What Black Moon Lilith Is (And Is Not)
Black Moon Lilith is the apogee of the Moon: the point in the Moon’s orbit where it is farthest from Earth. It is not a physical black moon or dark moon, but a mathematical and astronomical point in local space. The synodic cycle of this mathematical point is 3,233 days, or about 8 years and 10 months. So every 3,233 days, Lilith is back where she was on the day of your birth.
Mean Lilith and True Lilith
There are two Black Moon Liliths that we’re concerned with in astrology: True Lilith, which is where that apogee is at a given moment, and Mean Lilith, which is the average position of the apogee. Why do we have both?
Lilith is not a static revolutionary mathematical point, going around Earth at a steady pace. It’s oscillating rapidly, fluctuating back and forth, while it makes its revolution. It’s hard to pin down. It’s not still. So as a method of clocking Lilith in a systemized or controlled way, we tabulate the average Lilith. We call it the Mean Lilith. The Mean and True are never more than 30 degrees apart from one another, often much closer, and at rare times they are conjunct.
When you see Lilith on your birth chart (AKA Spacetime code) through any app, software or website, there’s a 99% chance that you’re looking at the Mean Lilith. I think it’s important to have both, so when I’m looking at a chart, I’ve got both of them depicted.
Are You a Lilith Person?
In a natal chart reading, I would describe you as a “Lilith person” if your chart carried a pronounced true or mean Lilith: a strong conjunction with another planet or an angle, a sacred geometric multi-planet pattern, or a very tight midpoint structure with Lilith involved. When True and Mean Lilith are conjunct, that is very powerful. Lilith, like any astrological point of significance, bonds and blends with whatever it touches. A Lilith-Venus aspect, for example, brings the Lilith influence one’s tastes, aesthetics, and the sort of people one draws into relationship.
So, the question you’re all concerned with: Phil, that’s all fine, but what does Lilith mean??
The Black Moon Lilith Archetype: Deviant in Truth
Black Moon Lilith performs deviance from the norm of whatever she* touches. In her inner truth and principle, Lilith is hardwired to only honor what she finds right and just. I often call Lilith people the “Edgewalkers.” In being themselves, they create the outer edge of society, skirting prescribed standards and laws, living only in accordance their own moral and ethical code. Just like the lunar apogee is the farthest the moon can travel from Earth, the edge set by Lilith defines the border of what commoners can accept culturally.
You may find it interesting, and metaphorically apt, that the lunar apogee is perpetually distancing itself from Earth. The rate is just 3.8 centimeters per year, but over time, that adds up. You might speculate that at a similar rate, the Lilith people just get weirder. And that’s exactly what we need them to do.
*I’ll be using “she” for a Black Moon Lilith pronoun, just because the mythical name that was given to the lunar apogee is that of a woman. The characteristics I detail in this article are not exclusive to one’s sex or gender in any way. (Lilith wanted me to add this footnote here.)
Lilith is Not Evil!
Contrary to the anti-Lilith propaganda, Lilith is not evil or amoral. While deviant, you must understand that Lilith people don’t deviate out of hatred for prescribed truths or common folk. They do it because that is their only way to live in authenticity.
When done right, this is the mature Lilith.
Of course, there is a path one must travel to express the mature qualities of any archetype. In the folly of youth, Lilith is always pushing to see what she can get away with. She plays with poison, fire, blades, theft: anything extreme or dangerous. If a young Lilith is unheld and unguided by a Lilithian initiator of sorts while traveling this path, there are many difficult, or even deadly, potential pitfalls.
But later, for an actualized Lilith person, these same draws to extreme states can become therapeutic, purifying, and deeply fulfilling.
Lilith loves metalwork. Glasswork. Blacksmithing. Sweat ceremonies (see a theme? Purification through extreme heat). Hallucinogens, pushing the limits of the mind. Piercings, tattoos, and bondage: playing with pain. And in terms of humor, well, she’s all-out raunchy. Lilith finds her truth by probing the edges. She finds her space through testing the limits of what can be withstood. And for Lilith, that’s a lot.
Scary with a Purpose
In being unapologetically themselves, Lilith people can cause a lot of fear and discomfort in others. But that is not Lilith’s problem. Those who don’t understand will just have to deal with it, because someone has to set and keep the edge.
In terms of her scariness, think of Lilith like a gargoyle of the human community.
Placed outside of holy buildings like cathedrals or churches, gargoyles or grotesques were believed to scare away evil spirits, demons, and malevolent forces. Their hideous, monstrous faces were not decorative, but served a purpose. They were the building’s guardians, stationed at the edge of the sacred space, facing outward. They protected what was inside by terrifying what was outside.
Don’t worry, my Lilith people. I am not calling you hideous. You are likely quite beautiful in your way. But you may find it fun, from time to time, to costume yourselves in very scary garb. More examples of that later!
The Mother Wound
In my work over the years, I have noticed Lilith in ancestral patterns around birth and motherhood. Lilith with Chiron and/or the Moon, for instance, can indicate matrilineal stories of separation between mother and child that carry on from generation to generation.
This can include patterns of absent mothers, miscarriages, infertility, abortions, stillbirths, adoptions, and generally large distances and deviations between mothers and their offspring.
I could speculate that this difficulty with primary attachment, the mother, is what leads a Lilith person to creating a life on the outskirts. Metaphorically, they weren’t so welcomed in the womb, the center, the mouth of life emergent.
