Pagan Blog Project Week 3: “B” is for “Baubo”
This is a subject I’ve been meaning to write on for a long time and it keeps evolving and getting pushed back, pushed aside, buried… but it is time to start addressing certain issues; Mr Pants has made it clear that it is necessary if I want to play with him properly. Also, it is necessary – per my definition – to be alive to be Pagan, and I am barely breathing.
Coincidentally, my Free Will horoscope for the week I am writing this post, not only uses the analogy of armour (as I do, further down), but also states that now is the time to shed as many of my defense mechanisms and emotional baggage as possible. Oh, Rob Brezsny, you always know just what to say.
This is very difficult (the only reason I can stand to post this is because I know I’ll be gone for the next 6 weeks and the shame will lessen), but Baubo lightens the burden. Baubo is the beginning.
This entry is NSFW.
The Devil of Pope-Fig Island by Charles Eisen; from -Tales and Novels in Verse- by Jean de La Fontaine, 1896
Baubo is a favourite mythological figure of mine. She resonated with me the moment I read her story on the (currently down) Shanmonster’s site. Later I encountered her again in Women Who Run with the Wolves
She is what Ms Estes terms a “dirty goddess” – “dirty” being a good thing! Baubo is dirty like the fertile and creative earth; dirty from being pushed underground and hidden; dirty in her bawdy and obscene actions. She is a trickster – she literally tricks Demeter (and in the form of Usume, Amaterasu) into laughing – and a crone, one of those wise women who doesn’t give a flying fuck. She knows the score – and it’s not at all what you perceive it to be – and so she laughs and jests and is raunchily alive. She is laughter as an expression of life-force: It is laughter that brings the grief-stricken Demeter – and by association, the world – back to life.
Baubo gives voice to the body, circumnavigating the intellect.
When you laugh – truly laugh, without control – you can’t help but be in your body. The intellect shuts down, allowing a state of calm up there in the higher regions. All sorts of things happen with your oxygen levels, promoting a state of physical bliss; muscles relax and contract, blood flow increases, your heart flips out – it is invigorating! And freeing. And alive. Laughter really is good, good, medicine.
Baubo. Body. Bliss.
Belly.
The belly is where it gets real. The belly and that area south of it, for below her obvious capering and timely employment of anasyrma, Baubo is a teacher of the sacred sexual; laughter is just her tool.
Sacred sexual. Sacral sexual.
At this point, I deleted the rest of the original version of this post; I didn’t know how to say what I was saying. I know what it’s about now and, while this is turning into something maybe not-so-much-Pagan, it is spinning a thread that is very much mine. The words are hard to get out though. They stick in my throat and he insists I form them for myself. There’s (literal) fucking ahead, so there you have it.
This is a continuance of my work to free myself from my ancestral legacy.
In my upbringing, sex was equalled to pain, shame, loss, betrayal, discomfort and, at its best, necessary (but no more than that). I knew they were full of shit, but I was always very good at learning fear and shame, so I made them my own. From a distance now, I understand why. I understand the child conceived by an unmarried naïf, sacrificed to adoption. I understand the serial adultery and broken home. I understand the abuse, the Calvinistic chokehold on affection. These things were not mine, but I fashioned them into a spectacular suit of armour.
In addition, I was precocious – mentally, physically, sexually – and precocious enough to know I was precocious. Hide it hide it hide it well. Hide the fire. Hide the feral smile. Hide the dilated pupils under slitted lids; the surely-visible hot glow of power; the hunger – hunger for unnatural things. Sometimes I slipped. I scared The Boy with just one look; scared him to pallor. I nearly ate his brother. Lock the cage again. Lock it down.
When my time finally came – a good deal later than the average and a damn deal later than I desired – I was a fucking superstar. Even more surprising than my physical aptitude though, were the other things that happened while riding the ol’ bone rollercoaster:
I am sure this was him, my daimon. It reeks of him. It definitely wasn’t anything more than a physical connection with the guy I was with (manipulative asshole); he was just the flesh. My horse. I say it was him because the sacral is his base of operations. He works to spin that wheel and stoke the fire, because now…
Now, it is gone. Depression, medication, relationship dynamics. There is a disconnect between body and brain. Brain wants, but body no comprende. Body wants, but brain is busy elsewhere. It happens, but not on my terms. Not when I need it to. It used to be effortless – just dive in. Instead I have become what I was given: an inhibited, disinterested, shame-filled prison and I am fucking (ha! I wish) sick of it.
