Book Review: The Metamorphosis of Baubo: Myths of Woman’s Sexual
Energy by Winifred Milius Lubell (Vanderbilt University Press 1994)
This is a neat book. It is a study of a feminine mythos. It
is well illustrated and delves into the very roots of mythology. The study
revolves around the figure of Baubo from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Baubo was an elder nurse-maid for a queen in Eleusis . When Demeter was
distraught due to the rape and abduction of her daughter Persephone/Kore, she
wandered in disguise in search of her. She ended up at Eleusis disguised as a servant and was
brought to this queen for work. It was Baubo who cheered her up with a gesture
of lifting her skirt to reveal her woman parts which made Demeter laugh. It is
likely that Baubo then came to serve Demeter when she was revealed to be the
earth goddess. Baubo is also called Iambe.
Along with the reference to Baubo/Iambe in the Hymn to
Demeter, a slightly different version of her role occurs in Orphic literature. In
one of the Orphic versions the wandering Demeter encounters Baubo and her
husband Dysaules and is welcomed into their humble cottage. Their herdsmen sons
Triptolemos and Eubuleus witnessed the rape and abduction of Persephone. In
another version, one of the sons guides Demeter into the underworld. The other
brother Eubuleus provided the pigs upon which they traveled to Hades. The
Athenian author Philochorus wrote that Iambe was the daughter of Pan and the
goddess Echo and noted that there was a sanctuary to Echo on the way to Eleusis,
suggesting (among other suggestions) that Iambe/Baubo had a role in the
Eleusinian Mysteries. A different Orphic myth occurred in Phrygia in Asia Minor . Here Baubo was said to have a daughter, Mise.
They were both witchy, nocturnal, chthonic creatures frequently associated with
Hecate. Like Hecate they were also associated with frogs. There is also a
curious story from Sardinia where the Virgin Mary was mourning the death of her
son and was consoled by a female frog who said that her own grief was worse
since she had seven children ran over bay cart wheels. This made Mary laugh.
This seems possibly a version of the Demeter/Baubo story.
The author paints a picture, investigating Baubo/Iambe as a
universal mythic form, giving possible correlates in many cultures. Baubo’s
gesture of revealing her vulva is called the ana-suromai. Apparently this gesture occurs in similar jesting yet
protective/healing contexts in several cultures and forms. Baubo was said to be
first connected in writing to the vulva by the 5th century B.C.
philosopher Empedocles. Baubo was also referred to as Bona Dea, goddess of women. The author suggests that the
ana-suromai gesture may have had something to do with women squatting over
newly plowed fields to offer their menstrual blood for fertility. Another
possibility is that of female puberty rites. The vulva as a symbol of power is
quite evident and ubiquitous in art from Paleolithic times. The rites of the
vulva may have faded or fallen out of favor with the advent of the male-dominated
Olympian gods. There is a current of feminist mythology here but it is
scholarly rather than militant. The forward to the book was written by Marija
Gimbutas and she was an advisor. Gimbutas is slightly controversial in her
feminine-centric views of the past but was nonetheless a brilliant
archaeologist and mythographer.
The author gives the two functions of Baubo as Sage Iambe
and Raucous Baubo. It was once thought that Iambe was the source of inspiration
for iambic meter but it is now thought iambic meter figured in the Eleusinian
Mysteries where raucous gestures and jokes may have been a part. Iambos refers to mocking poetry. Some
authors consider that this was a part of the Thesmophoria but not of Eleusis .
The name Baubo is found on a few inscriptions on an Aegean
island along with Demeter Thesmophoria (bringer of law and civilization), Kore,
Hera, and Zeus. Olender noted that the root word “bau” was used in a few words
associated with nursing an infant – ‘to lull to sleep, to rock, a cradle, a pacifier.’
