Speaking up against abuse,
Lilith is a place in the horoscope I have been working with for a number of years. I have found it shows up in the charts of rebels and ‘difficult women’.
Lilith is found in Jewish and Mesopotamian mythology. She was said to have been Adam’s first partner, not wife, there was no marriage. The myth tells us she refused to obey Adam and was banished to the desert. Looking at the charts of women with a strong Lilith, conjunct the Ascendant, Sun or Moon, for example, I suggest that she refused his orders and decided life in the desert was preferable to life with Adam. Lilith, was said to be a night demon who killed, and perhaps ate, new born children and also had a voracious sexual appetite. The same old same old patriarchal nonsense in other words. In Pagan/Wiccan practice Lilith is seen as the embodiment of the dark moon (Buckland) or the coven priestess (Gardener) or the embodiment of sexual pleasure and repressed sexual dreams (Valiente).
In astrology, Lilith or Black Moon Lilith (BML) is found at the moon’s apogee (the point in its orbit when it is farthest from the earth). Tables of BML are found these days in Ephemerides like Raphael’s , a past Ephemeris (Delphine Jay 1900-2000) can be found here1 I have collected a few examples of women with a prominent Lilith, to illustrate my understanding of Lilith in the birth chart. BML is the Lilith found in most astrology programes, the asteroid Lilith #1181 is different and not to be confused with BML.
Rose McGowan has Moon conjunct Lilith. I first knew of her as she starred in Charmed a TV show my daughter loved about three witches who battled demons on a daily basis. Which fits Lilith as the witchy woman. Rose had an unusual childhood, she grew up in a cult, her father ran the Italian chapter of the Children of God, she spent her childhood in their communes around the world. At 15, she legally emancipated herself from her parents and moved to Los Angeles. Latterly, Rose was known for calling out Weinstein for sexual abuse in 1997, she was paid £100,000 by him, presumably in an attempt to silence her. She later accused male actors, including Ben Affleck for failing to expose the Sexual Abuse of women in the industry. Rose became part of the ‘Me too’ movement which ended in Weinstein’s imprisonment for multiple offences. Angry, mouthy, rebellious and fiercely independent, Lilith Moon in Sagittarius ticks all these boxes.
Angela Davis, author of Women, Race and Power is an American academic, radical feminist and political activist. Lilith in Leo demands respect and an audience, placed midway between Jupiter and Pluto and North Node in her fourth house, opposite her Sun Moon conjunction in Aquarius shows how rebellion, together with great intelligence, demands the world listen. Like Grace McGowan, she criticised men in the Black Power Movement for not standing up for black women, claiming feminism was the bedrock of any revolution. The Jupiter conjunction in marvelous Leo gave her luck and support from the powerful which protected her and ensured she won her battles.
Active in the Communist Party and the Black Panthers, she studied philosophy with Marcuse and Jean Paul Sartre in France and Germany. She was fired from her post in UCLA for being a Communist, took them to court and won. A gun she bought was used in a courtroom shootout in the Soledad brothers trial. She was declared one of the FBI’s most wanted and went on the run. John Lennon wrote a song about her, Angela, to highlight her case and raise funds along with black writers who organised her defence committee. The Rolling Stones recorded Sweet Black Angel about her on their album Some Time in New York City 1972. She was captured and imprisoned, but found not guilty at her trial. She remains professor emerita at the University of California Santa Cruz and is active in the Black Lives Matter movement. She lives with her partner, Gina Dent a fellow academic. For more info see my Goddess Astrology here
Josephine Baker had Lilith conjunct Sun and Mercury, in her stellium in Gemini in the 10th. Best known for her dance, she was a spy for the Free French (classic Gemini) and a comrade of MLK and others in the NCCP. Gemini gave her Lilith an even greater voice, she fought her battles against racism and fascism, with a light touch Gemini energy. You can read a longer version on a blog post here. or in Goddess Astrology here
Lilith then, gives us rebels, women who will not accept the status quo and raise their voices in protest. Lilith won’t fit in, can’t fit in, but needs an avenue of expression to thrive.
Arguably, Marilyn didn’t quite find her place, although she was incredibly successful as an actress, she may not have had the space to express her undoubted intelligence. One story I do like of her, she was friends with Ella Fitzgerald the singer, they had similar backgrounds of abuse and poverty. Ella wanted to play at the big LA clubs, but they wouldn’t hire her. Marilyn went to the owner and said if he hired Ella, she would sit in the front row every night and bring her famous friends. This she did and it changed the trajectory of Ella’s career, she never played small venues again.
However, it might be that Lilith rising has less heft than Sun or Moon contacts, and perhaps is more subject to other people’s whims, certainly, Marilyn shone brightly, but perhaps this was more a reflection of other people’s regard than her own story. However, she did take on the big film studios, win control for her own projects and a huge salary and run her own production company. The image of the ditsy blonde could not have been further from the truth, she was shrewd and intelligent, a fighter.
Elisabeth Brooke 