Originally Posted by JanieBelle

Thanks for the welcome everybody.

Maksutov, that's from an 1892 painting by John Collier entitled "Lilith", and is one of my favorite paintings ever. It currently hangs in The Atkinson Art Gallery in Southport, England. It's oil on canvas.

Though the character was plagiarized from elsewhere, in Judeo-Christian mythology she was Adam's first wife, made from the dust of the earth (as opposed to a rib from Adam) and was Adam's equal. When Adam told her to get on her back to um... perform her wifely duties... she refused because of his lousy attitude and said "I will not lie below", demanding to be treated equally. When Adam acted like a butt-head, she left him and he went sniveling to Yahweh for a new wife that would do as he told her.

She got quite the bad rap and was eventually accused of all sorts of evil stuff (bringing disease, famine, etc. etc.) and eventually she was mostly erased from the official mythos. The argument can be made that the Christian Lucifer is a derivative of the idea of Lilith masculinized so as to avoid the appearance of too much power vested in and wielded by a woman.

In any event, she wasn't the submissive and subordinate field lily that Eve was, though it's interesting that the two of them got the blame for basically every bad thing ever to happen after that. Eve gets the blame for the bad actions of humans because of that whole fruit/snake/fall thing, and Lilith got the blame for all the bad natural events which were scurrilously pronounced to be children of sordid affairs she was later accused of having with demons.

Personally, I think she's the most interesting character in that particular mythology so I carry that painting as my avatar everywhere I go. I like her attitude.

BTW, her demand for equal treatment is why the Lilith Fair is so named I understand.