Lilith is the most important of a small collection of named female demons in Jewish legend. Historically, she is actually older than Judaism (at least Judaism as defined as a post-restoration phenomenon). Her earliest appearance is probably in ancient Sumer. Although it is far from certain, she may be a minor character in a prologue to the Epic of Gilgamesh. In the ancient world she also sometimes appears in magical texts, amulets, etc., intended to thwart her activities. She appears once in the Bible (Isaiah), in a context that associates her with demons of the desert, and again in some Dead Sea Scroll passages clearly based on the Isaiah reference.
We see somewhat more of her in late Roman/early medieval Judaism. She appears frequently on prophylactic magical bowls. In this context, she is clearly associated with childbirth (e.g. as a threat), and perhaps also as a succubus against which men need protection. In these bowls she is often countered by invoking the powers of her nemesis angels: Snvi, Snsvi, and Smnglof (we don't know what vowels to use with these names, but presumably they were intended to be pronounceable). She also shows up in the Talmud, and is clearly linked with the demonic world. Here also, her role as succubus begins to take clear shape.
Somewhere between the eighth and tenth centuries, CE, she makes an appearance in a satirical work entitled the Alphabet of Ben Sira. It is here that she is first given what has become her most famous persona: the first wife of Adam (before Eve). In this story, she is created at more or less the same time as Adam, and, as was Adam, out of the ground. Because of this she tries to assert her equality -- an assertion which Adam rejects. Refusing to conform to Adam's desires, she escapes from Eden, and is subsequently replaced by the more subservient Eve (who has less claim to equality, since she was made out of Adam's side). Having escaped Eden, Lilith takes on her renowned role as baby-stealer and mother of demons. She also promises to leave babies alone who are protected by amulets with the names of the three angels mentioned above.
While it is true that there was a rabbinic tradition that Adam briefly had another wife before the creation of Eve (Genesis Rabbah), there is a great deal of doubt as to whether Lilith had any connection at all to this first wife of Adam story prior the publication of the Alphabet. The satirical nature of the Alphabet casts further doubt on the authenticity of this Lilith connection. But whatever its origins, the connection between Lilith and the first Eve seems to have struck a chord with Jewish folk imagination and it is now an inexorable part of those traditions. It has been able to function both as a 'woman's story' (in which Lilith is a role model for uppity women), and as a patriarchal story (in which we see the dire consequences of being an uppity woman). As a midrash, it also helps to solve a problem that arises from the fact that Genesis 1 has mankind created "male and female," but when we get to Genesis 2, Adam seems to be alone and in need of a partner.
Kabbalistic literature is occasionally aware of the Alphabet story, but more frequently not. Here Lilith usually appears as a partner for Samael (=Satan), and as the chief feminine expression of the Left (evil) Emanation. In some passages, she participates in the temptation of Eve/Adam, and, after the expulsion, she serves as succubus to Adam, generating hoards of demons from his seed. She is also the personification of temptation, and is for all intents and purposes identified with the woman Folly from the early chapters of Proverbs. In one story, she actually serves as consort to the Holy One.
She also appears in Christian iconography. Most late medieval and renaissance paintings of the temptation of Adam and Eve have portrayed the serpent as having a woman's head and often torso as well. This is usually referred to by art historians as 'Lilith,' but there is no Jewish story which easily corresponds to the pictorial representations (the one exception is Bacharach, 'Emeq haMelekh 23c-d, but it is confusing, and problematic at best). I am led to presume that there were Christian versions of the Lilith myth in which the identification between her and the Serpent were made explicit. Unfortunately, none of these versions have survived in either text or known folklore.
Lilith enjoyed something of a revival in literature beginning in the mid 19th century. Usually she represents the feminine dark side (the part that men subliminally fear). Carl Jung made use of her as prime expression of the anima in men (the suppressed feme within), and the best monograph on her still belongs to one of Jung's disciples (Siegmund Hurwitz).
She has also been embraced by many modern, particularly Jewish, feminists. Based mainly, or entirely, on the Alphabet, she is presented as the proto-feminist, willing to sacrifice even the paradise of Eden as the necessary cost of freedom and equality. Of course, her role as baby-stealer is usually down-played (or assigned to a patriarchal layer of the tradition). Some neo-pagan groups have taken up her cause as well, either accepting her dark nature as part of larger sacred reality, or finding the erotic goddess within after removing the clutter of what they argue are patriarchal and monotheistic condemnations.
