In Jewish, Babylonian, Sumerian and Biblical lore, Lilith was considered the first woman created by God (not actually Eve, in fact). She embodies wild, untamed sexuality and is typically characterized as feminine.

Lilith wasn’t interested in marriage based on submission. Her need for equality forced her to flee her marriage to Adam and seek a more independent life. She was persecuted for it; even considered demonic. Lilith is sexual freedom – perhaps even freedom from gender binary definitions.

Even in 2022, the wild feminine is still very much maligned. Those with a uterus who honor their freedom to choose? Conservative opinion says that is unacceptable. The Lilith archetype often sends God-fearing people into a judgement frenzy.

Black moon Lilith is not a celestial body but rather a point. The farthest, darkest point of the moon’s orbit.

Lilith is often unfairly depicted as a dark, lascivious witch who gave birth to demonic children. In less sinister depictions, Lilith represents a kind of sexual and creative liberation. Lilith also unveils an extraordinary degree of beauty, talent and/or sexual appeal.

I went on a deep dive recently researching celebrity Lilith personalities – particularly heterosexual men. Be prepared. While this is fascinating, it is going to get a bit dark.

John Lennon was my first celebrity to research. Lennon was extremely Lilith – possibly the most Lilith of all of my research. In his natal chart, Lilith was conjunct his ascendant within 6 degrees. Not a tight signature, but there were other aspects to consider.

Lilith was also conjunct his south node within 3 degrees. It also opposed his Sun and squared his Midheaven.

In order to properly analyze Lennon, we have to go back to his early years. Most importantly, his relationship with former 5th member of The Beatles, Stuart Sutcliffe.

Stuart also had many Lilith aspects in his chart and in many ways represented a kind of beauty one reserves for Renaissance paintings. There’s a picture of Sutcliffe in Hamburg wearing his collared shirt tied provocatively at his midriff, a flower poking out of his low-waisted leather pants.

In his natal chart, Sutcliffe had a square between his Sun and Lilith and Venus and Lilith. His Lilith tightly opposed Lennon’s Mars and Lennon’s Lilith-Ascendant was conjunct Sutcliffe’s south node.

In Beatles’ history, the two men were very close. Did they consummate their relationship? No one will ever know for sure. Lennon’s  bisexual proclivities weren’t fully embraced yet, by him or officially by anyone close to him. Some suspected he had bisexual leanings, particularly with gay manager Brian Epstein.

Lennon wanted Sutcliffe, an aspiring painter, in the band for personal reasons. Sutcliffe wasn’t a great bass player, but Lennon didn’t care. This produced tension with Paul McCartney, who was ambitious and wanted The Beatles to be good.

When Sutcliffe met girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr in Hamburg, his priorities changed. He wanted to quit the band. Lennon was hurt but also allegedly furious. There are rumors that the two of them got in such a terrible fight that Sutcliffe sustained the head trauma that eventually lead to his death by cerebral hemorrhage.

This rumor has never been proven, and could also be an embellished story around the close relationship between the two men. Whatever really happened, Sutcliffe experienced some kind of head trauma that led to such severe headaches he collapsed dead at age 21.

Lennon was devastated. So much so that he apparently never uttered Sutcliffe’s name again later in life.

This Lilith bond between two acknowledged heterosexual men (though Yoko Ono has confirmed Lennon’s bisexuality) is not easily broken and very difficult to navigate. The dark rage, even if latent, in the Lilith archetype is an important part of the conversation.

Being called a “girl” or “feminine” or a “pussy” has forced many allegedly heterosexual men (who are likely more sexually fluid) to sometimes violently defend themselves. The Lilith personality is no exception. A feeling of victimization and, at times, self-loathing often characterizes Lilith.

As he grew older, Lennon definitely embraced his Lilith energy, though it was fashionable at the time. Public nudity, sexual freedom and a kind of wildness his earlier Liverpudlian self would have been too scared to reveal.

Mark David Chapman, who murdered John Lennon in 1980, had some intense Lilith aspects in his natal chart, as well as in his synastry with Lennon.

Chapman has a tight Mercury-Lilith opposition in his natal chart.  It might not seem that Mercury would have as much potency in a hard aspect with Lilith, but I’ll give you another celebrity example of this later. Chapman also had Lilith square his Midheaven.

