Dreaming the Dark: Lilith, The 'Banshee' (Part 2)

Stone Mad
Oct 4, 2021
3 min read

Updated: Sep 20

An Irish perspective on shadow consciousness & the psychopomp

On a winter night, you might hear it – a cry rising from the hillside, long hair streaming, a voice that is more than human. The banshee keens, and all who hear it know what it means. In Irish we call her Bean Sí – woman of the faerie folk – and her dwelling is tied to the mounds, the síde, that stand across our fields. Brú na Bóinne, Knocknarea, Shee Mor – places where earth swells over the entrances to the Otherworld. From here grew her link with graveyards, thresholds, and the dead.

The Bean Sí is remembered as a shapeshifter. Sometimes an old hag, ugly and fearsome, sometimes a young woman of startling beauty. She is often described as dressed in red or green, hair unbound, bright as flame. This same fire-haired image has been given to Lilith in other traditions. In some tales, what seems to be a banshee or cailleach is later revealed to be the Morrígan herself – the crow-goddess of battle, death, and prophecy.

Another current of this energy moves through water as the siren. She too wears red hair and green garb, her voice pulling the unwary into depths. And in popular culture? She was enchanted into Ariel – the cartoon mermaid. Red hair, green tail, stripped of danger, turned into sweetness. A false spell that tamed a figure once recognised as deadly.

Anaïs Nin wrote, “I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.” These words cut to the heart. Lilith, Bean Sí, Morrígan, siren – none of them live in the shallow end. They are guardians of depth, and they call us down.

In the Middle Ages, the hag aspect of the banshee became tangled with Lilith. She was made into a vampire – shrieking, cursed, blood-drinking. Later she softened into the seductive vampire, still deadly but beautiful, draped in sex appeal. Even now the spell is repeated – think of Twilight, those pale-skinned immortals with glowing eyes and dangerous allure. Once more the same figure, demonised and desired at the same time, repackaged for the masses.

Across cultures, the names shift – Lilith, Bean Sí, Morrígan, siren, vampire, Baba Yaga, Kali. Yet a single thread runs through them. They are psychopomps – ferry-women of the soul, bone-collectors, midwives of death and rebirth. They destroy, unravel, dissolve, and in so doing, they open the way to transformation.

But this underworld journey has been demonised for centuries. Religion taught us to fear it. Culture taught us to avoid it. Even the business of spirituality is not immune. People call themselves ‘lightworkers’, as if light were the whole. In the 1980s the phrase ‘twin flame’ was coined. Sold as the idea of a soulmate to be found outside, it drove many into longing and disappointment. Yet the truth is older, and far closer to home. The twin flame is your wild twin – the part you cast away to survive, waiting for you in the underworld.

To cling only to light is to live inside half of what we are – one hundred percent caught inside fifty percent of our being. Separation, shallow living, endless seeking. Wholeness comes when we walk willingly into shadow, let the psychopomp lead us through death, and return remade.

This is the journey of surrender – the dark night of the soul, the dissolution that gives birth to the new day. Wandering wastelands, gathering the charred bones of your being, carrying them home, and rebuilding from what cannot be destroyed. The triumphant return. The oldest arc of story, told and retold until we understand – both altars within, masculine and feminine, must be tended with equal reverence.

So let us be clear. Lilith is not only the whore, the scorned lover, the vampire, the bitch, or the first feminist. Nor is she a cartoon princess or a Hollywood vampire bride. She is all of it and more – beauty and beast, shadow and depth, unity through integration. She is the wild twin who waits until we are brave enough to descend and bring her home.

And consider, finally, the lily. Rooted in mud, feeding on decay, yet opening its bloom on the water’s surface, luminous and whole. To be complete, we too must root ourselves in what has died, if we are ever to flower again. This is the work of Lilith, of the Bean Sí, of the Cailleach – to be equally at home in the dark and the light, nourished by both, blossoming because of both.