Biblically and mystically

Lilith is often thought of in Kabbalah as a cosmic evil force, and if we constrain ourselves to the jewish texts alone (namely genesis, the zohar, kabbalistic texts in general, and various commentaries by the sages), we have a few different origins of Lilith: she arose before Adam on the fifth day, she arose with Adam, she was created as a part of Adam, she arose with Samael as a single androgynous being, arose spontaneously, or arose from the shell/husk of evil.

This all (well, the last few explanations) draws a lot on kabbalah, and is kinda, um, out there. The fourth origin has her and Samael mirroring Adam and Eve in their arising as an androgynous being that is later separated. But the last two have her being a part of the cosmic creation process.

Its waayyyy more than I have the time and inclination to get in to, but Kabbalah puts forth Lilith as a personification/anthropormorphization/embodyment of evil, of the supernatural concept of evil, which is forced into the insanely rigid kabbalistic view of everything and of spirituality. She is talked about as the evil mistress of Y", and as the queen of the underworld. These are metaphores but illustrate how she figures in to the cosmic creation process. She exists all at once in heaven, on earth, and in the "underworld". Kabbalah is hyper dualistic, good vs evil, etc. etc. and she serves as the evil counterpart to Eve, as the "shadow self" of the individual, and in general when tikkun (sort of a mending of the fabric of the universe) has occured, she will have been brought into balance with the other parts of "the feminine". Once the dispirate parts of "the feminine" are reunified, then the reunification of the masculine and the feminine can happen, and eventually everything reunifies with the other aspects of itself, and we all reunify back into God, and restore ein-sof as a single thing that is no longer "withdrawn". So she is kind of an important and key figure in a pretty big part of the process of reunification, as the "dark feminine".

I've kind of skipped over all of this, because Kabbalah is so strange in a lot of ways, that explaining why or even just how a conclusion was made, would require citing 10 different texts, each with 5 different interpretations, and unifying them all together. Seriously, kabbalists do math with letters and use the resulting numbers to infer meaning about the universe and all sorts of wild shit, its way more than I have the energy to get into. Its also kinda super problematic imo.

modern day

So, we see starting in maybe the 70s (maybe earlier?) feminist midrashim that paint Lilith in a wholly different light: one of a first wife, one of the archetypal Woman Who Is Not Subservient To Man, one of a feminist who was strong enough to defy not only Adam, but God himself! She used the power she had to stop Adam from removeding her, and fled and refused to be brought back to Adam. Theres one midrash that shows her returning to the garden, and speaking with Eve, and helping Eve to escape Adam and the garden.

Lilith became the badass woman who didnt take shit and helped her sisters and was strong. She was of the night and was evil and a demon because she didnt do what the patriarchal authorities told her to.

Aaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnddddd then our gender system enforces her subservience. Lilith was brought back into the patriarchal fold as a "sexy, dark feminine". She has been re-imagined (without anything to really back it up as far as I can telm) as an all goddess (selene lilith), stories of her are told with the basic moral of "liberation is fucking men at their impulse", in general i see an attempt to slowly refold her into our misogynistic tradition as a fucktoy, as a power fantasy of men taming the Rebelious Powerful Woman^tm^. (To be clear, this is not an idictment of sexiness, but rather an indictment of sexiness in service of men and the cultural power fantasy. Its also just my thoughts, and could very well be wrong).

Thats not to say she should be discarded though! She is an incredible archetype, myth, spirit, demon, whatever you want to call her. IMO She should be invoked/related to in archetypically feminine ways that are empowering and bring people freedom from our patriarchal binary gender system. To paraphrase the accellerator, just because the gender superstructure is (at some point in the future) destroyed, does not mean "woman" ceases to exist; just because we tear down the cell walls and can move beyond, does not mean that the position of the cell ceases to exist, we can still reside there but we are also free to move beyond it.

To me she represents transgression against patriarchal norms and society. She represents the demonization that non-men face under patriarchy. She represents an embrace of that demonization; she becomes a demon in a show of force that refuses adam and god himself. She represents a revocation; of blessings, of the gilded cage, of abuse, of assimilation.