Think of a hard aspect between Mercury and Lilith as having passions and ideas that are not always in alignment. This can lead to a level of unchecked rage that is spurred by feeling misunderstood or unaccepted by others. The desire to be free and unfettered in communication is strong here, but often blocked due to fear of social judgement.

Chapman played guitar and was a huge fan of popular music, but had also adopted some fanatical religious views that made him judge the music industry and those profiting from it.

His obsession with Holden Caufield and “Catcher in the Rye” may have been part of his efforts to suppress his own desires. He was married in the late 70’s and identified as heterosexual, but my take on him is that if he couldn’t be like the male musicians he idolized (or couldn’t socialize with them), then he was going to ruthlessly attack them.

Almost like the archetype of the jilted woman, when you look at the synastry between Chapman and Lennon, the hard Lilith aspects are alarmingly tight.

Chapman’s Venus at 19 degrees Aries made an exact conjunction with Lennon’s Ascendant and was within 5 degrees conjunct Lennon’s Lilith. Conversely, Lennon’s Venus was square Chapman’s Lilith by 3 degrees. Chapman’s Chiron also squared Lennon’s Mercury and Pluto.

These men didn’t know each other, but the Lilith connections were heavily felt in Chapman’s imagination. He also had a Lilith-Venus conjunction with David Bowie (and had allegedly planned to assassinate Bowie as well), but no celebrity could top what Chapman could feel energetically with Lennon.

It’s almost like the synastry between lovers, but it isn’t quite that exactly. Sometimes it is. Because Lilith is so harshly judged as an archetype for those who identify as women, imagine how that energy articulates itself within a sexually repressed heterosexual male. It’s explosive and almost always violent in some manner.

This leads me to my next example. Daniel James White, elected member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in the late 1970s, most famous for his assassination of SF Supervisor Harvey Milk and SF Mayor George Moscone.

White was the 2nd of 9 children who grew up Irish Catholic in Long Beach, CA in the 1950s. He enlisted in the Army in 1965 and served in Vietnam. He was known in these early years as a kind of “All American” guy.

White was born September 2, 1946. While I don’t know his time of birth, looking at the ephemeris for that day reveals the south node of the moon was conjunct natal Lilith within 3 degrees.

Having Lilith on the south node can illuminate what happened in a past life. Perhaps in a former life, White was a sexually liberated woman, or a sexually liberated man who was persecuted in some manner. Since his Lilith was in Sagittarius, perhaps he/she was persecuted for religious reasons or was excommunicated from some high office due to sexual deviancy.

With White’s squeaky clean image, associating professionally with Harvey Milk, the first American openly gay politician, would seem out of character. But Milk actually wasn’t the first gay man White had worked with, and actually, they were on friendly enough terms that Milk was invited to White’s son’s baptism. There was no strong evidence of homophobia towards Milk, as many have assumed.

White did have a mixed voting record on gay rights, but had encouraged then president of the board of supervisors, Dianne Feinstein, to appoint Harvey Milk as chairman of the Streets and Transportation Committee. What turned his relationship with Milk sour were political differences.

In April of 1978, the Roman Catholic Church proposed a facility for juvenile offenders who had committed murder, rape, and other crimes to be operated in White’s district. White strongly opposed the facility while Milk supported it.

On November of that year, White resigned his seat as supervisor. His reasoning was that he thought San Francisco politics were corrupt. His employment as a trained police officer and firefighter was not possible while serving on the board. He was struggling financially.

His supporters urged Mayor Moscone to reappoint him, but Milk strongly urged against it, so Moscone declined. Later that month, White visited SF City Hall with the intent to kill Moscone and Milk, and he did.

What really explains what happened is White’s Lilith was conjunct Milk’s Midheaven, revealing the intense nature of their relationship. Lilith conjunct the Midheaven or M.C. (10th house angle) in synastry desires a partnership where the two can really change the status quo in regards to career. The Lilith person wants to help and even endorse the Midheaven person, with the agreement that the Midheaven person will never try to control or limit them. The main caveat is always: do not try to control Lilith.

One aspect of the Lilith story arc is the characteristic rise and fall in society. White had had a promising life until he entered politics. It was as if he was unconsciously re-living the script of his past life trauma: a social or political fall from grace. He had dissociated  from the memory of his past-life circumstances and Milk must have triggered a feeling of betrayal and rejection that White could not shake. White’s harsh judgement of sexual deviancy (in his opposition to the Catholic Church helping sex offenders) was his blind spot.

