Lilith: Myth vs. Archetype
I’m spending a lot of time these days with Adam, Lilith & Eve, digging into the mythos to understand more about why the natural feminine is perceived to be so dangerous.
We hear that Lilith represents the demonic feminine and that she’s to be feared. Yet when you actually read the myth, you’ll find that you don’t know anyone who’s done the heinous things attributed to her.
There’s a gigantic gulf between how we’re taught to think of Lilith and how we live her story. This is because the story of Lilith is essentially the myth of the patriarchy, and the feminine expressed is, from its perspective, the most dangerous possibility. There’s a lot to work with here, but the underlying message I have for you today is to keep in mind this gulf between the theory we teach our children and the way that they will in actuality live the story.
Look up the myth anywhere and read it. As you do, remember that it’s a control mechanism designed to make people feel bad about having an instinctive side that can’t be controlled by the mind. Essentially, we’re supposed to feel bad about ourselves because we are biological beings, and not mere computer minds.
The fact that we still live her story, despite the attempts to demonize her, is a perpetual thorn in the side of those charged with maintaining our culture as it is. This natural part of us can’t be stomped out, no matter how much it might seem to serve the aims of the particular kind of society we’ve created.
Our task now is to re-interpret Lilith based in how we actually live her story, the archetype, as we leave behind the feminine-negating mythos that villifies Lilith, Adam’s other half, and elevates in her place the bland, milquetoast, watered-down, opinionless submissive who is Eve.
See Tom’s website to order a new true Black Moon Lilith natal report and to book a private consultation.
June 11, 2008 By Tom Jacobs
Lilith in Real Life
I’m taking a pause after writing a natal true Black Moon Lilith report while the Sun was in Taurus. I have a sense of needing to bring my energy back in and recharge. The present Mercury retro is pretty convenient timing, isn’t it?
Here’s me debriefing myself: I learned a tremendous amount about Lilith while writing the report, with useful words coming through about what I know in my bones about Lilith. I also connected on a new level with my own experience of the archetype (it’s in everyone, not just women). For a few years I’ve been working with my clients’ Liliths, helping them see in what arena of life they’ve invited suppression for bringing out their instinctual selves, and what they can do now to release whatever they’ve taken on about others’ fear of witnessing the wildness in them.
A major part of this is in affirming for people that this part of themselves is not a bad thing to feel shameful for having. We’re told Lilith is a demon, and the word needs to get around that demonizing the wild in us is a measure of control devised by people afraid that individuals will flail around violently and injure others, and destroy groups. Yet it’s our instinct, and we need it to be healthy.
The truth is that the wild in us can be integrated into our daily lives. Sometimes it does involve flailing (but this can be enabled consciously), and it acts violently only as a result of suppression. I’m assiting people to figure out how to integrate this energy proactively, with consciousness, into their lives.
My true Black Moon is in Sagittarius in the 2nd, conjunct Neptune-Mercury-Moon in Sagittarius/2nd-3rd. An astrologer a few years ago used a phrase for this that’s stuck with me: the satellite dish. It seems I can gather intuitive information of any sort if I just choose and figure out where to aim the dish, and that’s a fun and exciting part of the work that I do. And yet with Lilith there, I’ve internalized others’ fears that I might say inappropriate things, so I’ve mostly had a big tarp draped over this amazing tool.
A few years ago I realized that a key dynamic in my family growing up was that there were two people who were terrified someone would say something important-seeming and disturb the status quo, and there were two people who couldn’t stop saying things they felt were important, precisely to disturb the status quo.
I was in the second group, and when young, it seemed to my child logic that love and acceptance from my sister and father might depend on keeping my mouth shut.
So, can you guess what I did?
Yup, threw a tarp over the dish that seems designed to bring info to shake up the status quo.
And now, here I am, being asked what astrology conferences I speak at and where are my books, and I’m learning how and why to take the tarp off this admittedly amazing piece of equipment I’m blessed to be sporting.
Everyone has a Lilith story. Understanding what your Lilith has to say, and how to bring that out with consciousness, is an integral part of wholeness, of health. You have an instinctive voice waiting to come out that offers you a chance to usher yourself into a more vibrant aliveness. Lilith represents our primal selves, which are our means of connecting with life on a more meaningful, less merely-brainy ways.
Tom is available for private consultations. See his website for more info, to book a consultation, or to order a new true Black Moon Lilith natal report, outlining your Lilith by natal house, sign and aspect and upcoming transits and progressions.
