Lilith

"The First, The Last, The Eternal."

- Roman Zimojic

Lilith is a recurring character in the fifth season. She is played by Jessica Clark and debuts in.

Lilith is known as the Progenitor and is supposedly the "first vampire", made in God's image. She's believed by many vampires to have been created before Adam and Eve, who, according to the Original Testament, were designed to sustain Lilith; her progeny in turn would be sustained by their children, the human race. Lilith is worshiped as a god by many vampires.

In the fifth episode of season five it is revealed that the Authority possess a vial of blood that many believe to have belonged to Lilith. However, Roman Zimojic explains to Salome Agrippa that the blood is not Lilith's, and that by allowing others to believe that the blood is authentic, he boosts his own, and the Authority's, credibility. In spite of Roman's insistence that neither Lilith nor the blood are real, the blood has powerful properties when consumed by vampires, suggesting that, whoever or whatever Lilith really was, she did exist.

Pre-Season
According to the Vampire Bible, Lilith was created by God in His own image: a vampire. Adam and Eve were created to sustain her, beginning the natural order of humans existing to service vampires. Lilith eventually met the sun, after which her progeny gathered her remains in an earthen jar. At some (possibly multiple) point(s) in the intervening centuries, the remains were transferred, eventually winding up in a fine crystal vial.

Is is logical to assume that the Guardian's original purpose was to guard Lilith's remains; the Chancellors and the Vampire Authority likely arose later as extensions of the ecclesiastical authority the Guardian wielded.

After Roman met the true death at the hands of Russell Edgington, Salome and Nora organized a ceremony in which the surviving chancellors and a select group of newcomers drank small drops of Lilith's blood. The vampires swiftly became intoxicated, wandering through the streets of New Orleans in search of a meal. As they gorged themselves on a private wedding party, the group experienced a vivid hallucination of Lilith rising from a pool of blood.

While in bed with Salome, Bill Compton hallucinates that she is Sookie Stackhouse, and then that she is a blood-encrusted Lilith.

Bill and Nora force-feed Eric a drop of Lilith's blood, with Nora taking a dose herself to share the vision. The vampire siblings are greeted by a vision of Godric, who admonishes Nora for her ideology and denounces Lilith as "a godless god". An apparition of Lilith creeps up behind Godric and, ignoring Nora's pleas for mercy, rips off his head.

While praying in the shrine one day, Lilith appears to Bill. She states that she has chosen him as the one vampire to rule all others and that he should drink all of the blood in her vial. Bill is shaken by the vision, particularly when he notices that Lilith's bloody handprint remains on the glass of the shrine after the vision ends. After the vision repeats itself later, Bill resolves to follow it and returns to the shrine, only to find Kibwe Akinjide, who also claims to have been chosen. A distressed and confused Bill immediately decapitates Kibwe. While cleaning up the remains, Bill notices that the handprint is still there.

Unknown to Bill, Salome also receives a vision of Lilith, who delivers the same message: she is the chosen one and must drink all the blood.

Powers and Abilities
Lilith would possesses the normal powers and weaknesses of a vampire, such as superhuman strength, speed, healing, reflexes and agility; she might also have had access to other powers, sight as flight. The exact extent of her abilities would depend on how old she was when she met the sun (a date for her existence and true death has not yet been suggested).

Lilith's blood, if it is indeed hers, exhibits all the qualities of normal vampire blood, in addition to being an extremely potent hallucinogen. Vampires who consume her blood exhibit behavior typical of vampires in nests, as well as a greatly increased appetite and vivid hallucinations of Lilith herself. Most disturbingly, it appears that these visions endure even when the vampire has recovered from the initial effects of the blood, seeing Lilith hours or even days after consuming a single drop.

Trivia

 * In Jewish folklore, from the 8th–10th centuries Alphabet of Ben Sira onwards, Lilith becomes Adam's first wife, who was created at the same time and from the same earth as Adam. This contrasts with Eve, who was created from one of Adam's ribs. The legend was greatly developed during the Middle Ages, in the tradition of Aggadic midrashim, the Zohar and Jewish mysticism. In the 13th Century writings of Rabbi Isaac ben Jacob ha-Cohen, for example, Lilith left Adam after she refused to become subservient to him and then would not return to the Garden of Eden after she mated with archangel Samael.