The Story of Baubo

BAUBO, I laugh. Your humor lives in ME...I am joyous with grateful mirth as I see the Divine Humor in it all. To laugh...what a Gift from the Goddess!

Blessed Be

From The Metamorphosis of Baubo, Myths of Woman's Sexual Energy by Winnifred Milius Lubell

foreword by Marija Gimbutas

"Baubo. Who was she? Where did she come from? What does she represent? Baubo is one of the names of a mythical Greek woman, said to be a servant or we nurse to the grain goddess Demeter. In certain Greek religious writings and later accounts of Greek religious rites, Baubo exposes her vulva before Demeter, an act called "ana-suromai", a Greek verb literally meaning to lift one's skirts...The effect was to make Demeter laugh during a time when the Grain Goddess was deep in mourning over the loss of her daughter, Persephone."

Baubo's name has had many forms, among them, Iambe, Isis and Bau., Bona Dea, bawd, night demon or Mal Ochio (Evil Eye), Sheilah-Na-Gig...."The image of Baubo spans eras and cuts across cultures, like an ubiquitous time-traveling pilgrim."p.8....Baubo's gift of joke and jest was shared among women...Surely, Baubo, who made the goddess laugh, was one of the transformers, one of the important missing pieces in this complex puzzle and the absence of her jokes and her laughter is our great loss." p. 39

"Baubo's role was to reemphasize women's importance for the fecundity of earth and its peoples." p. 43

"Baubo...was sacred--and she was an abomination (virgin/whore?)...Her "exhibitionism" before Demeter was a ritual reminder that through their bodies, they each contained the entire mystery of the creative cycle." p.54

"This ladder-of-the-soul permits the initiate to go back and forth from the desirous mud realm of Baubo (her husband tended pigs) to the transcendent starry heaven of Venus. Women's worship connects the highest with the lowest, the maculate and the immaculate." p. 120

Discover the Baubo in yourself.

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