May 27, 2008 By Tom Jacobs
A Lilith Profile
Recently, I met an astrologer with Neptune in Scorpio precisely on the Midheaven (Aug. 24, 1968, 6:22 PM, Redding, CA). I asked her if she’s an antenna for Neptunian power plays, and we talked about her 8th house South Node and what the 2nd house North Node is asking her to do.
All of us are conditioned in early life, and therefore much of what we have to heal & release typically involves what we learned from our families, whether spoken outwardly in the environments of our youth or not. She told me about the dynamics in her home growing up, mostly in terms of the differing levels of support for each of the children in the family, the attitudes their parents had about each of them that carry through to the present. And it sounded a little like something beyond an 8th house Libra South Node might be at work, though there were plenty of 8th house-related power plays and dark Libran issues of relationship imbalances and buried resentment.
Something in the story told me she’d been singled out in her family system for some reason that no one understood or had any idea how to talk about, so I looked up her true Black Moon Lilith (BML), which is opposite that Neptune, precisely on the Taurus IC.
Adding Lilith to the discussion helped contextualize her experience. Lilith in a person’s chart tells us many things, but the first is what part of the person is judged by others to be dangerous, and is therefore (according to others) in need of editing or suppressing. Lilith is a wild, instinctive influence in us and doesn’t want to be corralled, edited or reshaped. Yet we might give in to this pressure because, especially when we’re young, our survival might be threatened if we were to be thrown out of the group.
Not every situation is really that dramatic, of course, but many of us are carrying emotional memories from past lives in which we didn’t survive precisely because we didn’t yield to the mandates of the groups of which we were members. And when we’re young and our families are most of our world, it can certainly seem that survival is at stake.
Her true BML is in Taurus on the IC, the beginning of the 4th house, the house of family, heritage, roots and a person’s most private self. My acquaintance seems viewed by her family as Lilith, dangerous and in need of editing or suppressing. Her natural sense of establishing a value-based approach to life (Taurus) seems dangerous to them, and gets her into trouble with them. If she’s honest with herself about where she’s rooted (4th house), and what’s truly going on inside (4th house again), she’ll find Lilith there. And even if she doesn’t, others will still see the energy in her.
With Lilith on the IC or in the 4th house, it’s also true that our family of origin (or those who raised us, whether blood relatives or not) carries Lilith’s story. Her family has, likely for many generations, experienced at least some aspects of Lilith’s story. The censure from the greater society that any family would receive for representing Lilith will be distilled into rules and directives centered on how not to draw negative attention or punishment for being in some way wild and outside the reach of a community’s or society’s censuring arm, and will then be passed down through the generations framed as information necessary for survival.
The underlying energy of such inheritance can feel/seem like this: People, we can’t afford to have anyone around here acting out of bounds. Get in line, stop complaining and get with the group program. There’s a reason for everything, and just trust that it’s for your own good.
And then you have my acquaintance, who appears as Lilith to them, threatening to start leaking uncomfortable truths that seem to threaten the stability of the family system (Taurus/4th) at any moment. Even if she never spoke truths that made them uncomfortable, she would, to them, always seem on the verge of potentially doing so. And so they do everything they can to make her feel like she shouldn’t express herself - of course they do! They’re afraid of the potential repercussions, the kind they carry emotional memories of from the karmic past (past lives).
She’s got a karmic role in her family system as someone volunteering to speak uncomfortable truths, and exploring how to develop and stick with her own value system in a filial climate that doesn’t want what she’s bringing, that’s afraid of it. A big challenge for her is to honor her own needs while not cutting herself off from her family.
Much of her healing related to Lilith involves accepting that the ways that they have treated her are reflections not of her actual value or worth as a person (Taurus/4th house), but of their fear of having the status quo of the family disturbed by uncomfortable truths (also Taurus/4th house). As she lives the story of Lilith, she can change the entire dynamic by honoring who she deeply knows she is above all the feedback from others that might be hurtful.
And in case you didn’t see this coming, this echoes and underscores the symbolism of her Aries 2nd house North Node, where she’s asking herself to learn to bravely assert and directly live (Aries) a life based in her own value system (2nd house), which will result for her in a new level of self-esteem (2nd house), putting her love for herself before the judgments/esteem of others (Libra/8th house South Node).
Tom is available for private evolutionary astrology & intuitive counseling sessions. See his website for more information, and to pre-order on his new True Black Moon Lilith natal report, available in late May.