The author notes that the root word is not common to Greek and may have been a
foreign import. For this and several other reasons she thinks Baubo was a
foreign goddess – possibly arising from the Sumerian goddess Bau, a goddess of
the dark waters of the deep, or void, who was listed on a clay tablet dated to
2500 B.C. as having seven hundred priests and priestesses at her temple – so an
important figure. The Phoenicians and Syrians had a similar goddess Baalat
(Anat), the wife of the storm god Baal. Egyptologist Margaret Murray favored an
Egyptian origin for Baubo from the Egyptian Beb ot Bebt, female counterpart of
the god Beb, although not much is known about these two, apparently popular in
the VIIth Dynasty (2250-2050 B.C.). Another possible link to Egypt is the
cult of the cat goddess Bast. Her main temple was at Bubastis ,
along the Nile . She was a goddess particularly
venerated by women. According to Herodotus women would crowd onto a barge and
travel down the Nile on their way to Bubastis, coming close to shore in towns
and displaying their revelry and ribaldry. Much wine was drunk. They would play
music, shout, laugh, and hike up their skirts. Another Greek traveler reported
similar skirt-raising gestures to the bull Apis at the Temple
of Serapis in Memphis in the first century B.C. Later.
Baubo was associated with the Hellenistic Isis as reliever of her grief anxiety
at the loss of Osiris.
There is evidence of the usage of Eleusis as a ritual site since 1450 B.C.
Underground chambers – possibly to store grain - have been dated to then. The
Eleusinian Mysteries were practiced there for more than a thousand years. The
height was perhaps the 5th century B.C. when there were buildings,
gardens and tended areas, and people coming from all over the Mediterranean
to attend the eight day festival. There were public rituals and private rites
for initiates. The public rites of the first five days were attended by all
classes of society, including slaves. The initiates then did a procession to Eleusis . Nearing Eleusis there was a
curious custom of clowning on a bridge that marked a boundary. The clowning
included making lewd gestures and shouting obscenities. Such activity is common
in many cultures as a means to induce fertility and that may well have been the
function of Baubo and her gestures. Aristophanes in his play “The Frogs”
mentions such jeering and jesting on a bridge by drunken women as a treasured
part of the feast of the Goddess. The final three days of the rites were
conducted in secret. River immersions, drinking of potions, ritual drama,
eating of consecrated cakes, and the sacrifice of pigs are thought to have been
parts. The three day October festival, Thesmophoria, was more solemn and mainly
a women’s affair. Here women gather to mourn and console Demeter on the loss of
Kore. Herodotus wrote that the rites came from Egypt through the daughters of
Danaus. After the mourning parts were finished the rites turned to joke and
jest strongly suggesting Baubo and her function of relieving the anxiety of
grief and promoting fertility. Some thought it was a puberty ritual but others
like Karl Kerenyi thought it was a traditional veneration of menstruation. He
noted that a woman’s period was evidence of her own fertility and as long as
they had that they could influence the fertility of the earth. In the
Thesmophoria the women were separated from the men just like in more primitive
societies where women go away from men during menstruation. Here the women
acknowledged their kinship with the earth. On one day they ate only pomegranate
seeds, likely to identify with Persephone. They made a tea of lygos (chaste
tree) in order to stimulate menstruation. Thus, the Thesmophoria is thought to
have been focused around communal menstruation. Interestingly, Baubo’s gesture
may symbolically show that comedy may arise from tragedy, that the emotional
overtones of situations are more flexible than those immersed in them often
realize. It is perhaps the notion of “comic relief.”
The author accords with the feminist notion that Attic
Greece and the Olympian pantheon derived from a male-dominated conquering tribe
and women, who once had the greatest of prominence in state and religious
affairs, had been reduced by the new patriarchy. This may have happened way in
the past but the aristocrats of Athens ,
in particular, seem to have been male-dominated. Some feminists have referred
to it as a phallocracy! In that case,
aristocratic women in Athens
had less independence than women in the countryside. The author notes the familiar
story from Hesiod of Pandora as the possible case of a venerated maiden-goddess
of abundance reduced to a creation of Zeus. Her defiance of his orders not to
open the jar causes curses on humankind so she is called a bringer of evil
rather than a bringer of abundance. The author notes feminists who think that
the women’s rites at Eleusis
and the Thesmophoria were a means for them to release frustrations at their own
oppression.