This was the murder case known as “The Twinkie Defense”, as White’s high sugar diet allegedly pushed him to commit murder. I offer “The Lilith Defense” instead.

Another once famous but now lesser-known celebrity example of Lilith conjunct the south node was musician/writer/composer Peter Ivers. Peter was brutally murdered in 1983. The case was never solved.

Ivers, born 18 days after Dan White in 1946, had an exact conjunction of Lilith on the south node. Ivers was the personification of Lilith. Sexually open yet almost like Peter Pan in persona, Ivers was a well-liked, but definitely zany guy. He composed the score for David Lynch’s seminal film “Eraserhead” to much critical acclaim.

Ivers best friend was National Lampoon’s creator Doug Kenney whom he met at Harvard (who committed suicide in 1980). Kenney, who changed American comedy in outlandish and sexually explicit ways (despite his extreme self-criticism), had an exact conjunction between his natal Mars and Lilith. Interestingly, though he and Ivers were more associates than friends, David Lynch has an exact conjunction of Lilith to his natal Ascendant. Lynch’s milieu is undeniably Lilith. Lilith types are attracted to one another.

Ivers was sort of a cult hero, initially having all kinds of commercial success in Hollywood, but his solo albums sold miserably. He hosted a Los Angeles public access tv show called New Wave Theatre, which is still known in punk music circles as having been great exposure for bands like The Dead Kennedys, Suburban Lawns and The Circle Jerks. The show also celebrated a kind of anti-establishment queerness.

New Wave Theatre co-producer and co-writer, David Jove (born David Sniderman) and Ivers had an often contentious relationship. Jove was known for having violent tendencies, apparently triggered too by Ivers. He was allegedly very angry when Ivers wanted to leave New Wave Theatre to pursue his solo music career.

Ivers and Jove had wide orb conjunctions but significant Lilith contacts. Jove’s Lilith was conjunct Ivers’ moon and Ivers Lilith was conjunct Jove’s sun.

When Ivers was found bludgeoned to death with a hammer in his apartment, the police did a terrible job of securing the crime scene. David Jove managed to leave carrying Ivers blood-soaked sheets. Ivers friends thought that might be an admission of guilt, though Jove denied it until his death in 2004.

Another celebrity with Lilith conjunct the south node was Michael Jackson. Certainly we can see how his androgynous sexuality was constantly under attack by the mainstream press. I see Jackson as the classic Lilith victim. In many ways, he personified a kind of wild sexuality in popular music more than most artists.

Because his music is so pop-y, it’s easy to miss how dark albums like “Thriller” or some of his later videos were.

Jackson managed to channel his anger and frustration into songwriting and dancing. Self-identifying as Peter Pan likens him to Peter Ivers in many ways. Jackson didn’t want to be seen as a sex object but he was undeniably sexual as a performer. Having poor boundaries with children was his undoing regardless, but he is an example of a Lilith personality with ferocious talent who refused to be tamed.

I’ll briefly mention Jaco Pastorius. Natal Venus square Lilith.

One of the founding members of Weather Report and a Joni Mitchell collaborator, Pastorius kind of re-invented the role of the bass player. He was a composer and producer as well.  His onstage antics and amazing musicianship gained him many accolades. He had a kind of raw, androgynous sexuality.

He also had a violent streak (plus a penchant for drugs and alcohol). When he ended up homeless due to not getting work, he started picking fights pretty regularly. One fight in particular with a bouncer at a club put him in the hospital with a brain hemorrhage, where he died soon after.

Mia Zapata, lead singer of the Seattle punk band The Gits who was murdered in 1993, had natal Mars square Lilith. She was an incredible singer with a rawness that was infectious to the punk scene. Her lyrics were poetic and personal, detailing at times forms of sexual destruction.

Her murder remained unsolved until DNA testing done almost a decade later found Jesus Mezquia, a known sex offender, to be a match. Mezquia was convicted of the murder but maintained his innocence up until his death in 2021.

From what I understand, saliva samples for DNA testing are only viable up to a maximum of 5 years. Since the murder remained unsolved for so long, I am dubious as to whether justice was actually served.

