The Limyth
It is Branwen (a character who slips between the Branwen of the Mabinogi, as well as Lamia and maybe even Eve, but not on a heavy level of over-association) who first tells Ember to find the place of the limyth – where owls fly and roost with the bats – and start again from there. Not a beginning that wishes to forget the past, in the hope of pretending there never was one, but a beginning that tells and hears all the stories; with order but not control, with both respect and irreverence. No-one’s story should be ignored or left out. And with the people who come to her and join with her, they will invent and write the myths together:- no singular voice, no finished stories, no authoritative history, only their ongoing stories…
The Limyth, as understood by the Clegyrheli community:
Lilith was a creature emerged from the clay and soil, earthy and materialist from birth. A partner creature named Adam formed from the clay alongside her, but he refused to accept her equality. He wanted an inferior, not an equal, because he believed himself to be in a position to dominate, since he’d mistaken for a weapon what was intended as a connecting cable…
Lilith refused and rejected Adam’s advances, which damaged his pride, and he became angry and called her a whore, even though she hadn’t had intercourse with anyone. But the misnaming brought with it a magic that was hers to use. It gave her the will to expand and stretch her limbs: to reach, bursting with plumage, flexing her neck so that she might twist round and see who is stabbing her in the back, and the Lilith creature took flight at dusk.
First he denied and tried to hide her existence, allowing Eve to believe that he was first, and she his one and only, but when eventually this failed Adam spread lies about Lilith, declaring her gone with devils to be succubus and temptress and mother of demons. She did join with demons, and gave birth to the lilim.
The first to hear the limyth from Ember is Tammy, when Tammy gets spooked by an owl hooting from the branches of the big tree that marks the entrance to the homestead. Ember explains to Tammy how the owls are alone in knowing all their names and what their names mean.
When they meet in the lake, after Ember follows the stag to the deer, Branwen tells her that if she were superstitious and really believed every detail of the old myths, she would say that what is currently happening in the world is the realisation of Adam’s curse: that because she left him, one hundred of Lilith’s children must die every day (at the hands of the adamim?). After all this time he is finally seeking vengeance, since “although Adam’s lips said Eva, his soul always echoed Lilith”.
The limyth is not a religion with rules by which the community live. There are no gods to be worshipped: no rituals or hierarchies. There are festivals which mark time and season changes, but no tales of retribution, no damnation promises: no heaven and no hell.
The limyth helps the unsettled world take shape(s) without confining it, restricting it, or repressing its residents. Its people are encouraged to shape the world their way through their own stories and process of continually telling their altering and alternating stories. It also names things and people more purely, and allows for complexity without falsifying acts of life. For example, through the story of Lilith mating with Lucifer to form one androgynous being sexual intercourse becomes understood as a moment of equality between all creatures, regardless of their ‘original’ sex. Gender is important as a configuration of individual variation and diversity, but is not a division upon which power is based.
