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Lilith
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Lilith, or Black Moon Lilith, is not a body at all. The Moon's orbit is an ellipse, not a circle, and Lilith marks the lunar apogee — the point of that ellipse farthest from the Earth, projected onto the zodiac. Nothing is there to see, which is where the name "black moon" comes from. The charts here use the mean apogee, a smoothed position; the "true" or osculating apogee follows the orbit's real shape and can swing up to thirty degrees either side of it, so two charts can show quite different Liliths depending on which is used.
Two other things share the name and should not be confused with it: the asteroid numbered 1181 Lilith, a small body in the asteroid belt, and a hypothetical "dark moon" proposed in the early twentieth century, which has never been observed.
Motion
The mean Lilith moves forward through the zodiac about forty degrees a year, a little under seven minutes of arc a day, completing the circle in roughly nine years and spending around nine months in each sign. It is never retrograde in its mean form; the true apogee does appear to reverse from time to time.
Its place in astrology
Lilith is a modern point. It has no traditional nature, holds no domicile, exaltation or other essential dignity, and rules nothing in the tradition. It is read alongside the planets, never as one of them, and is weighed lightly unless it closely touches a planet or angle.
How it is read
Drawing on the figure of Lilith in Jewish legend — Adam's first companion, who refused to submit and left Eden — modern astrologers read the Black Moon as the raw, instinctual part of a person that refuses to be tamed: desire, anger, independence and anything felt to be taboo. Its sign and house show where someone is least willing to perform for approval. When that energy is denied it can turn into resentment or self-sabotage; acknowledged, it can become integrity and a fierce kind of self-respect. In the 7th house the theme tends to centre on equality in partnership; in the 10th, on refusing to be defined by others' expectations.
In transit
Because it moves steadily but not fast, transiting Lilith stays within a degree or two of a natal point for a month or more. Its contacts are often read as moments when a suppressed feeling or desire comes to the surface and asks to be owned rather than hidden.