Strong Lilith people don’t seem to fit. But I believe that to be an illusion. Lilith in her deviance actually fosters a much vaster truth: a perspective from the edge. The edgewalkers do a great deal of energetic maintenance for humankind just by living out their truth. They are the hem that keeps the quilt of culture from fraying.
Black Moon Lilith as Sacred Clown: The Archetype Across Cultures
Anthropologically speaking, the Black Moon Lilith archetype of astrology has had many names across cultures and through time. Just as Venus is beauty, Saturn is systems, and Neptune is magic, I believe that Lilith is the sacred clown, which appears all over the world and throughout the human story.
I did some research and found many, many examples of the Lilith archetype I have just detailed for you. I narrowed it down to seven figures for this article. And then I prompted the image above, of them having a sort of “last supper,” because I thought they’d get a good laugh out of that.
So here are seven faces of Lilith:
1. The Court Jester (Medieval and Renaissance Europe)
The jester was a sanctioned figure in European royal courts, wearing motley and carrying a bauble. Alone among the court, the jester could speak truth to power. He could mock the king, name hypocrisies, and not be punished. The jester’s role was to remind the court through humor and parody that no one was above being laughed at. The jester held the place for critique that otherwise could not be spoken.
2. The Koyemshi / Mudheads (Hopi)
The Mudheads are sacred clowns of the Hopi people who appear during ceremonies wearing mud-smeared masks with bulging, knotted heads. They speak nonsense, mumble, stumble, fall. They mimic priests and dancers with exaggerated, ridiculous gestures. They touch what is forbidden and enter spaces that are taboo. Their ceremonial role is to absorb mistakes, impurities, and wrong intentions, thereby purifying the ceremony. They are the necessary disruption that clears the way for the sacred.
3. The Tengu (Japanese Folklore)
The Tengu are mountain spirits depicted with long noses, red faces, and wings. They live in deep forests, on high peaks, away from temples and villages. Comfortably on the outskirts. Their role is not tied to a single event but to a pattern: they kidnap arrogant monks, drop them from great heights, and terrify them into humility. Some say they taught martial arts to worthy samurai. They hold the place for brutal pedagogy, the kind of teaching that breaks the student open before rebuilding them. They punish pride, and teach through inflicting trauma.
4. The Yurugu / Pale Fox (Dogon, Mali)
The Yurugu (also called Ogo or the Pale Fox) is the trickster figure of the Dogon people of Mali. He is the first being to rebel against the creator god Amma, tearing himself out of the cosmic egg prematurely and introducing disorder into a perfectly balanced universe. In ritual, a designated figure performs the Yurugu role by behaving badly, breaking taboos, and speaking what should not be spoken. The purpose is to draw poison out of the community through enacted deviance. Yurugu is not expelled. He is channeled. He holds the place for the necessary deviation.
5. Tlazōlteōtl (Aztec)
Tlazōlteōtl is an Aztec deity associated with purification, steam baths, forbidden love, childbirth, and filth. She is called the Eater of Filth because she consumes the moral and physical waste of human beings: confessions, sins, excretions, shame. Her role was invoked during the temazcal (sweat bath) ritual, where participants would sweat out impurities and confess transgressions. She was also called upon during childbirth. She holds space for the unclean, the expelled, the shameful. Through her consumption of it, she transforms waste into purification.
6. The Shakespearean Fool (Elizabethan England)
The fool in Shakespeare’s plays is licensed to speak truth to power and is often the wisest character in the play. The fool’s role is to name what everyone else is too afraid, too foolish, or too self-deceived to see. In King Lear, the fool accompanies the king into madness and is the only character who understands what is actually happening. The fool holds the place for wisdom disguised as foolishness.
7. The Sacred Clowns of the Pueblo Peoples (Koshare)
Among the Pueblo peoples (including the Zuni and Keres), sacred clown societies called the Koshare perform during ceremonies wearing black and white striped body paint. They parody the serious dancers, engage in gluttony and lewd behavior, and act out the opposite of proper conduct. By doing so, they hold space for impurity, release tension, and ensure the fertility of the land. They hold the place for the inversion of order as a necessary component of order itself.
What Unites Them
Thematically, what unites these figures is not their behavior, which is still strikingly similar, but their role within culture and ritual: that of the misfit, the keeper of the edge.
The jester is allowed to mock the king because the costume is a shield. The Tengu live on the mountain because the mainstream cannot hold what they know. The Yurugu tears himself from the cosmic egg because perfection requires a flaw. Tlazōlteōtl eats filth because purity requires a consumer of waste. The fool speaks truth because no one else dares. The Koshare invert order because order requires inversion.
These figures do not deviate randomly. They deviate ritually. They are the medicine that tastes like poison. They are not the center of a culture’s tapestry. They are the hem that the tapestry requires to keep it from tearing at the edges.
And that is precisely the position of Lilith: the one who has never felt welcomed in the mainstream, who lives on the outskirts, who operates by an internal code, who just by living their truth, frightens the normies, and who is essential despite or because of all of it.
For the Edgewalkers
So, for you edgewalkers out there: thank you. Thank you for holding that edge. We need that edge.
Lilith is not evil. Not amoral. She is deviant down to her absolute core. She is the misfit, the sacred clown who opens the window to the truth, and the gargoyle who scares off evil spirits with her own ferocity.
And she has been here, always, in every culture, under many names.
All blessings, from edge to edge,
– Astro Phil
