This course is free and always will be. No account, no email needed. Your progress stays in your own browser. If you have met Lilith on a quote card, in a tarot deck or in a birth chart and want to know where she really comes from, this course is for you.
Lilith for Beginners: A Novice’s Path follows one of the most retold figures in Western culture through about four thousand years of sources. She begins as a group of Mesopotamian night spirits, appears once in the Bible, haunts the clay bowls of Sasanian Iraq, becomes Adam’s first wife in a medieval tale, a queen of the other side in Kabbalah and, in the twentieth century, a feminist heroine. Each lesson teaches one layer, ends with a small exercise and has a quick quiz.
What you will learn
- What the Mesopotamian lilû spirits were, and why the Burney Relief is probably not Lilith.
- What Isaiah 34:14 and the Dead Sea Scrolls actually say.
- How incantation bowls and birth amulets tried to keep liliths away.
- Where the first-wife story comes from, and why it is medieval.
- How Kabbalah made Lilith the partner of Samael.
- How painters, poets, feminists and astrologers transformed her.
- How to begin a respectful, reflective practice if you want one.
How it works
Open a lesson, read it, try the exercise and press “Mark as done”. Your progress is saved privately in your browser, so nothing is sent to me. When every lesson is done, you can open your certificate of completion.
I label what I teach in three layers, as everywhere on this site: Historical for ancient evidence, Later tradition for medieval and early modern material, and Modern for the last two centuries. Modern does not mean fake. It means honest about its age.
The lessons
- Meeting Lilith
- Mesopotamian roots
- Isaiah and the Dead Sea Scrolls
- Bowls, amulets and Ben Sira
- Kabbalah and the Zohar
- Lilith transformed
- A respectful beginner’s practice
How each lesson works
Every lesson opens with its goal in one sentence. Then comes the history, with each claim labeled by layer, a short note from my own practice, one small exercise for your notebook and a quick recap. A three-question quiz checks the main idea, and nobody sees your answers. The last line links to the next lesson. If a lesson needs a second evening, give it one.
Who this course is for
Complete beginners, witches who want to check what they have read online and anyone who loves myth. It does not ask you to believe anything. It does ask you to keep apart what ancient texts say, what medieval writers added and what we choose today. If you came here because of Black Moon Lilith in your birth chart, lesson 6 explains where that astrological point comes from and how new it is.
What you need
A notebook and a quiet corner. For the last lesson, a candle or an LED light, a cup of water and, if you like, a small mirror.
Start now
Begin with Meeting Lilith. It takes about ten minutes.
Go deeper
My Lilith guide has the full story on one page, and the history of Lilith in sources goes text by text with a timeline. The deities hub links everything else.
Sources
- Isaiah 34:14, King James Version (1611).
- James A. Montgomery, Aramaic Incantation Texts from Nippur (Philadelphia, 1913).
- David Stern and Mark Jay Mirsky (eds.), Rabbinic Fantasies (1990), with Norman Bronznick’s translation of the Alphabet of Ben Sira.
- Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess, 3rd enlarged edition (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990).
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