< chamber PILL II: LILITH AND THE NAME THAT SHOULD NOT BE SPOKEN ====================================================== 2026-08-23 There is a moment in the story of Lilith that, to me, is far more fascinating than the simple idea that she may have been Adam’s first woman. It is the moment when she decides to leave. She is not expelled from Eden, she is not sentenced to abandon the garden, and she does not flee in secret during the night. According to the best known medieval version of the legend, Lilith does something extraordinary: she pronounces the Ineffable Name of God and, through it, rises into the air and leaves Adam behind. It is a brief passage, but it contains almost everything that would later make Lilith such a powerful figure in the imagination. There is rebellion, secret knowledge, magic, sexuality, divine authority, and a woman who chooses exile rather than submission. The detail of the Sacred Name completely changes the story. Lilith is not merely a wife abandoning her husband. She knows a word that belongs to the realm of the Creator himself, and she knows how to use it. The story appears clearly in the Alphabet of Ben Sira, an anonymous work probably composed sometime between the eighth and tenth centuries. It is there that we find the earliest surviving complete version of the story in which Lilith is identified by name as Adam’s first companion. There are earlier traditions about a first woman and, separately, much older references to Lilith as a creature of the night, but it is in Ben Sira that these paths finally meet in a story recognizable to anyone familiar with the myth today. (jewishchristianlit.com [1]) [](#before-eve "Jump to this heading")Before Eve ------------------------------------------------ The story begins with a simple idea. God had created Adam from the earth and saw that it was not good for him to remain alone. Instead of taking the new woman from Adam’s body, as would later happen with Eve, God creates Lilith from the same earth from which he had made the man. This detail may seem small, but the entire story depends on it. Lilith cannot simply accept a hierarchy between them because, in her own memory of creation, there is no foundation for one. Adam came from the earth. Lilith did too. Neither was taken from the body of the other, and neither possesses, by virtue of the material from which they were created, an earlier or superior position. It is during sexual intercourse that this difference becomes a conflict. In the Alphabet of Ben Sira, Adam demands to remain above Lilith. She refuses to lie beneath him and argues that the two are equal because both were created from the earth. This is not merely an argument about sexual position. Within the logic of the story, the body makes visible a much larger struggle over authority. Who remains above? Who stays below? Who has the right to determine the place of the other? (sefaria.org [2]) Neither of them gives in. It is at this moment that Lilith turns to something Adam apparently does not expect. She pronounces the Ineffable Name of God. And she flies. [](#the-name "Jump to this heading")The Name -------------------------------------------- It is difficult today to grasp the full force of this passage without understanding the importance of the divine Name within Jewish tradition. The God of Israel has several titles and designations in Scripture, but the name represented by the four Hebrew letters YHWH, known as the Tetragrammaton, came to possess a special sanctity. Its pronunciation was avoided, and in reading, forms such as Adonai, meaning “Lord,” were used in its place. Rabbinic tradition itself uses expressions such as Shem ha-Meforash, Shem ha-Meyuhad, or simply HaShem, “the Name,” when dealing with this question. (jewishencyclopedia.com [3]) The Alphabet of Ben Sira does not give us a transcription of what Lilith is supposed to have pronounced. The text speaks of the Ineffable Name, and later traditions and interpretations naturally brought this expression close to the Tetragrammaton and the Shem ha-Meforash. That is why modern retellings often state directly that Lilith pronounced YHWH. The more important point, however, does not depend on knowing which sounds came from her mouth. In the story, she knows the Name that should not be spoken. And in this world, knowledge is not passive. To know a name can mean to know the nature of something or to exercise power through that knowledge. Jewish tradition preserved for centuries discussions concerning the divine Name, its transmission, and extraordinary uses associated with it. The Jewish Encyclopedia records traditions according to which the pronunciation of the Name was reserved for specific circumstances in the Temple and also mentions belief in its extraordinary powers, including in contexts of healing. (jewishencyclopedia.com [4]) It is within this symbolic world that Lilith’s escape takes on another dimension. She does not discover a hidden passage in the walls of Paradise. She does not wait for Adam to sleep. She does not ask God for permission to end the union. She uses sacred knowledge to make herself unreachable. The Name becomes an escape. [](#lilith-flies-out-of-paradise "Jump to this heading")Lilith Flies Out of Paradise -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The text is surprisingly direct. After realizing that she and Adam will not come to an agreement, Lilith pronounces the Ineffable Name and flies into the air of the world. Adam then stands before God and complains that the woman who had been given to him has fled. God sends three angels to retrieve