May 19, 2008 By Tom Jacobs
A Thought on Conditioning
After being related a story by a friend just back from a rather intense family Thanksgiving visit, I loaned her a favorite book of mine, What Do You Say After You Say Hello?, by Eric Berne, MD. If you’ve ever wondered why people do the things they do, check out this book. It’s a pretty easy read, given it’s a text for psychoanalysts.
So, what is it that you say after you say hello? It depends on what you’re trying to get from any given interaction. Berne outlines the scripts people live, and shows how we’re conditioned by our early home environments to perform certain roles.
SO, then, again: conditioning. The roles we play aren’t indicative of our true natures. An astrological birth chart is a map of possibilities, and two major factors determine which sets of realities we create from those possibilities: conditioning and free will.
Our free will is often, by our beliefs of what’s possible, shaped by that conditioning. Okay, so I’m really saying that it’s often not even two factors that determine what reality we’ll create; there are times when it’s all about conditioning.
Last week I gave a talk on a new view of spirituality in the birth chart. When dealing with any issue, including spirituality, key is a client’s conditioning. Regarding matters of spirit, we have to look not only at Neptune/Pisces/12th house, but also Jupiter/Sagittarius/9th house to understand the conditioning surrounding belief. We have to look at the asteroid Lucifer (1930) to understand the conditioning around a person’s relationship with the idea of and the reality of the existence of a higher power. We have to look at the asteriod Arjunsuri (20300) to understand the person’s relationship with his or her own conscience (whose voice/authority is considered the ultimate authority?). The picture is pretty complex when you get deeply into any individual chart, but it all comes down to conditioning.
As long as we’re on the subject, I’ll note that every interaction you have with your family and those with whom you’ve been close for a long time, offer the opportunity to see your conditioning. If you’re someone who has difficulty dealing on some level dealing with family/where you came from and yet are going back for upcoming holiday festivities of some sort or other, see if you can catch yourself in however you want to react to any stressful situations and hold up a second. Wait a minute, and instead of reacting how you perhaps always have, make a different choice. That’s how you start breaking conditioning!
Brought to you by the “Down With Outmoded Conditioning” Committee, with additional support from the “Pluto in Libra ‘Can’t We All Get Along?’” Cabal.
Tom is available for spirit-guided karmic astrology readings. Contact him via his website.
November 25, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Notes on the Myths We Live - Finding Ourselves in the Movies
I’m staying at friends’, catsitting. They have quite a collection of movies (each is Sun-Neptune), and I’m a movie lover (Neptune-Mercury-Moon in 2/3, sextile Venus-Pluto in 12). I found myself busier during the stay than I anticipated, so I didn’t watch dozens of the movies over the last few days as a non-reality-based part of me had dreamily anticipated.
When faced with choosing one to watch tonight, I’m reminded of some work I’m developing on the idea that we’re living myths. At different times in our lives we relate to and bring to the world different stories. What these are at any given time in a life can be identified simply and easily by looking at the characters and themes in stories and various media that appeal to us again and again.
As a Scorpio, you might be able to guess that stories of transformation appeal to me. I like action flicks, indie stuff and I like some historical drama and musicals/opera, but stories of characters in deep transformation in any genre really do it for me. And they have for years. I haven’t sat down to work out all the dates, but so far Pluto’s transited to conjunct most of my chart, as Pluto at 3 Libra begins a stretch from the 12th to the 3rd that contains all my major planets but Saturn. It began with Venus-Pallas in the 12th, then Ascendant, then Mars-Uranus-Ceres in the 1st (all these but Ceres in Libra, with Ceres in Scorpio), and then Neptune-Mercury-Moon in Sagittarius in the 2nd-3rd. So, I’ve had plenty of opportunity to Plutonify various aspects of myself (or, um, have various parts of me injected/flooded with Pluto), and these stories of transformation are what I relate to. It seems my personal norm, I suppose.
While I’ll never be done, but as the same particular stories appeal to me again and again, I can tell that I’m in a particular phase of this business. I’m comfortable sharing some of the history (though I might not spill all the current choices): for a long, long time, my favorite movie was David Lynch’s Dune. “The sleeper must awaken!” came through as a kind of anthem to the part of me that was trying to come through. And pretty abruptly, I note, when I began taking channeling class and incorporating work with Spirit into my readings, Dune was no longer my favorite - someone had indeed awoken.
Tom is available for consultations and lessons. See http://tdjacobs.com for more information and to book a consultation.
November 10, 2007 By Tom Jacobs