Kabbalah and the Zohar

Your goal in this lesson: to understand Lilith’s place in medieval Jewish mysticism, and to tell it apart from modern occult borrowings.

What Kabbalah is

Later tradition Kabbalah, Hebrew for “receiving” or “tradition”, is a family of Jewish mystical teachings that took shape in Provence and Spain in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Kabbalists described God’s inner life through ten sefirot, divine attributes, and asked how evil and impurity could arise in a world made by a good God. Lilith became one of their answers.

The left emanation

Later tradition Around the 1260s or 1270s, the Castilian Kabbalist Isaac ben Jacob ha-Kohen wrote a short work usually called the Treatise on the Left Emanation. It describes a demonic “left side” mirroring the holy emanations. Here Samael and Lilith are born together, joined as one being, like a dark reflection of Adam and Eve. The treatise even distinguishes an elder Lilith, partner of Samael, from a younger Lilith, partner of Asmodeus.

The Zohar

Later tradition The Zohar, “Radiance”, is the central work of medieval Kabbalah, written mostly in Aramaic as a commentary on the Torah. It presents itself as the teaching of the second-century sage Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. Most scholars, following Gershom Scholem, attribute its core to Moses de León and his circle in Castile, around the 1280s. Many traditional Jews regard it as ancient and holy, and that difference of view deserves respect.

In the Zohar, Samael and Lilith become the king and queen of the other side, a dark mirror of the holy union of the divine masculine and feminine. Lilith seduces men in their sleep and threatens children, the old roles in a grand new frame.

The husks

Later tradition In sixteenth-century Safed, Isaac Luria taught that creation involved a “breaking of the vessels”, which scattered sparks of divine light into the kelipot, the “husks” or “shells” of impurity. Human beings, through the commandments and prayer, help lift the sparks back. In this system Lilith remains a central figure of the other side.

Modern borrowings

Modern Western occultists borrowed these ideas, spelling the husks “qliphoth”. Kenneth Grant’s Nightside of Eden (1977) is a key text for modern qliphothic occultism, where Lilith often becomes a goddess of the dark side to be explored. That is a modern esoteric reworking, not Jewish Kabbalah, and honest practitioners say so.

Try this

Today’s exercise: make a short timeline with four dates: the Ben Sira tale (8th to 10th centuries), the Treatise on the Left Emanation (1260s to 1270s), the Zohar (1280s) and Kenneth Grant (1977). Write one word next to each that sums up how Lilith appears there.

Quick recap

• Thirteenth-century Kabbalah pairs Lilith with Samael on the “left side”.
• The Zohar, attributed by most scholars to Moses de León, makes them king and queen of the other side.
• Lurianic Kabbalah places her among the kelipot, the husks.
• Modern qliphothic occultism is a Western reworking, not Jewish Kabbalah.

Keep going

Press “Mark as done” and continue with Lilith transformed.

Need a refresher? Go back to Bowls, amulets and Ben Sira or see the whole course.

Sources

• Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941).
• Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess, 3rd enlarged edition (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990).
• Kenneth Grant, Nightside of Eden (London: Frederick Muller, 1977).

Go deeper: the Lilith pages on this site

Mark as done