats'.... then, after writing a bunch of stuff, I stumbled onto the answer on Wikipedia's Wheel of The Year page, which has citations for its claims:

Margaret Murray (very early 20th century scholar) in her now discredited witch-cult hypothesis said that the Scottish "witch" Issobell Smyth in 1661 confessed to attending meetings for witches on the cross quarter days included Candlemas. Robert Graves (oh how I loathe you ehem I mean: poet folklorist), mentioned that Candlemas was part of the 8 ancient British agricultural festivals. And Doreen Valiente ("The Mother of Wicca") included Candlemas in her list of Greater Sabbat Fire Festivals, while also listing "Gaelic counterparts," in this case Imbolc.

Sigh.

Early (read: 19th-20th century) paganism and witchcraft, or scholarly work about it, really was just: put every claim regardless of accuracy from any culture in this jar, shake it up real good, see what pops out from the mix, then pretend its historically attested to and traditional despite any and all evidence.

Also whatever Wikipedia writer wrote this, I appreciate your sassiness ... even if it was unintentional:

Due to early Wicca's influence on modern paganism and the syncretic adoption of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic motifs, the most commonly used English festival names for the Wheel of the Year tend to be the Celtic ones introduced by Gardner and the mostly Germanic-derived names introduced by Kelly, regardless whether the celebrations are based on those cultures.

I love lilith and to me lilith is as free as the chill of the swift starkissed winds! Despite our differences I pray may Peace be upon you :3

I have no problems with you blocking me, please block people like me if we upset you. My unease was being blocked after someone asked an open ended accusatory question—which I now realize you didn't do. I didn't realize that you used the word misosyncretism, I have dyslexia and misunderstood and thought you were saying I was a misogynist so I am sorry for that misunderstanding and will erase those tags.

🔹Not Needing Opinions🔹

If you don't need anyone's opinion on whether or not something is closed don't reblog a post saying a particular thing is open. You are inviting dissenting opinions— whether its from Jews or non-Jews— when you reblog someone else's post with your own opinion. If you don't want to discuss open vs closed then simply ignore posts that say Lilith is closed, block people who say she is closed, do whatever, but don't engage if it makes you upset.

People are going to have opinions and, again, my opinion is that Lilith is closed based on numerous Jewish voices I have listened to. I recognize not every person in a group is going to agree with each other because no group is a monolith, but I do my best to listen to the voices of a paticular culture and come to a conclusion.

🔹My Opinion🔹

Yes, I am "very keen to summon" my own opinions because its my blog. If I reblog and add to a post I'm giving an opinion... thats kind of the point of blogging.

My conclusion is that non-Jews worship Lilith as a part of cultural Christianity, an ahistorical mythology they refuse to admit is modern, ignore all open entities that still fit the bill, and I see a lot of antisemitism among them. As well as a lot of Islamaphobia & Chrsitophobia. It is a form of cultural appropriation for their own comfort because they cannot be bothered to learn actual history.

My observation is that the majority of Lilith worshippers don't actually care about Lil-demons, they use the demons as a tool to try and validate their worship as something rooted in a non-Jewish historical tradition, when it is not. Lil demons are a convenient excuse. In reality they cling to her because they see her as a feminist icon who stood up the the Big Bad Misogynistic Abrahamic God™.

There is no need for non-Jews to worship a Jewish figure ahistorically when there are plenty of actual Ancient Near Eastern Goddesses who are open.

Thats my opinion. Its what I'm standing by.

🔹Pseudo-history🔹

Now again, I'm not going to try and argue from the Jewish side it is not my place. But I can and will argue from a Sumerian Polytheism and accuracy in history side.