The author goes through scholarly references to Baubo,
trying to discern how others have interpreted her. She compares Jane Ellen
Harrison and Margaret Murray. Harrison was a
scholar of Ancient Greece who began to consider the influence of pre-Greek
matriarchal societies. Murray
was an Egyptologist also interested in Witchcraft. Early Christian writers
spoke of a sacred marriage (hieros gamos) rite at the Mysteries of Eleusis.
French scholar Charles Picard (1927) concluded, based on Orphic sources, that Baubo
was an integral part of this hieros gamos. Others as well regarded the Baubo
and Baubon as wood and/or clay representations of the vulva and phallus used in
the ceremony. Another French scholar, Mylonas, thinks that the accounts given
by Clement of Alexandria (of the hieros gamos as part of the Mysteries at Eleusis ) instead referred
to later rites in Ptolemaic Egypt, where Baubo/Isis images became quite common.
He does not think Baubo was a part of the rites at Eleusis . He distinguishes the trusted Iambe
from the depraved Baubo. The author disagrees and thinks he is influenced by
the Christian writers themselves in their denunciation of Baubo as an obscene
female figure. She points out that the Aegian island inscriptions (of the name
Baubo) alongside Demeter and other deities and the story in the Hymn to Demeter
both refute a later borrowed tradition. Another author, Burkhart, thought that
the Baubo and Baubon were not vulva and phallus, but mortar and pestle to grind
corn for the kykeon, the sacred drink
of barley, honey, and pennyroyal, described in the Hymn. Even so, one can
hardly not note the sexual symbolism of mortar and pestle and the act of
grinding! Burkhart considered Baubo to belong to the Thesmophoria rather than Eleusis .
Kerenyi noted an Orphic myth that had Demeter being drawn
through the underworld in a chariot pulled by serpents. It was there in the
underworld that she encountered Baubo and Dysaules. Kerenyi collaborated with
Carl Jung on a volume of essays on the Demeter-Kore myth. Bruce Lincoln
considered the myth of Demeter and Persephone to be the most important myth for
women. His idea was that before Indo-European conquest of Greece around
1800 B.C. there was a prominent female puberty rite involving a ritual drama
that was later incorporated into the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Next the author delves into the deep past of the Paleolithic
and Neolithic with their abundant female figures to search for distant
precursors to Baubo. The vulva was a frequent image, not only in Europe , but also in other parts of the world. The vulva
was most often depicted abstractly. Other implements incorporated vulva and
phallus in one sculpture and may have been used as a sort of ritual dildo for
initiatory purposes. The figures are thought to represent creative power, life
force, and perpetuation of the species. Many of these “Venuses” had no heads or
arms. One Venus has an ample and mature shape and holds a horn or crescent moon
with thirteen marks. The prominence of female figures continued into the
Neolithic after the melting of the glaciers. Marija Gimbutas points out that it
is mistake to suggest that these figures are simply fertility objects. She
notes that fertility was a primary concern of the agricultural era but before
that the great goddess was mainly concerned with life, death, and regeneration.
She says that in the Neolithic the goddess was depicted as snake, bird, fish,
frog, or hedgehog. Carved figures of the Fish Goddess from Neolithic Serbia have
a resemblance to Sheela-Na-Gigs.
The author notes three gestures common in feminine ancient
art that apply to Baubo: arms up-raised, the frog-like squat, and Baubo’s
gesture of the ana-suramai. Each of these gestures, she says, has both scared
and profane connotations. Arms-upraised is a very ancient Mediterranean gesture
of mourning and reverence for the dead. It also signifies epiphany and seeking
or the receiving of a divine blessing. The squatting posture emphasizes the
female genitalia. Anthropologists associate it with death and the underworld.
It is also, of course, the posture of giving birth. It should be noted that
throughout this book there are many pictures of these goddess-figures. The
Egyptian frog goddess Heket (or Hekat) was venerated as “primordial mother of
all existence.” She had her own temple at pre-Dynastic Hermopolis and some
think she came originally from Mesopotamia .
She was a midwife and crone, assisting the daily birth of the sun god. She
shares many similarities with the Greek goddess Hecate, aside from the nearly
identical name. Both were crones associated with witches, death, regeneration,
the underworld, and frogs. Baubo may also have been associated with the Triple
Moon Goddess form of Hecate. The “old toad” invective has become an insult to
old women in general who became scorned and feared. Squatting is associated
with birthing, urination, defecation, and menstruating – biological actions
that are generally deemed private and profane.
