Road of Lilith

The Roads

Nickname: Bahari or Lilin (These are both singular and plural.)

The first woman was not Eve. Eve was a submissive, pure, behaved creation, designed to satisfy Adam's arrogance and to indulge his foolishness. The first woman was Lilith. She demanded knowledge and equality and was cast from the Garden of Eden for that sin.

It was in her long years of wandering that she found Samael, the Lightbringer Angel. He too was fallen. Lilith gave him her flesh and her love and he gave her knowledge. At least, that's how some tell it. Others say he raped her and she stole magic from him in revenge. The details do not matter, only the result: Lilith was pregnant and she had learned the power of angels.

God sent the angels Senoy, Sansenoy and Semaneloff (Snvi, Snsvi and Smnglv) to subdue Lilith and drag her back to servitude in the Garden. Her first children claimed that the three angels raped and abused her and put a curse upon her. If anyone carved the names of those three angels on an amulet and held it to her or her children and shouted, "Out Lilith," she (and her children) would be powerless and would have to flee. Lilith, betrayed again, bleeding and wounded, gave birth to the angels' children.

In later years, she met Caine, the son of Adam, wandering in the Land of Nod. She took him in, clothed him and taught him the secrets she had gathered from Samael, from the angels, from the demons that she had taken as her lovers, and from the wild ones who had sheltered her when she gave birth. Perhaps she loved Caine. He too bore a curse, an exile from God akin to her own. Caine, too, betrayed her.

Eventually, elder succubae and incubi offered their allegiance to Hell, or traveled away from the Earth. Lilith went into hiding, disappeared or died. Others say she walked the Earth, stalking the tribes of man as they spread. "The Dark Mother," they called her, giving her names such as kali, Morrigan, hel and Tiamat. But where she went, her children followed. Their blood mingled with all the races of man so that in each tribe there lay the potential for the dark, beautiful, demonic and immoral Lilin to be born.

Before the Flood, the Lilin ruled huge kingdoms in defiance of heaven and the sons of Caine. Then three of them, grandchildren of Lilith herself, entered Enoch to offer themselves to the dark gods who ruled there. In the Sons of Caine's lust for the children's blood, beauty and knowledge, the vampires gave the Lilin the Dark Gift. And in time, the Children of Lilith bade their siblings rise up and slay the sons of Caine.

The Bahari say they were the first to walk the Path of Lilith, and the first vampires to know Lilith's truths.

Basic Beliefs: The Bahari (or Lilin as they sometimes refer to themselves) are a large, diverse group of worshipers of the Dark Mother. Many Cainites worship Lilith, but only a few of those use such worship as the focus for a Path of Enlightenment.

Lilith worshippers do not follow any one canonical theology. Rather, they each follow one of a number of apocryphal and contradictory beliefs, oral traditions and fragments of ancient texts. All agree, however, that Lilith is the Dark Mother, Caine's lover and the explorer of hidden things. To find her truths, one must suffer her thorns.

A common concept discussed by the Bahari is the notion of "the Torture Garden" or "Lilith's Garden" - a perfumed oasis of pain, suffering, dark sensuality and enlightenment. The garden is both a mythological place - spoken of in several stories about her - and a metaphorical thing. To be a true Lilin, one must dwell in the lair amongst the sharp, barbed flowers and the sweet moans of the seekers as they enjoy the Dark Mother's torments. For a vampire, one of Lilith's thorns is the hunger of the Beast.

To progress on this path, one must move deep into the garden, wherever darker pleasures and sharper agonies await. At the center of the place lives the Tree of Enlightenment, which by legend Lilith grew from the stolen seed of God's tree, and which in metaphorical terms is the final initiation that balances Beast and intellect, pleasure and pain, intellect and sensurality. by opening one's self to true experience, suffering and ecstasy, enlightenment and madness, one can comprehend the truth of reality.