Points in the chart

Lilith, the Black Moon, in astrology

Lilith is the point in the chart that most people would rather not look at, which is exactly why it is worth looking at. This page covers what the Black Moon actually is, the myth behind the name, and what a prominent Lilith tends to describe.

Suomeksi: tämä sivu on päivitetty englanninkielinen versio vuonna 2007 julkaistusta artikkelista "Lilith, Musta Kuu". Alkuperäisen tekstin aiheet, Kuun apogeum, keskimääräinen ja todellinen Lilith, Lilith-myytti ja Lilithin merkitys syntymäkartalla, on säilytetty.

Three Liliths, one page

The name is used for several things, which is why the concept confuses students. There is an asteroid numbered 1181 Lilith. There is the Dark Moon, a hypothetical second satellite of Earth that astronomers claimed to spot early in the 20th century and again in the 1980s, used by a few astrologers following Ivy Goldstein-Jacobson. And there is the Black Moon, the one most software means by default: the apogee of the Moon's orbit. This page is about the Black Moon.

What the Black Moon is

The Moon circles the Earth in an ellipse, not a circle. Once a month it reaches its farthest point from Earth, the apogee, and once a month its closest point, the perigee. A Full Moon at perigee looks visibly larger than one at apogee. An ellipse has two focal points. The Earth sits at one of them; the other is empty space. The Black Moon is that empty focus, or in the common simplification, the apogee itself. It is a calculated point, nothing you can see, and the words astrologers attach to it, empty, void, the dark side, come straight out of the astronomy.

We never see the far side of the Moon from Earth. The near side is covered in the dark plains the Latin-speaking astronomers called maria, seas, which is a convenient symbol for the unconscious. The far side has almost none. When the Moon is at apogee its pull on the tides is weakest; at perigee the tides run higher and the weather is said to be less settled.

Mean versus true Lilith

Chart programs offer two calculations. The mean Black Moon smooths the orbit into a regular cycle; the true Black Moon follows the actual, wobbling apogee. The two can differ by close to a sign, up to about 30 degrees. The mean position is the one most astrologers use, partly from habit and partly because when you add a new factor to your toolkit it makes sense to begin with the most accepted version. Lilith takes 8 years and 10 months to go around the zodiac, about half an eclipse cycle, and moves roughly 40 degrees a year.

Who Lilith is

In the Kabbalistic tradition Lilith was Adam's first wife, created from the same earth at the same moment, not from his rib. She was his equal and refused to be anything less, so she was replaced by Eve. The classical mythology reference books mostly do not mention her. The Penguin Book of Symbols gives her half a page and links her with the Greek Lamia, the destroyer whose children were killed by Hera. In the stories Lilith flies the night sky screaming, lives in the depths of the sea with the other outcasts, and seeks revenge for being cast out. By biblical times her main role was the seducer who caused erotic dreams and stole children, and amulets against her were common.

The oldest picture is a Sumerian relief about 4,000 years old, often identified as Lilith: a winged woman with the talons of a bird of prey, flanked by two owls, standing on lions, holding a rod and ring in each hand. The owls are her totem, the animal of wisdom and night vision that can turn its head almost fully around so nothing creeps up on it. The rod and ring are rulership. The serpent, another symbol attached to her, is life force and the guardian of the tree of life; in the Sumerian story of Inanna, Lilith lived in the roots of Inanna's tree until she was driven out to fly screaming into the sky.

The astrological glyph is a black waning crescent sitting on the cross of matter. The waxing Moon is read as masculine and the waning Moon as feminine, so the sign itself says: the feminine in its oldest, least domesticated form.

What a strong Lilith describes

Lilith is the part of us we would most like to throw out of our lives, as Inanna did. It is also a feminine archetype of power and wisdom. Which one shows depends, as always, on the rest of the chart: a Lilith near an angle or in aspect to several planets is loud, a Lilith tucked into a cadent house with no aspects is quiet.

One caution from the myth that does not hold up in practice: Lilith is associated with the loss of children, but in charts of miscarriage and stillbirth it never acts alone. Venus, Ceres, Chiron and Vesta are always part of the same picture, and the same configuration in another chart describes something else entirely.

Watching Lilith in daily life

On the days when the transiting Moon passes over your natal Lilith, pay attention to what surfaces: the mood, the people, the feelings you would normally decline to examine. It is the cheapest way to learn what your own Lilith is about. Lilith is not a popular point yet, perhaps because it takes longer to admit its influence in our own lives than to see it in someone else's.

This page is an updated English version of the Finnish article "Lilith, Musta Kuu" published on Astrologically Speaking in 2007. The text has been rewritten; the structure and the astronomy follow the original.