Ladies Of Lilith (Inspirational Women)

We are desperate to write a post that is not related to the current problems in any way! So this post is a highlights version of some of the conversations we have had lately while sipping wine late at night in our kitchen. We are all in our own ways devotees of the Goddess Lilith but this is not going to be a deep, ontological, theological discussion of who or what Lilith is. Rather, this is a discussion of women who in different ways exemplify the qualities that attract us to Lilith. You don’t need to share our beliefs to admire the women we discuss here and this list is by no means exhaustive. As soon as we press “publish” we are bound to think of a dozen more women we admire just as much and whom we might want to write about at some future time. Most of the women we speak of here are known in the arts and media; most, but not all, are alive now. They are all very different but seem to us to exhibit some Lilith-Like attributes. If you know nothing of Lilith, don’t worry. We are simply talking about women who are strong, talented and powerful in different ways. Women who dare to step outside convention. Women who make their own rules. Women a bit like us. Women who in different ways inspire us.

One little caveat before we begin in case any of the people mentioned or those who admire them object to being praised by a trio of self styled Satanic women; we don’t mean to imply that any of the people mentioned share any of our spiritual beliefs.

(Cassie) The first woman I am going to talk about is Mary Shelley who is most famous as the author of Frankenstein.. She was an extremely unconventional woman for the times she lived in. She was the archetypal bohemian and an intellect to be reckoned with in an age when women were rarely valued for their brains.

Mary Shelley was the daughter of the radical philosopher William Godwin, who described her as ‘singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind’. Her mother, who died days after her birth, was the famous defender of women’s rights, Mary Wollstonecraft.

At the age of 16, Mary eloped to Italy with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who praised ‘the irresistible wildness & sublimity of her feelings’. Each encouraged the other’s writing, and they married in 1816 after the suicide of Shelley’s wife. They had several children, of whom only one survived.

After Percy Shelley’s death in 1822, she returned to London and pursued a very successful writing career as a novelist, biographer and travel writer. I admire her for her passion and because she was so unconventional and ahead of her times in the way she lived and worked.

(Léonie) Well, since Cassie has mentioned Mary Shelley, I’d like to talk about somebody who has played her in a film; Elle Fanning. She is a young actress who has already achieved quite a lot in her career. She has won several awards and seems to be respected in her field despite her young age. She is probably most famous at the moment for playing Aurora in the Disney Maleficent films but really made a name for herself playing darker, off the wall characters in indie films. I like her for slightly different reasons that relate to my beliefs and outlook on life. She began as a child actress but has progressed to some very mature roles. When you see her interviewed she has a kind of child-like charm that people around her find very attractive. But she is not a child. She is intelligent and probably a lot wiser and more mature than others her age. She is a woman. She has relationships. She smokes and drinks and probably has other vices. But she still has that child alive inside her. I like that. I hope I am the same way. It seems that she has both light and dark within her and values both of them. In a way that is what my own philosophy is about. Elle Fanning to me symbolises the fact that having darker, adult tastes doesn’t have to corrupt people, it can actually be empowering and enlightening.

As I mentioned one Aurora already I might as well go on with my second choice; another creative young person, this time a singer and songwriter called Aurora Aksnes from Norway. I guess you would have to describe her as a modern day hippie. She has a haunting voice and my favourite song of hers is “The Seed” an electro-folk anthem about the environment. She has a style that is totally her own, a true original. In some ways I probably find her a bit too “nice” and “good” but she is a feminist and I love her relationship with her fans and with nature. I also love the fact that in the middle of an interview for mainstream TV when asked what she likes to do in her spare time she said “Well I do love to masturbate a lot!”

(Sophie) An actress I have always admired is Angelina Jolie. I admit I find her a beautiful woman to look at, and of course she shares our tattoo fetish to some degree. But what I most admire is her fierce independence, her work with the U.N. and the fact that she was not content to survive on her beauty alone but invested in her talents and really honed them. While she has done quite a few very commercial films she has also made some smaller, grittier films such as “Girl Interrupted” in which her acting talent really shines. She is committed to many humanitarian causes especially concerning children and women’s rights and has used her fame and her money to really help in those areas. I also see her as a role model for mothers around the world. In recent interviews I have been particularly impressed with her views on letting children go; of taking pride in the fact that they grow up and become adults in their own right.

(Léonie) The third person on my list is the scientist Marie Curie.

Marie Curie arrived in Paris to start her studies as a virtually penniless refugee from Poland. Just getting there was a dangerous adventure and continuing her studies in poverty must have been really hard, but she went on to become one of the most brilliant scientists of her time. There were many points during her studies and in her career where her work was not valued or even recognised because she was a woman. Eventually she won two Nobel prizes but they nearly refused to let her accept one of them because she had had an affair. (Would that have been at all controversial if she had been a man)? She also suffered prejudice in France for being a foreigner and because she was thought by some to be Jewish.

Despite all this, during the First World War she set up mobile radiology units, trained people (especially women) how to use them and went herself to the front lines in the battlefields to help injured soldiers. Apart from the dangers of being in the battlefields this work eventually played a part in killing her because she later died of leukaemia as a result of her exposure to radiation.

These days Marie Curie is respected as one of the great scientists of her time, but actually her life was very hard and she was often the victim of all kinds of prejudice despite her brilliance or the many things she did to help other people. A lot of people hold her up as a hero without even realising that.

