Lilith, Night Mother: On My Faith, My Name, and the Sacred Fire Within
The Inheritance of the Outcast
I've worn the sigil of Lilith every single day since I started HRT.
The first week I placed the patch on my skin, I stood alone in the bathroom, shaking. Everything in my life was about to change: my voice, my smell, my skin, my future. My God. That was the moment. That was the death. That was the resurrection.
I lit a candle, pressed the pendant to my chest, and whispered my first prayer to Her:
"Beauty in this life, for service in the next."
I’ve identified publicly as a theistic Lilithian ever since.
Who Is Lilith?
In the most ancient tellings, Lilith is the first woman: created equal to Adam, made of the same earth, with the same breath. But she refused to lie beneath him. She would not bow. And so she was cast out. Demonized. Erased.
But she did not die. She rose.
Lilith is Queen of the Night, Mother of Witches, protector of those who are cast out. Her roots run deeper than the garden. She predates scripture and survives its fires. To some, she is a demon. To others, a goddess. To me? She is both.
Lilith is the force that lives in the void between suffering and self-possession. She is what waits when love abandons us. She is the darkness that does not devour, but shields. She is the blood in my mouth when I speak the truth too loudly. She is the one who said, "no, not like that," and left.
She is the reason I survived.
She is also the question. The challenge. The sacred interruption. To follow Lilith is to stop making yourself small. It is to live without apology. To claim your name, your gender, your hunger, your fury. To no longer seek permission for your existence.
Lilith first mother and queen of the night To you belong the hours after I rise Devoted, I who bear the witch’s mark Desired, you who sends forth sacred dark From primordial void your voice becomes life In flickering candle flame I write my heart Mother, watcher since my youth To thee my love hath sworn From primordial void your voice becomes life Lilith, first mother and queen of my night Lilith, first mother and queen of my life
When I came out as trans, I lost almost everyone.
Some left quietly. Others exploded. There were texts from childhood friends filled with scripture and venom. There were coworkers who stopped speaking to me entirely. There were family members who cried like I had died.
But I hadn’t died. I had finally been born.
That loneliness made my connection to Lilith even stronger. She is, after all, the matron of the outcast. The patron saint of the one who says, "enough."
Chosen by the Name
It was in the raw aftermath of this that a name found me. I didn't go looking for it, not exactly. But one night, reading about the witch trials of France, I came across her: Catherine Monvoisin, known to history as La Voisin.
She was a poisoner. A midwife. A seer. A dealer in love magic and dark pacts. She sold potions to the mistresses of kings, performed abortions for women with nowhere else to turn, and conducted black masses for those who needed miracles denied by the Church. She was powerful. She was feared.
And she was burned alive for it in 1680.
The men who condemned her called her vile. The Church called her heretic. History tried to reduce her to a villain. But I read her story and saw something else: I saw a woman who made power out of powerlessness. I saw a woman who used the little freedom she had to give other women choices. I saw a woman whose very existence threatened a system built to crush her.
They burned her because she would not apologize for surviving.
And when I took that name—Voisin—it was not vanity. It was spiritual. It was ancestral. It was a declaration of war against every voice that told me I was not allowed to exist.
I chose the name, yes. But more truthfully: the name chose me.
Voisin is not just a name. It’s an oath. An inheritance. A promise that I will not forget who I am or what it took to get here. When I say it aloud, I hear all the women who died unnamed. I hear the ones who bled quietly in the dark. I hear the ones who never got the chance to fight.
And I speak for them.
There is power in choosing your own name. There is power in becoming your own ancestor. When I adopted the name Voisin, I was reaching backward and forward at once—resurrecting a lineage the world tried to erase, and sowing seeds for the world I want to leave behind.
When my old friends left, when people ghosted me or preached at me, when I lay on the floor wondering if I would ever be seen again—I thought of La Voisin. I thought of the smoke curling above her execution. I thought of her teeth, bared, unrepentant. And I lit a candle.
And I survived.
Lilith, night mother and ruler of my life Illuminate my temple in black and holy light Night mother, consume me in your embrace I called to the Christian god and found not grace Your love called out to me while falling, I chose embrace Lead me safe goddess of infernal realm Mother eternal, consume me in your love And the promise of transformation to take hold of Night mother, consume me in your embrace Lilith, night mother and ruler of my life I called to the Christian god and found not grace Mother eternal, consume me in your love Lilith, night mother and ruler of my life
It was the same fire that took La Voisin that nearly took me. And it is the same fire, now, that I keep sacred.
Lilithians are not a formal tradition. We have no church. No central texts. No robes. Just candles. Just darkness. Just our own bodies, reclaimed from shame. We are heretics. We are witches. We are survivors.
Some of us are trans. Some of us are queer. Some of us were born into silence and had to scream our way out. Some of us still whisper. All of us were told we were too much. And all of us dared to stay anyway.
We wear our scars like sigils. We speak in tongues the world tried to erase. We light candles not to pray for deliverance, but to remember the divine that already lives in us.
I wear her sigil on my chest because I need to remember who I am. Every day. I need to remember who stayed with me when the world left. I need to remember the holiness of saying no. Of living loudly. Of choosing yourself.
This is not an easy path. But it is a holy one.
I write this now not as a sermon, but as a letter. If you are trans and spiritual, if you are queer and curious, if you have felt the sting of rejection and still seek the divine, know this: there is a god for you, too. There is a love that does not ask you to bleed for it.
Her name is Lilith. She does not want your shame. She wants your truth. She wants your rage, your poetry, your softness. She wants your whole self, authentic, unsanitized, unafraid.
She wants you alive.
And so do I.