found in George and Bloch’s Asteroid Goddesses.Unlike the planets, which are associ-
ated with a wide range of phenomena, the smaller asteroids are said to represent a sin-
gle principle. George and Bloch give Lilith’s principle as personal power and conflict
resolution; their tentative key phrase for Lilith is “My capacity to constructively
release my anger and resolve conflict.” Zipporah Dobyns views Lilith as related to
many Pluto concerns, namely, a strong will, interest in the occult and the uncon-
scious, and power and control issues. J. Lee Lehman relates Lilith to the “wild women”
in each of us (in men, the anima of female shadow self). This aspect of ourselves is
often repressed, leading to misogyny in men and self-hatred in women.
Lilith the dust cloud, Earth’s “dark moon,” received much attention from a
handful of important earty twentieth century astrologers, such as Ivy Goldstein-Jacob-
son and W. Gorn Old (Sepharial). While the very existence of Lilith has been ques-
tioned, some astrologers have taken the claimed observations of a dust cloud obscur-
ing—or being illumined by—the Sun and constructed ephemerides for this body.
Early investigators regarded the influence of Lilith as malefic, believing the dust cloud
to be involved in such unpleasant matters as betrayal and stillbirth. However, the fem-
inist movement—which has strongly influenced the astrological community, if for no
other reason than that the majority of practitioners are women—has caused reevalua-
tion of mythological figures like Lilith: Perhaps the rejection of Adam’s authority
should be seen as commendable, as the first time in history (even though it is a
mythological history) that a woman refused to be ordered around by a man. Thus,
more recent interpreters have tended to give Lilith a richer range of meanings, includ-
ing many positive ones.
The majority of contemporary astrologers reject the notion of astrological
influence from an obscure dust cloud, and fewer actually use “the dark moon Lilith” in
their work. (One measure of its rejection is its absence from such standard twentieth-
century reference works as the Larousse Encyclopedia of Astrology.) Attributing influ-
ence to Lilith persists, nevertheless, particularly among astrologers in the lineage of
Goldstein-Jacobson and Sepharial. An important modern treatment of Lilith by Del-
phine Jay (Interpreting Lilith) and her very usable Lilith Ephemeriswere published in the
early 1980s. In 1988 and 1991, respectively, these two books went through their third
printing. Thus, like her namesake, Earth’s dark moon continues to refuse to submit to
the astrological mainstream, which would prefer to deal with more manageable celes-
tial bodies.
Sources:
Dobyns, Zipporah. Expanding Astrology’s Universe.San Diego: Astro Computing Services, 1983.
George, Demetra, with Douglas Bloch. Asteroid Goddesses: The Mythology, Psychology and Astrol-
ogy of the Reemerging Feminine.2d ed. rev. San Diego: ACS, 1990.
———. Astrology for Yourself: A Workbook for Personal Transformation.Berkeley, CA: Wingbow
Press, 1987.
Jay, Delphine. Interpreting Lilith.Tempe, AZ: American Federation of Astrologers, 1981.
———. The Lilith Ephemeris, 1900–2000 A.D.Tempe, AZ: American Federation of Astrologers,
1983.
Lehman, J. Lee. The Ultimate Asteroid Book.West Chester, PA: Whitford Press, 1988.
Schwartz, Jacob. Asteroid Name Encyclopedia.St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1995.
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Lilith