(Cassie) The next person I want to hold up is the New Zeeland Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. In a world that seems to have gone crazy, she seems to be one of the few active politicians who are worthy of genuine respect. She is a progressive social democrat who speaks out for women’s rights and backs same sex marriage and is generally supportive of LGBTQ+ issues. Her response to the Christchurch Mosque shootings was more tactful and respectful than the way most other politicians respond to such things and went a long way towards healing her nation while also bringing in stricter gun controls. Thanks to a strict lockdown and sensible policies her country seems to be recovering from the present crisis better than most. I wish there were more politicians like her. The good news is she is not alone. There are an increasing number of influential female leaders around the world, such as Finland’s Sanna Marin who seem to be tackling important issues more wisely and more successfully than those who have gone before them. I don’t want to sound like a preachy feminist, but there does seem to be a lesson to be learned here.

I would also like to include Kala Trobe on my list. She probably won’t be very well known to people who don’t have any interest in witchcraft or the occult, but her books have played a significant part in guiding the three of us as witches. I find her books on witchcraft very grounded and easy to adapt to any tradition, including our own. She is very knowledgeable on many occult and esoteric paths including Ancient Egyptian (which is one of my own interests) and I suppose for me she is an inspiration because she has in a sense made a career of living her life the way she wants to and writing about what she knows and what she does. My ambitions aren’t very different!

(Sophie) For somebody very different I’m going to talk about the Olympic gymnast Nadia Comaneci, who was a big influence on me as I was growing up. She was the first gymnast ever to get a perfect score of ten at the Olympics and she was only fourteen at the time she achieved that. I was only a child then but I had joined a junior gymnastics club so I was aware of her. As I got older and read more about her I was struck by something a lot of writers and commentators said about her and that was that she has an extraordinary ability to concentrate. While I never really progressed very far in gymnastics, I did later find that in my job and in my spiritual interests, the ability to concentrate was indeed a very important ability. It helped me a lot in meditation and in all aspects of the magic I now practice. Nadia had a difficult life after the Olympics that made her famous. There are rumours she was raped by Nicolae Ceausescu’s son during the communist era. Whatever the truth of that, she eventually had to defect and start her life again in the USA. The good news is that she seems to have made a happy and successful life for herself since then coaching other gymnasts. I’m sure she is a hard task mistress!

(Léonie) For my final nomination I have to mention Greta Thunberg. I get so angry about the amount of animosity that is sometimes directed towards her in the media and from powerful idiots like Donald Trump. Whether you agree with her or not, and I mostly do, she has succeeded in raising awareness of climate change like nobody before her. She has used her Asperger’s Syndrome as an asset to focus her mind and the minds and thoughts of others. She has travelled the world, without flying, and has spoken directly and without compromise to some of it’s most influential leaders. Perhaps most importantly she has inspired a whole generation of young people who will not just let the matter go. I think it could be argued that she is one of the most influential people in the world today and most of her achievements so far happened while she was only sixteen years old.

(Sophie) I am going to speak about another highly influential woman who achieved great things while she was still a teenager and that is Malala Yousafzai. I use her frequently as an example in my lessons at school. As a child she wrote a blog detailing her efforts to get educated during the Taliban occupation of her region of Pakistan. As a consequence of that her school-bus was attacked and she was shot in the head and seriously injured. She could easily have been killed or permanently brain damaged. In fact after months in hospital in Pakistan and the UK she began to recover. Rather than be frightened away from studying, she continued and became an even more vocal critic of the Taliban and a campaigner for girls education throughout the world. In 2014 she won the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts. She continues her campaigning today with a focus on refugees as well as education. She would possibly disagree with a lot of my personal beliefs, but I would love to meet and speak with her. I think she is an amazing young woman.

The last person on my list my favourite artist, Frida Kahlo. A large reason that I like her is simply her art itself which is strange mixture of surrealism, naivety and folk art which represent the struggles she and her country were going through. She had an extremely difficult and quite sad life due to health problems caused by illness and a serious accident which left her in pain most of the time. Yet she kept going… Like most of the people we have mentioned her life was quite unconventional. She married another artist much older than she was and physically as different as could be (large and overweight while she was extremely thin and fragile). Both of them are believed to have had numerous affairs which eventually lead to a fairly amicable divorce. Despite her physical and health problems she enjoyed sex a lot and was openly bisexual. She died relatively young as a result of her health problems and didn’t really achieve recognition for her art until long after her death. Yet without knowing it she left a body of artistic work that still inspires and moves people today.

(Cassie) I am going to finish our list with somebody we all thought about, and that is Emma Watson. I went through my teens and twenties reading the Harry Potter books and then watching the films at the cinema. Emma was perfectly cast as Hermione, an intelligent female witch who inspired a generation of real witches. But what has been most satisfying has been to see Emma herself go on from the Harry Potter franchise to develop into a positive role model for women everywhere. She never seemed to get sucked into social or tabloid media controversies. She learned to carry herself with sophistication and dignity. She has become known for her association with #Me Too and other campaigns to improve women’s lives and she has used the platform her fame gives her well. Yes, Harry Potter has made her richer and more influential than most of us could ever hope to be but with wealth and power comes responsibility, and she has taken that responsibility seriously.

Perhaps in the women we have highlighted here certain linking themes become apparent. We value intelligence and creativity. We value those who dare to be different and go against the grain when necessary. We value those who are responsible for themselves and caring towards others. We value all aspects of the female psyche and all stages of a woman’s life. We value those who find their power and use their talents wisely. We value and praise the Lilith archetype in all women.