her, known in different transliterations as Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof. (sefaria.org [5]) This flight is one of the most beautiful elements of the myth because it makes Lilith the first human creature in the story to leave Eden voluntarily. Adam and Eve will later be expelled. Lilith leaves by her own decision. Paradise, which should represent the place no one would ever wish to abandon, becomes for her less desirable than the freedom found beyond its boundaries. The direction of her escape is also significant. The angels do not find her hiding somewhere near the garden. They have to pursue her all the way to the great waters. The text says they find her in the midst of the sea, in the mighty waters where the Egyptians would one day be drowned. The reference points to the waters of the Exodus, often identified in popular tradition with the Red Sea or the Sea of Reeds. (sefaria.org [6]) There, before the angels, Lilith could simply agree to return. She refuses again. [](#the-three-angels "Jump to this heading")The Three Angels ------------------------------------------------------------ Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof bring the divine command and try to force her to return. According to the story, if Lilith refused to go back to Adam, one hundred of her children would die every day. The angels even threaten to drown her in the waters, but despite the threat, she remains where she is. (lilith.org [7]) It is at this point that the story of Adam’s first wife becomes permanently intertwined with another Lilith, one much older in the Jewish imagination, the nocturnal entity associated with danger to children and sleeping men. From the encounter with the three angels comes a pact. Lilith would recognize their names and images on amulets and spare the children placed under their protection. This part of the legend did not remain confined to literature. Amulets against Lilith, especially those connected to the protection of pregnant women and newborns, became a real part of Jewish folklore. (jewishencyclopedia.com [8]) This makes the story particularly interesting. Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof are not merely forgotten characters from a medieval tale. Their names were written on protective objects, placed near mothers and children, kept in rooms, and carried as protection against the very creature who, according to the story, once confronted them beside the sea. The myth had left the book and entered the home. [](#and-the-mountain "Jump to this heading")And the Mountain? ------------------------------------------------------------- There is a widely circulated image in modern retellings of the story. Lilith climbs a mountain or reaches the edge of a cliff, pronounces the Sacred Name of God, and throws herself into the void. In some versions, she acquires wings during the fall. In others, the Name prevents her from falling and allows her to fly away from Paradise. The image is so powerful that it feels ancient, as though it had come directly from a medieval manuscript. But the Alphabet of Ben Sira does not describe a mountain. In the surviving version of the text, the sequence is much simpler. Lilith argues with Adam, pronounces the Ineffable Name, and flies into the air. When she next appears geographically in the story, she is already in the great waters, where the three angels finally catch up with her. (sefaria.org [9]) This does not make the image of the mountain any less interesting. On the contrary, it shows how myths continue to grow after leaving their original sources. A woman standing at the edge of a precipice, pronouncing the forbidden Name before throwing herself into the unknown, is a perfect representation of the story that Ben Sira told much more economically. The precipice simply gives physical form to what was already implicit: Lilith reaches a boundary and prefers to cross it rather than return to the place assigned to her. Curiously, there are other folkloric traditions involving Lilith, mountains, deserts, and wild places, and elements from different stories eventually became mixed over the centuries. This helps explain why it is so difficult today to find a single “story of Lilith.” She has no gospel of her own. Her biography is made from texts, legends, amulets, rabbinic interpretation, demonology, Kabbalah, and countless later retellings. [](#how-did-lilith-know-the-name "Jump to this heading")How Did Lilith Know the Name? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here we arrive at a question the text leaves wonderfully unanswered: how did Lilith know the Ineffable Name of God? The Alphabet of Ben Sira simply assumes that she knows it. There is no scene in which God teaches her the Name, nor a passage in which Lilith secretly discovers it. She pronounces it at the moment she needs it, as though the knowledge had always been part of her. The lack of an explanation opened the way for countless interpretations. Some modern traditions imagined that Lilith had heard the Name in Eden. Others claimed that she had learned it directly from God. Occult retellings even constructed stories in which she discovers or obtains the pronunciation of the Name through secret means. None of this is necessary to the account in Ben Sira. There, the mystery remains intact. Perhaps that makes the passage even stronger. Adam commands language in another way. In Genesis, he receives the task of naming the animals. Lilith, in the medieval legend, knows the Name that stands above all other names. Adam names the creatures. Lilith knows the Name