The Lilin are the night-demons of Jewish lore: a host of malevolent spirits, the demonic offspring of [lilith], who haunt the darkness and prey especially upon children and women in childbirth, a class of dangerous nocturnal demons against whom the protective amulets and charms of the tradition were raised. They are the children of the night-demoness.
The Children of Lilith
The lilin (singular lili; related to the lilim) are the demonic offspring of Lilith — the host of night-demons born of the night-demoness, whether from her own breeding or from her seduction of men in their sleep. They are a class of malevolent spirits of the darkness, kin in nature to their dread mother, and like her they are creatures of the night who threaten the vulnerable. Their name, like Lilith’s, derives from the ancient Mesopotamian lilitu, the night-spirits, and from the Hebrew for “night.”
The Predators of the Night
The lilin share their mother’s dread predations. They are especially dangerous to children — haunting the night to harm or steal newborns and infants — and to women in childbirth and the newly delivered, and they afflict the vulnerable in the darkness. Like Lilith, they were warded off by protective amulets, charms, and the invocation of holy names and the three angels (Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof), hung over cradles and birthing-beds to protect mother and child from the night-demons. They are also associated, like their mother, with the seduction of the sleeping and the breeding of further demons.
The Host of the Demoness
The lilin belong to the broad demonology of Jewish lore, the host of malevolent night-spirits that, with their mother Lilith and the broader class of the [shedim], populate the dark and threaten the order of human life. They embody the dangers of the night, of childbirth and infancy, and of the demonic feminine descended from Lilith. In the Lilin, Jewish lore gave form to the demonic offspring of the night-demoness — the host of night-demons born of Lilith who haunt the darkness and prey upon children and women in childbirth, the dread children of the night against whom the amulets and holy names of the tradition stood guard.