This is a story about power. How were myths created to control societal behaviour and how can they be turned around to better purpose? Where once a mythic figure was wholly negative, designed to keep both men and women in their places through fear, now she is appreciated as a way of healing our innermost suffering and pain as individuals. She clears out unwanted aspects of our lives, emphasises immanent experience and reminds us of our bond to the Earth.

The Moon also represents the Earth, as a fragment that split off millions of years ago and the other, so-called Black Moon, represented by Lilith, is “something from the female elemental force that's hidden in the shadow”. The mysteries associated with the owl and the menstrual cycle belong here too: one transformed from the monstrous medieval screech owl who roamed at night into a magical power animal; the other for its insight to instinctive sexuality.

As one ancient society sought to identify itself as separate from its neighbours, in custom and belief, with stories of foundation, it retold the myths of those neighbours, changing positive characters to negative, making deities appear weak or insignificant so as to supersede or dismiss them. Those that couldn’t be assimilated were rejected with force. Now Lilith asserts herself as the other, without as woman outcast or within as anima; champion of liberty and equality.

There are overlapping chronologies at work here: the path of the Sumerian legend and the Hebrew myth that overtook it; the artist’s discovery of the elements in each story and the order in which they were considered to reimagine the character for her psychological, spiritual and political significances. Whether a devotee who honours the goddess Inanna in reflection of her hand maiden Lilith or the hero herself in self-imposed exile, determination is never in doubt.

In contrast, and as a sort of coda to the earlier images, the Hallupu tree that had once been Lilith’s home also appears in the story of Gilgamesh. As interpreted here, he mistakes his own folly for courage and chops it down, destroying all it represents.

See also https://kenoath.wordpress.com/lilith-edits-and-links/.