I love horror films. I love that tease as I am taken to dark places and left there just long enough for dread to crawl up the back of my neck. I loathe the splatter and shriek films; instead it is the films that sit next to me perfectly politely and then whisper to me of unease and distrust in reality, these are the films I choose to threaten me and my imagination.
And they do give me terrible, terrible nightmares. I have always suffered with nightmares. They can paralyse me with fear and so I have learned to make a sound with my unmoving mouth. I cannot scream; it comes out like a moan. The sound wakes me up or, if I am with Dev, he wakes me. It takes me a little while to come back, because all too easily I can slip back into the dream and the cave of terror that I just escaped.
There is something else I can sometimes do. If I catch the dream in time, if I can catch it before I surrender to panic and all is lost, then I can suddenly turn on my predator and make it my prey. This is the world of dreams, where we can re-invent ourselves at will. There is dark heart in all of us, and all a girl has to do sometimes is remember it is there.
**
I would like to tell you a story. This is the best type of story. It comes from so far in our pasts that its birth can tell us something of ourselves. It has been whispered in countless ears, in the dark, blocking out the sound of the raging wind whilst leaning in close to the warmth of fire.
I would like to tell you the story of an ancient woman, an ancient girl, one of us, and her name was Lilith. Her name means ‘night’ in Hebrew and Arabic and ‘spirit’ in Akkadian.
So this girl was never destined for goodness.
In another incarnation, Sumerians (about 4,000 BCE) she is the demon in the wind and the storms. She appears to women in their dreams, she bothers them, and makes them restless, and to men, she appears in their sleep and ravishes them.
For the Assyrians she had the feet of a bird with long talons, and she preyed on women and children.
In another incarnation, Lilith was Adam’s first wife. She was pre-Eve, the one made, set aside, and forgotten. Lilith’s downfall was her temperament, her refusal to lie down and accept.
Extract from an 8th century script
“After God created Adam, who was alone, He said, ‘It is not good for man to be alone.’ He then created a woman for Adam, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, ‘I will not lie below,’ and he said, ‘I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.’ Lilith responded, ‘We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.’ But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air.”
She became the serpent in the tree, whispering temptation to Eve.
She was the anti-woman, always childless, always with a tenacious sexual appetite, living alone in the desolate places, in dreams and deserts and wastelands.
Unlike other demons, she acts upon her own accord, she is driven by free will.
She has a thousand births and a thousand stories.
Lilith is the woman spirit just out of sight, the willful, sexual, dangerous spirit.
I am sure it is no mystery why I love Lilith. I love this female creature who is so much part of our human psyche that you can follow her footsteps through thousands of years. I love this woman who does not do as she ought.
Maybe sometimes she has children now but she has a life away from them as well.
Maybe she loves but does not obey without question.
Maybe she walks her own path, thinks her own thoughts; she has the distinct smell of trouble about her.
Maybe she is so restless at night because she has such dreams of desire that they will not let her rest.
Somewhere out there, in the dark, Lilith creeps.
Now Halloween is almost upon us, she may be closer than you think.
I think Lilith is that part of women that we are not supposed to be. She is the woman who wants to be alone for a time. She does not want to be always at the hearth. She feels the pull of something out there.
She is sexual. She is not focussed on raising children. She dreams ferociously.
She has lived in every age, in every country – the outside, dangerous, spurned part of womanhood.
She is terrifying.
I rather like her.
I also like the man who likes her, the man who seeks out the girl who has her own mind, the girl who will challenge him, and struggle, and whose eyes flash sometimes with something a long way from demure.
And this particular man? I also like what he does when he finds her.
Lilith creeps in the dark until she finds her mark and then she acts. Everyone fears her.
The man she loves is stronger still. He sits and watches her and not once does he destroy her when he takes her.
I like what I find in the dark.