Lilith is not a member of the Lil demons, she is not Ardat-Lilî even if there are some similarities. I show information about Lil-demons here and they are not Lilith. Syncretism is not the problem that was common in the Ancient Near East— Inana, Nanaya, Ištar, Šaušga— as one example. There may be some connection between Lilith and Ardat Lilî: mainly influencing the characterization of the Hebrew Lilith in the Book of Isaiah, but there is no evidence they are one in the same. There is no evidence they were ever considered one in the same by any ancient people or traditions. The issue isn't syncretism its pseudo-history.

They were not syncretic in history. Lil demons come from Mesopotamian tradition which spans the 4th millennium BCE to the 1st millennium BCE; while the Sumerian language continued as a liturgical language for quite some time the Sumerian Civilization ended circa 2000-1700 BCE. Aside from the extremely minor mention in Isiah 34:14, the story most Lilith worshippers base her on comes from a midrash written at some point during the 1st millennium CE. This is a significant time difference and people just seem to wipe away time differences as if they don't matter, or they simply can't wrap their head around them.

Pseudo-history absolutely can be harmful and I absolutely abhor pseudo history and always will. I literally have an entire tag, #letsdebunk , for it and its been apart of my blogging since I started in 2017.

"We don't go after the Exodus lie"

Plenty do, plenty of Jews debate the historicity of stories in Jewish literature including the Tanakh, as do many Christians when reading the 'Old Testament'. (Also I would call it a myth not a lie). But whether or not Exodus actually happened in history is very different than making things up and claiming that it was a real religion and real mythology people once believed. Saying "Exodus is a story in the Tanakh and Old Testament and it says [insert story]," is different than saying "Lilith was originally a Sumerian Goddess of love and war," when she wasn't.

You are comparing apple to oranges. The fake history around Lilith is more akin to saying something like "Exodus is a story about how an ancient Egyptian God punished Egyptians for there bad deeds and Jewish slaves escaped while their was chaos and then they found a tribe worshiping a God named YHWH and adopted the religion of that tribe" <- that is not the story of Exodus its abunch of made up bullshit. Made up bullshit is what I consider most modern neo-pagan/left hand path/witch claims about Lilith.

Pseudo-history is used to culturally appropriate many things not just Lilith. It has many problems:

It's used to make bigoted claims against Jews, such as "the Jews killed Jesus" which is historically factually wrong and one of the most damaging sources of antisemitism in history.

Bigotry against Christians, by claiming their only role in history is oppression and the silencing of any Christian voices including POC the world over. Like the dumb St Patrick pagan persecution story which is listed as a false meme by Snopes but shows up as a real belief among neo-pagans. This is also extremely dangerous towards African Diaspora Religions that are syncretized with Christianity, as just one example of how Christophobia is dangerous.

Bigotry against Muslims, by claiming they have solely been a patriarchal oppressor that made no advancements to humanity and only offer "violent jihadism." Which is false and ignores actual Islamic history because real history is very inconvenient for the narrative

Its used to validate bullshit like the Burning Times, blood based witchcraft lineage, and a false sense of persecution among modern neo-pagans. A completely toxic belief.

Its used by feminists who claim a unsubstantiated matriarchal pre-historic religion destroyed by evil patriarchy. They use it to deny anyone who isn't a cis-woman from Goddess worship, witchcraft, and other neo-pagan traditions and claim transwomen and transfemmes are just another iteration of the evil patriarchy trying to taint there ancient Goddess faith. A faith that never existed. Pseudo-history as a tool of transphobia.

Its used by Wiccans and neo-pagans to ignore real Irish history. And add things like Ostara a made up holiday based on the Goddess "Ēsotre" of dubious historicity according to medieval historian Bede & Mabon's fabrication by Aiden Kelly based on the name of a Welsh folk hero.

Its used to fabricate stories about deities that may or may not be real, like Ēsotre mentioned above, and then connect her to the holiday of Easter, and then make a huge leap and connect that to real historical deities like Ištar. Which is also used as a false sense of persecution among neo-pagans.

It can be a weapon for racial/ethnic supremacists. For example, the idea that Hellenic Polytheism was a national religion unique to the Hellenes is pseudo-history used by the boarding on ethnic supremacist YSEE organization.