Looking at the synastry between Mia and her then recent ex-boyfriend Robert Jenkins (with whom she was in a band called Hells Smells), it seems pretty clear to me that he was the one who killed her. They had a tight conjunction (within 1 degree) between her Venus in Libra and his Lilith in Libra. She had been looking for him the night she was murdered, drunk and angry. Jupiter was transiting through Libra that night, making an exact conjunction to Mia’s Venus. Mia was reportedly scared to come back to Seattle after tour that summer of 1993, as Jenkins had been known to have crazy fits of rage towards her. Jenkins died of heart failure in 2012.

Sharon Tate had Lilith conjunct her Ascendant, along with Jupiter. She was easily one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood. She had somewhat low self-esteem despite her incredible looks, which is another Lilith signature. Feeling trapped in female gender roles is certainly an issue for the Lilith female, as well as being over-sexualized.

Natalie Wood had Lilith square her Ascendant and her Midheaven. Like Tate, she also started being groomed for stardom at a young age. For Tate it was beauty pageants, for Wood it was acting.

Both women dealt with sexual assault that was quite traumatizing. Particularly for Wood who was apparently raped at a young age during an audition.

Both women died tragically under bizarre circumstances and both had Lilith relationships with their husbands.

There are many eery things about Tate’s murder, but one in particular is that in the Babylonian Talmud, Lilith was said to have fertilized herself with sperm to create demons. Tate’s husband, director Roman Polanski, had just finished “Rosemary’s Baby” a year prior to her death, which was a film about impregnating an unsuspecting mother with a demon baby.

Ancient legend also warned pregnant women to wear amulets to protect themselves from Lilith stealing or killing their babies. Then a pregnant Sharon Tate is violently murdered.

Charles Manson also had many Lilith hard aspects in his chart. A remarkable musical talent who was just too sinister, too crazy and too controlling to ever have his talents recognized. The darkest Lilith character of all.

Wood was married to husband Robert Wagner for the second time when she mysteriously died at age 43. She apparently was going to tell him she was leaving him on that boat trip with Christopher Walken. Wood wasn’t sure she wanted to act anymore and the two men were trying to decide that for her the night she died. How infuriating to have two men trying to determine her fate. I imagine that felt incredibly disempowering.

Lilith relationships are a lot like Pluto relationships, except Lilith relationships seem to grapple more with ownership issues. Lilith seems to be more activated by marriage or the contracts made between two people. Adam wasn’t exactly cool with her disregarding their matrimony and splitting.

In Biblical text, Adam complained to God about what happened with Lilith and asked God to get her back. God sent three angels to retrieve her, who warned: “Return to Adam at once, or we will drown you!”  That’s exactly what happened to Natalie Wood.

Wagner has natal Mercury conjunct Lilith. Wood knew of his bisexual liaisons (she apparently caught him in the act during their first marriage) but she kept quiet about it for many years. Her affair with actor Warren Beatty was stated as the reason for the marriage ending, who also happens to have Lilith conjunct his moon (they also had a few Lilith contacts in their synastry). Weirdly, Beatty starred in a film in 1964 entitled “Lilith” (the premise of which was exactly what it sounds like).

Wagner was very drunk the night Wood drowned. It’s very possible that he hit her and caused her to fall into the water but had no recollection. I don’t know if he meant to kill her, but he did argue pretty aggressively with her that night.

In current U.S. politics, with Roe vs. Wade being overturned, I thought Lilith might be involved. In the U.S. Sibley Chart, Venus is at 3 degrees Cancer and Jupiter at 5 degrees Cancer. Sure enough, Lilith is transiting Cancer now and was just separating within 2 degrees of the U.S. natal Jupiter when the final decision was made on June 24, 2022 (6-6-6). Cancer rules the stomach, womb and breasts. In other words, motherhood.

The U.S. natal Lilith is at 19 degrees Virgo conjunct Neptune at 22 degrees Virgo. When the sexual revolution was in full swing in the mid to late 1960s, the Uranus-Pluto conjunction was right on this U.S. Lilith-Neptune in Virgo. I thought Neptune transiting through Scorpio might have had more to do with it, but this better explains why sexuality was such a huge part of the revolution.

I’ll end this with two life-affirming examples: Venus Williams and Billie Eilish. Both have Lilith conjunct their ascendants and have both have broken down barriers in their fields. Venus Williams is one of the greatest tennis players of all time and radiates a level of beauty and strength that is otherworldly. Billie Eilish is one of the most successful pop singers to date with a fairly universal appeal, also with an otherworldly kind of beauty. Eilish also seems very in touch with the dark nature of the archetype.