Baubo is not depicted in representations of Demeter and
Persephone. Statuettes thought to be of Baubo found at Priene in Asia Minor are odd in that that have no torsos, just legs
reaching to faces. The faces are at the level of the vulva. Some hold baskets
of fruit, flowers, lutes, and torches. They resemble dwarves. The author delves
into depictions of ancient Attic Greek art, noting that genitals on male heroes
were miniaturized, but on foreigners, slaves, and satyrs, were enlarged. She
also notes the polarization of the sexes in aristocratic ancient Greek society.
Women were depicted fully clothed. When Praxiteles created a completely nude
statue of Aphrodite of Cnidus in 350 B.C., it was considered shocking.
The author makes an interesting study of Medusa, of the
three Gorgon sisters. Hesiod described the Gorgon sisters, Stenno, Euryal, and
Medusa. The first two were hideous but Medusa was beautiful. They arose early
in the creation of the world and dwelled across the ocean near Night. The
author considers the later myth of Perseus slaying Medusa at the behest of a
jealous Athena, to be a later reworking of the myth. Robert Graves first noted
such a scenario where he sees Perseus as one of the Archean aggressors
conquering Libya
and the Libyan supreme goddess Neith (as Medusa) being overthrown by the Greek
patriarchal system with the aid of Zeus-born Athena. Perseus brought her head
(or possibly the ritual mask of her priestess) back to Athens . Her mask (figuratively) may have been
what was transformed into the Vagina Dentata (vagina with teeth) of the Middle
Ages. Some feminist mythographers have come to see this myth of Medusa as a
myth of the fear of women and the need to suppress their inherent power in
Attic Greek society. Interesting ideas but I think much of this should be
considered speculative. Athena then stripped off the skin of Medusa to make a
breastplate. Drops of the blood of Medusa were considered both medicinal and
poisonous. She was noted in Greek art as early as 1500 B.C. Marija Gimbutas
considers her to be a pre-Indo-European goddess of life and death. By the
seventh century B.C. images of Medusa became talismans, particularly to avert
the “evil eye.” Medusa’s gaze came to represent being turned to stone – or
bewitched with her evil eye. Her later use as a talisman against it can be seen
as a form of homeopathic sympathetic magic – perhaps. There are images of
Medusa and possibly of Baubo as well with an eye. Several other authors have
pointed out similarities between Medusa (Gorgons) and Baubo – both as
embodiments of female genitalia. Displaying genitalia – both male and female –
is curiously a way of protecting againsts demons and witchcraft in many
cultures. Early Christianity may have absorbed symbolism of the evil eye and
the need to avert it – particularly the evil eye of the female witch archetype
which in Christianity was strongly associated with evil.
The author notes a change in Hellenistic society where Greek
women were freed up due to influences from other places. Religious syncretism
became more common. The author notes Hellenistic Age figures of Baubo doing the
ana-suromai found among the Scythians. This is also a time when the Hellenistic
Isis had some synthesis with Baubo and figures of Isis/Bauabo in the
skirt-raising gesture were apparently quite common among agrarian peoples. The
Baubo/Isis figures definitely support the equation of the skirt-raising gesture
with fertility as they also appear carrying baskets of fruit. One image from Italy shows
Baubo riding on a sow, an animal long associated with agriculture – also
Baubo’s husband and sons tended pigs and pig and piglet sacrifices were long a
part of the worship of Demeter. Isis was also
syncretized with Demeter as the Earth Mother goddess. The skirt-raising gesture
was also part of the veneration of the Egyptian bull god Apis, a reincarnation
of the supreme creator god Ptah. Here the gesture may have been for blessings
to conceive, to heal, or for fertility of woman and land.
