The Name, the Myth, and the Honest Dating

The astrological use of the point dates from the early twentieth century and its elaboration into a significator of suppressed feminine power, sexual autonomy, rage and exile belongs largely to the 1970s and later, developing alongside second-wave feminist reinterpretations of the Lilith figure. The figure itself is older and more tangled than the astrology suggests: lilitu demons appear in Mesopotamian incantation texts, a lilith is named once in the Hebrew Bible at Isaiah 34:14 in a list of desert creatures, protective incantation bowls from Sasanian Babylonia invoke protection against her, and the story of Lilith as Adam's first wife who refused to lie beneath him appears in the Alphabet of Ben Sira, a satirical Hebrew work of roughly the eighth to tenth century. Attaching that composite figure to the lunar apogee is a modern act, and the two have no historical connection whatever.

The astronomy needs stating too, because at least three different things circulate under this one name. The point in ordinary use is the lunar apogee, the far end of the Moon's elliptical orbit, and it comes in a mean and a true version that can differ by many degrees, so two ephemerides can disagree wildly about where Black Moon Lilith is. Separately, Dark Moon Lilith refers to a hypothetical second satellite of the Earth announced by Georg Waltemath in 1898, which does not exist and was never confirmed by anybody, though positions for it were still being published decades later. And a minor planet, 1181 Lilith, carries the name as well. Anyone comparing two charts should establish which of these is meant.