of the Creator. It is difficult to imagine that this opposition did not contribute to the enormous number of esoteric interpretations that would later gather around her. [](#to-know-the-name-is-to-possess-a-key "Jump to this heading")To Know the Name Is to Possess a Key -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The idea of a divine Name capable of producing effects runs through several Jewish traditions and later occupies an important place in mystical and magical currents. This does not mean there is a single doctrine according to which pronouncing certain syllables automatically grants supernatural powers. The traditions are far too numerous for such a simplification. What does exist is a long association between divine names, sanctity, reserved knowledge, and power. (jewishencyclopedia.com [10]) Within the story of Lilith, this principle is taken to its furthest consequence. The Name functions as a key that allows her to cross a boundary. Until that moment, Adam and Lilith are trapped in an argument that appears to have no solution. Adam does not accept the equality she claims, and Lilith does not accept the place he demands she occupy. When negotiation ends, she turns to something belonging to an order higher than Adam’s authority. Then she leaves the ground. The image is extraordinary because the same earth that had served as the foundation of her equality with Adam is no longer necessary. Lilith had argued that the two were equal because both had come from the soil. After pronouncing the Name, she no longer needs to remain upon that soil. She flies. [](#freedom-and-its-price "Jump to this heading")Freedom and Its Price ---------------------------------------------------------------------- It would be easy to turn this story into a simple modern fable about emancipation, but the medieval myth is darker than that. Lilith’s freedom does not lead to a peaceful life beyond Eden. She passes into the realm of demonology, becomes associated with the death of her own children and with danger to newborns, becomes a creature of the night, and in later traditions takes on an increasingly important place within the spiritual geography of opposing forces. The price of refusing to return is enormous. This may help explain why the character continues to resist simple interpretations. Lilith can be read as rebel, demon, seductress, killer of children, first woman, mother of spirits, symbol of independence, or manifestation of the dark side of creation. Depending on the century and the text being consulted, we seem to encounter almost a different Lilith. The Alphabet of Ben Sira already contains this ambiguity. The woman who pronounces the Sacred Name in order to escape submission is the same one who, only a few paragraphs later, appears associated with a terrible threat against children. The story feels no need to resolve this contradiction. Ancient myths rarely carry the modern obligation to make their characters morally consistent. Perhaps that is precisely why they survive. [](#from-eden-into-the-night "Jump to this heading")From Eden into the Night ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- After Ben Sira, Lilith continued to grow. Medieval Kabbalistic literature expanded her position and associated her with Samael, creating a dark counterpart to the union of Adam and Eve. In the Zohar and in other mystical traditions, she is no longer simply the first wife who refused Adam. She becomes a figure belonging to the spiritual architecture of the universe itself, associated with the forces of the other side, nocturnal sexuality, and the birth of spirits. (jewishencyclopedia.com [11]) But that brief scene of her escape remains the point where everything changes. Before it, Lilith is still in Eden. After it, she belongs to the world outside. Between these two states there is only a word that the text refuses to reveal. That is what I find so fascinating about this story. The heart of the episode is not simply that a woman abandons Adam. It is that she manages to leave because she knows something sacred. Her knowledge produces movement. The Name that men avoided pronouncing becomes, in her mouth, the thing that breaks her final bond with Paradise. We do not know exactly what she said. We do not know how she learned it. We do not know what the Name sounded like. The author of Ben Sira does not need to tell us. It is enough to say that Lilith knew it. And according to the legend, that was enough to make her fly. Links: [1] https://jewishchristianlit.com/alphabet/ [2] https://www.sefaria.org/Otzar_Midrashim%2C_The_Aleph_Bet_of_ben_Sira%2C_The_Alphabet_of_ben_Sira%2C_%28alternative_version%29.17?lang=bi&with=Translations [3] https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/8568-jehovah [4] https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14346-torah [5] https://www.sefaria.org/Otzar_Midrashim%2C_The_Aleph_Bet_of_ben_Sira%2C_The_Alphabet_of_ben_Sira%2C_%28alternative_version%29.17?lang=bi&with=Translations [6] https://www.sefaria.org/Otzar_Midrashim%2C_The_Aleph_Bet_of_ben_Sira%2C_The_Alphabet_of_ben_Sira%2C_%28alternative_version%29.17?lang=bi&with=Translations [7] https://lilith.org/articles/fall-1976-29/ [8] https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9986 [9] https://www.sefaria.org/Otzar_Midrashim%2C_The_Aleph_Bet_of_ben_Sira%2C_The_Alphabet_of_ben_Sira%2C_%28alternative_version%29.17?lang=bi&with=Translations [10] https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11305-names-of-god [11] https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9986 < chamber < the skull