Not to mention all the horrific pseudo-history of the extremely antisemitic Satanism group that I won't name. That constantly claims Lucifer is a Sumerian God or whatever and spams the inboxes of neo-pagans/witches/polytheists.

Its used by new agers to validate their appropriation of traditions from Dharmic religions for their own inaccurate purposes.

Its used to support, often very racist, "ancient alien" claims.

I could keep going and going and going with fake history touted among neo-pagans, witches, polytheists, left hand path folk, occultists, and new agers that is dangerous but hopefully I've gotten my point across.

"Recreating Christian persecution in a way"

If its not abundantly clear from my above examples pseudo-history is used to fabricate a lot of Christian persecution claims that have serious negative impacts. I don't even know what you mean by this so honestly I'm not going to try arguing against it.

Bottom line: pseudo-history absolutely is harmful in a religious context.

🔹Sumerian Polytheism🔹

As for "deifying" her up in Sumerian Polytheism. No I am 100% against that. Don't deify up demons and claim its still Sumerian polytheism because it isn't— its modern demonolatry.

First, Lilith isn't Sumerian.

Second, demons have their place in Sumerian cosmology and I'm not going to deify them. If a demon was honored, such as Pazuzu, then I many honor them. But I will not view Sumerian/Mesopotamian demons as Diĝir.

Third, I am a revivalist with a heavy reconstructionist approach, I value the real history of Ancient Near Eastern religions, cosmologies, and mythologies with a particular focus on Sumerian times (Ur III and prior) for my own faith.

This means I will always stand against pseudo-history, debunk claims, and defend actual ANE & Sumerian history. Ancient cultures deserve to be respected and not lied about. Pseudo-history is a lie.

🔹Last Thoughts🔹

Please do not pray to Lilith for me the mention in the ask made me feel uncomfortable.

Just like the "recreating Christian persecution" sentence in your ask I don't understand the "fraudulent behavior" statement so I can't really address it.

Tone clarification: The tone of this post is meant to be informative and explanatory not hostile and argumentative.

---

TL;DR Lil demons are not Lilith. Lilith is Jewish and I stand by my opinion that she is apart of a closed tradition. Pseudo-history is dangerous and I will always reject it.

EDIT: After reading their tags on this (x) and their rhetoric in the first reply to this post I think its better for me to not interact with this person. So I've decided to block. They've stated their stance and its literally just strawman arguments, many false equivalences, and whataboutisms; I have no time or patience for that. But this post is still useful as a rebuke against pseudo- history in our communities so I'll leave it up, I worked hard on it. I also deleted the original response post since it's redundant now. [Edit 2] The person has been extremely ableist towards me more than once, threatened me, tried to bypass my blocks, wished violent death on me more than once. I did report them and tumblr took one of their posts down... which is not enough but I won't waste my time trying to get tumblr moderators to do their job.

🔹And old debunk post that I'm turning into its own post🔹

"Nergal, sumerian god of war, disease and destructive sun"

No, not at all. By the end of both myths he absolutely wanted his marriage. Here is me gushing over the myth.

He tries to hide in both versions of the myth which one could assume means he didn’t want the marrige but had no choice; thats a false conclusion based on one section of each myth rather than examining the whole. In the first version he was sure he would be killed if he went down so tried to hide. In the second version he goes down but when he comes back up to heaven the Gods decide to hide him so he doesn’t have to return. In essence, he really was not in the mood to deal with the consequences of his actions when he chose not to bow to Namtar, Ereškigal’s son and Sukkal.

If Nergal did not want to be her husband he would have killed her— it's that simple.

🌹Longer Later Version of the Myth🌹

In the longer version he goes down, makes love to Ereškigal for six days; he then tricks her by making a false promise of returning. She allows him to return to heaven without sounding the alarm. Anu, Enlil, and Ea all know that Ereškigal will seek to bring him back down so they disguise him. (Why is he called son of Ištar? No idea.)