Further examining the dichotomy of feminine symbolism the
author notes the Judeo-Christian conception of Eve as both the mother of all
humans and the first sinner. The Romanesque grotesque female forms seen on
churches are perhaps evident of this dual symbolism. There are mermaids,
squatting crones, sheela-na-gigs, many revealing the vulva. Their function has
been described as a means to scare sinners from sinning but some like to see a
deeper function as regenerative goddesses. In any case, the old art form of the
squatting goddess is well preserved at least in the architectural form of
Christian tradition – though likely for reasons of warning rather than
veneration. The author sees these depictions as a transformation of the once
respected goddess of life, death, and regeneration into a lesser (Christian)
function of averting evil and the urge to sin.
One of the later chapters considers the male aspect of these
regenerative powers through the male genitalia. Particulary, Hermes and the
“herms” where he is depicted in statue form with large erect penis, are
examined. The author links Hermes and Baubo as the deified male and female
genitalia. Like the ubiquitous talismanic carved Medusa heads of Attic Greece,
the stone carved herms were everywhere. Piles of stone as milestones were
replaced by herms. The herms are thought to have had more of a protective than
a fertility function. In myth Hermes is a son of Zeus and the nymph Maia. He is
a herder from Arcadia .
Herodotus notes that images of the ithyphallic Hermes originated among the
Pelasgians, or sea peoples that settled some Aegian islands. Both Hermes and
Baubo were servants, she of Demeter, and he of Zeus. Both could move between
worlds – both were considered chthonic.
Hermes Chthonius escorted Persephone from the underworld. According to later
Orphic accounts it was Baubo Chthonius who did the escorting.
There are two appendices. The first is an account, with
commentary, of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. The second is a series of myths
from various cultures that sort of parallel the Baubo myth. The first of these
is a Hittite tale, with a similar Sumerian version, which tells of the loss of
Inara, a daughter of the storm god, in the Hittite version, and Telipinu, a son
of the storm god, in the Sumerian version. Both tales were written down around
2000 B.C. They are clearly different versions of a similar story that has
strong similarities to the story of Demeter as well. The lost son, or daughter,
is angry and withholds fertility from the land. As in the Demeter story the
gods are forced to convene and begin a search. They ask the ancient grandmother
Hannahanna to help. She agrees and summons the bee. The bee finally finds the lost
storm god and stings him on the hands and feet as instructed. This angers him
and rituals must be performed in order for fertility to return. Apparently,
there are quite a few Hittite and Sumerian versions of this myth. The
withdrawal of the Telipinu, or Inara, or the healing goddess Kamrupsepa in some
versions, may be seen as a trip to the underworld with the ensuing loss of
fertility. Of course, the famous myth of the Descent of Inanna into the
underworld has quite a few similarities to the Demeter/Kore myth. Inanna’s
faithful servant Ninshubur may be similar to Baubo as servant of Demeter. Ninshubur
was too valuable to Inanna to take her place in the underworld so she sends her
beloved husband Dumuzi instead!
Two myths of Hathor are also given. Hathor was mostly a
fertility goddess. Isis took on some of her
attributes by Hellenic times. Her wrathful aspect was the lion goddess Sekmet.
She was also merged to some extent with the cat goddess Bast. The first story
from the Pyramid Texts is one where Sekmet quarrels with her father, the sun
god, Re. She prepares to destroy the world and head for the desert of Nubia
Also given is the Japanese tale of the sun goddess
Amaterasu. Her outrageous brother Susanawo causes problems. They quarrel much.
He destroys her heavenly rice fields and shits in her temple but it is when he
kills the colt of heaven and one of her weaving priestesses and destroys her
weaving hall that she reacts. Amaterasu retreats to the Cave of Heaven
Finally, the author includes a modern myth in the making
from the mountains of the Phillipines. Here the Kalinga people were faced with
the prospect of a large hydroelectric dam inundating their ancestral land.
Their pleas to the officials were ignored. When surveyors came out escorted by
soldiers the women of the Kalinga met them and removed their skirts and began
wacking the men with their skirts. The men were dazed and embarrassed. It was a
cultural taboo there to observe naked women and so the men did not resist. They
also removed the clothes of the men who did not return home until after dark.
The women played on the men’s cultural taboos. No dam was built – at least at
the time. She gives a few other stories of wars in Persia ,
Lydia ,
and in the Celtic story of CuChulain, where women exposed themselves to shame
men.
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