Baubo gives voice to the body, circumnavigating the intellect.
That’s where Demeter found herself, too tied up in Her head, and all growth came to a halt. Baubo shook her free, reminded Her where Her fertile power lay, down there in Her belly. For too long I have found refuge in mental masturbation, which – while immensely pleasurable – is ultimately barren. I need fire; that’s what the Wands are all about: The creative spark. The divine creative spark.
Obvious Wand is obvious. (Ace of Wands - Sol invictus Tarot by Kim Huggens & Nic Phillips; Sagarin Press, 2007)
I consult myself, and the whiny voice answers: “I waaant to, I really do…” Liar. LIAR. Liar, liar, pants with no desire. Oh. That’s it, isn’t it? I have no desire. For anything. No ferocious urge. And… no joy? There are moments, but they are there and then they are gone. There is no fuel for the spark to take hold and burn. Too much air; too much air. Extinguish it – fire leads to feelings – feelings lead to pain.
Ohhh. Oh, that’s so sad. Perfectly understandable, and a perfectly logical reaction and solution to the (perceived) problem. And there’s the new problem again: logic. Logic is good, but it has no grasp of depth and nuance.
Once more, with feeling:
Baubo gives voice to the body, circumnavigating the intellect.
WWBD <- my new mantra.
I know what he would do – arrange for me to fuck the still-dead Osiris, complete with wooden wang (it is well-established that he has no use for subtlety). Even while it was happening and I asked, “What’s the point of all this?” he just stood there watching, smiling that smile, being inscrutable. Louche bastard (I love him.) There are many different versions of the Isis & Osiris myth, but the core details stay the same. In each, Osiris is hacked to pieces by Set; Isis reassembles His body, except for the one vital (vital) piece; She fashions Him a new one and brings Him back to life. In most of the tellings, Horus is conceived during this process.
I am unclear as to what this means for me (this esoteric study of the myth deserves serious reading) – all I can think of is “flogging *ahem* a dead horse”. It will resolve itself if I pick at it long enough, I’m sure. What is crystal clear though, is that I need to reconnect with my body. I need to find my desire and release it from confinement. I need to (allow myself to) feel joy again and, most vital: I need to be alive.
And that is terrifying.
-Desire- by Harutyun Gulamir Khachatryan, 2009 (click to view large)
I find it very interesting that we both wrote on Baubo this week, without even consulting each other.
This is a very interesting post and I see nothing in it for you to be ashamed…working through issues is hard and I admire your efforts.
WWBD…I like that…
I’m showing my deficient background in all this again, I’ve never heard of Baubo before. I will have to spend some time learning about her.
The intensity and raw honesty of your writing always amazes me.
Oh wow wish I were brave enough to write like that! I don’t see anything to be ashamed about, either; sounds like something written by a grown woman, that’s all.
Also this is a really helpful post, for me personally.
You mentioned medication up there. I know I’m more or less terrified now of having to go back on SSRI’s (the notorious libido killers) unless it is absolutely necessary, because last time I was on them my daimon went away. I didn’t miss him at the time, being bathed in this sort of wishy-washy contentedness from the drugs, but once I was off them he came back and I felt like myself again. Not that they do that to everyone, of course. But I’m just saying, that if you are on meds that affect the libido, that it is less your… responsibility, I guess, or less something you have some power to change, i.e., it’s not your fault that it’s at a low ebb (or gone) right now. It’s something outside of yourself, which is not something you are going to be able to change by interior work, as it were, and assuming you can fix all of it yourself is a way of being hard on yourself. Or at least that’s how it tends to work with me.
Holy shit, your story sounds so much like mine.
Thank you. No words for the rest (yet?), but thank you for writing this.
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