Ereškigal asks her father to send Nergal down to be her husband. When he is not returned to her she threatens Anu by saying she will send up the dead.

(Opinion on the Irkalla usage)

Namtar finally finds him; he gives a long speech about traveling back down. Nergal “takes the speech to heart” and follows instructions so that he doesn’t have to removing clothing as he goes down; he gives objects instead.

In the broken text, we see that Nergal is speaking [Footnote 98], the following line we do not know who is talking but Nergal is threatened with death to become a permanent resident of Kur [Footnote 99].

When he finally gets past all seven gates, he laughs. He goes directly to the throne and drags the Queen of the realm he just entered to him by her hair. Importantly, Ereškigal is described as the love of his heart. They embrace and make love for 6 days. On the 7th day Anu makes the verdict that Nergal will dwell with Ereškigal for the rest of his days.

In the passage that contains footnote 99, someone threatened to kill Nergal, the translator clarifies it would be to make him a permanent resident of Kur. So Anu made him a permanent resident of Kur— without him having to be killed.

🌹Earlier Version of the Myth🌹

"But, this shows it wasn’t his choice?"

No, he acceptes Anu’s decision. Ereškigal the love of his heart, as we've seen, if she wasn't he would have killed her if he did not agree with Anu’s decision. The earlier version of this myth proves that.

In the earlier myth, when he does not bow to Namtar, Ereškigal demands he comes to Kur, not to apologize, but in order to kill him. Nergal initially hides but when he is found out he becomes fearful and wheeps for he is certain he will die. However, Ea sends with him some troops in order to abate the fear.

When he finally gets through the 7 gates his fear has vanished. He goes to Ereškigal, forces her onto the ground, and is about to cut her head off.

However, Ereškigal cries out and asks to speak which he allows. She offers to be his wife. With that offer he becomes gentle. The love that will develop between them as husband and wife is bluntly showcased by a kiss and him wiping her tears away.

🌹His Choice🌹

In the earlier version Nergal accepts Ereškigal’s proposal. In the later version, if he did not approve of Anu’s decision, he could have killed her just as he nearly did in the first one.

In the later version he would not even need any form of troops or help from Ea to kill her. Because:

A.) He is not afraid of dying.

B.) Ereškigal is deeply in love with him, she weeps profusely when his trick is revealed, when she realizes she was lied to. She begs, laments, pleads, and eventually threatens her father.

C.) When he returns he asserts a level of dominance by pulling her from her throne into an embrace— she is not his captor, she is his lover.

🌹Conclusion🌹

Tl;DR-ish

The love that shall bloom between the two is evident in both versions of the myth. The “Love of his heart,” and becoming gentle by kissing her and wiping her tears— as one would comfort their wife.

Nergal wanted his marriage ❤️

🌹Sources🌹

▪️Earlier version: “New Readings in the Amarna Versions of Adapa and Nergal and Ereshkigal” by Shlomo Izre'el. http://www.academia.edu/3538014/New_Readings_in_the_Amarna_Versions_of_Adapa_and_Nergal_and_Ereshkigal

▪️About the Armana letters in which the early version is found: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/amlet/hd_amlet.htm

▪️Later version: The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures edited by James A. Pritchard

▪️About the Sultantepe Tablets where the later version is found: https://biaa.ac.uk/research/item/name/study-of-the-sultantepe-tablets Link broke

🌹

I really just hate this theory of some monotheistic pre-historic Mother Great Goddess; I hate peaceful matriarchal pre-history society theory even more. Were there cultures where Goddesses reigned supreme? Not impossible but books like this seem to not actually care about religion and care much more about a gotcha-moment argument for feminism.