Finally, she has a place in vampire lore either as the first and most powerful of the vampires, or at least as their queen. She is sometimes presented as either the daughter or the consort of Dracula. In her role as succubus, she has, of course, particular control of nightmares and erotic dreams. She also rules a horde of other succuba and incubi.
Isis
The Queen of the Nile has flooded my banks.
I am the infant Moses nurtured in the reed bed,
and the intimate lap and lullaby sway
of the waters of Isis.
I am a green palm tree in Her oasis.
Her Spirit is my shade.
The Sun God is laughing
for His Queen has lured
an other water baby into the arms of love.
She has been sewing a reed raft
with invisible incantations
while I rocked afloat in Her womb.
She has come with flowers in Her hair
and teased me into manhood
with the tickle touch of divine fingertips.
I am rewriting a bible
a living sea scroll of remembrance.
I am a lion in Her bosom,
my mane matted with desire's sweet dew.
I have no name, but am a pet in Her passion.
Fed with milky morsels of joy
that drip from Her hands as love letters.
I rip them open one by one
and mark my territory upon them.
She smiles at this
and pats me down with a lover's kiss.
Isis takes me to Her river,
washing the sweat of a thousand nights of longing,
from hank and flank.
I can only wade here and tremble.
One of Rumi's reed flutes salvaged
upon a shore of ruin.
I am a ruin waiting to fall.
A door unhinged and a lock burst asunder.
The ibis and the crocodiles are my lovers
they pull me under Her standing,
and baptize Jesus in my soul.
Mary Magdalene kisses my feet,
and I hold her nakedness to me and shudder,
growling love into her ripe belly.
I am every sweetheart's upheaval.
An invisible wave pushed into appearance
by a pulse from the fingertip of Love.
Isis has found every rendered chunk of flesh
and breathed Her life into my arteries
for her pleasure.
She has sent this soul berserk in the world
as Her divine rogue elephant
to trample down anyone
who has cast love from them.
The willow weeps no longer,
but sweeps this river
with the tresses of her graceful hair.
This man god-being, her current
and her care, sent fathering into exile
and returning, a prodigal heart of Her greening.
If the wind howls I become a wolf.
If the sun burns
I become an arctic lake
melting into a gulf stream.
If the dawn does not bring the scent of fresh roses,
I open a rose garden in the hearts of children.
I am the bear and the fox
my den is hidden from every hunter but love.
Plucked from the reed-bed
my eyes open on this world once more,
and I see all this passion seeking a channel
to run to.
And so I open my mouth as a delta and drink
all this new wine down to be your drunk.
This 'I' I speak of. This estuary of acceptance.
It has no form to hold to.
It floods the basins and the meadow-lands,
the deserts and the valleys.
It has no name on any map.
It is unexplored but explores itself
by letting it waters be any level.
It is just a flowing.
I am the 'Valley of the Kings'
washed into new pastures, and raised
up as green corn again.
Every trembling ear has a thousand seeds
that disperse upon the breath of the Friend
to fertilize the earth with spring shoots.
Isis harvests this soul and plants a new awakening
in every lover's seedbed.
These words have no one to speak them.
They arise like fireflies in a warm wind.
Isis labors and they appear from nothing
and return to Her womb as Her children.
Like this, poems blossom in the eye of eternity
flash across a mind-sky and disappear, to be you.
Aphrodite is her Greek name; Venus is how the Roman's knew her. She is the daughter of Uranus and the Ocean Foam is her mother. She is also known as "foam born" and "she who rises from the waves". When she shakes the seawater from her hair, the drops turn to pearls at her feet.
Lovely, indeed is Aphrodite, great goddess of love and lust. She married the crippled smithy Hephaestus, but found him boring and entertained many lovers, with whom she had many children.
The Romans considered her the goddess of charm and beauty and believed that a large stone resting near a tall tree was a place wherein she could be called for help in affairs of the heart. They offered her wild strawberries, herbs, pine cones, and cypress branches.
She is also thought to be a descendant of a prehistoric water bird goddess, and a goddess of spiritual as well as passionate love. The white dove symbolizes platonic love and the honeysuckle vines are symbolic of happy marriages.
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