Lilith, Gender and Demonology – Stephanie Spoto (Atramentous Press)

Description

A rigorous and genuinely timely scholarly study of one of demonology’s most enduring figures. Stephanie Spoto’s Lilith, Gender and Demonology traces how the demonisation of the feminine became embedded in Western culture through the figure of Lilith, beginning with a concise introduction to the occult philosophies circulating between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries — Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, Gnosticism — before turning to its central focus: the appearance of Lilith and the feminine demonic across official documents and poetry of the early modern period, in the work of figures including John Dee, Milton, and Shakespeare.

Spoto shows how official documents reveal the extent to which Lilith was feared as a genuine threat to patriarchal and royal power, while poetry offered writers the artistic freedom to explore the darker pull of attraction toward the feminine demonic. Her central argument — that Lilith was known and actively negotiated with, both in elite intellectual circles and popular folklore — reframes just how significant her influence has been on the evolution of magic, witchcraft, and demonology.

Genuinely relevant to contemporary gender studies as much as occult history, the book traces a clear line from these early modern anxieties through to the reappropriated Goddess of modern witchcraft movements and the demonology still practised by occultists today.