Its also extremely reactionary (not the word I'm looking for but close enough) to the dominance of current religions. Like you can tell just how much she can't stand "Judeo-christian" religion and values though out much of it, she mentions Islam as well at the beginning:

She eventually goes on to make the argument that the ruling elite of the "Hebrews" were actually Indo-European in origin. She takes the historical accounts of the Bible as fact way too much; I don't know if thats because the book was written in 1970s and the Bible was considered a better historical tool back then than as it is now or for some other reason. Either way the scholarly consensus (from many fields) shows that the ancient Israelites were just a Canaanite group no different from their neighbors in the Levant. They simply evolved with their own language and religion just as their neighbors did. Not that they lived in Egypt for generations and then invaded Canaan. A lot of her argument in some places relies on the idea that the Hebrews were outsiders, some coming from Egypt and invading Canaan at the behest of their God and others coming from the north Indo-Europeans/Indo-Aryans who had a male religion and the two groups combined and formed "The Hebrews" whose ruling elite were extremely antagonistic to the "Goddess Religion"

Which speaking of the Indo-European connection this was such a fucking bizarre passage that popped up when I was reading:

Like..... why did Hitler come into this discussion?

Also she makes the claims that earliest humans didn't connect sex to pregnancy and thus didn't have any sense of paternity and therefore saw woman as just magically being able to create a new human......and .... how stupid do you think our ancestors are?

The claims about aboriginal Australians is ridiculously reductive and the conclusions she draws from it are even worse. The only way to come to these conclusions is to study indigenous people through an extremely thick lens of "primitive people can't possibly understand science!" If anyones intrested in the idea you can read it here, paternity IS recognized (page 2) https://www.jstor.org/stable/2803097?read-now=1&refreqid=excelsior%3A338b1b647c8b5dd8b37523c756a9008c&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents (you can get 99 articles for free each month if you want to read it)

Anyways, one thing I REALLY hate is, Goddess Religion Theory's desire to lump all Near Eastern & Mediterranean Goddesses as all the same. Like if you want to believe that, you do you, but its not history.

I literally have a post coming out soon (well "soon") (I don't know if I'll ever publish it, that showcases how Astarte = Asherah is 100% false from the perspective of the ancient people who worshipped them.

I don't know why authors who approach the pre-history Goddess theory insist that all Goddesses were the same. Would a multitude of Goddesses detract from their argument?? I don't see how. Its especially weird considering this isn't religious apologetics shes not writing this as a theological or historical argument. She says herself this is to help woman view the world differently and draw new conclusions. So why is a ancient monotheistic Goddess preferred over polytheistic Goddesses? That was actually what I was going to debunk, a quote that called them all the same, but basically said screw it after finding the book and "reading" huge chunks of it.

One of the most annoying things is, unlike many books I debunk making dumb claims about Mesopotamia, Stone actually cites tons of sources. BUT she does it in such a way that its hard to fact check. No footnotes or endnotes just names and quotes with a MASSIVE bibliography. So I have no way of knowing if Professor [name] is actually in a field relevant to the claims they are making. For example, she cites Jacobsen, cool he's an Assyriologist, she also cites Robert Graves .... not so cool, he is mainly a poet. These two sources aren't on the same level of credibility when speaking about ancient religion. But I only know that because I know of both Jacobsen and Graves prior to reading this; allllll the myriad of other people she mentions I don't know. Without footnotes or endnotes it would be a arduous task to look up every person she is citing to see if they actually have credentials to support the claims in a 200+ page book. Sources wise she's fantastic simply because she actually provides them, unlike most. But the method makes it extremely frustrating.

Anyways. I'm 100% okay with Goddess Worshippers please don't think I'm not. If your a monotheist and view all Goddesses as The Singular Supreme Goddess or a duotheist who views them all as facets of The Goddess, or sees them as archtypes or whatever else— thats fine. What I hate is re-writing history to try and fit these claims. The people of the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean did not view all their Goddesses as the same, please stop twisting it to fit your new religion or your political ideology.