The Metamorphosis of Baubo: Myths of Woman's Sexual EnergyFrom primitive European and African carvings and cave drawings to the classical poetry, pottery, and sculpture of Attic Greece, from mysterious and disturbing female shapes on the facades of certain gothic Christian churches to startling and instructive examples of contemporary myths in the making, Winifred Milius Lubell tracks a vast resource of visual and textual evidence in this first book-length study of Baubo. Lubell's artistic and literary sources support the argument that from the earliest moments of civilization, humans have respected and revered female sexual energy, graphically symbolized in the vulva, as an indispensable force in the balance of nature. Over the ages, the images of Baubo and her sisters assumed deviant and disturbing forms, but the basic lines of her legend and its visual manifestations were not completely obscured. Nor, as this book will show, has Baubo's essential power been destroyed even in our own age. |
Contents
Sage lambe and Raucous Baubo | 13 |
Baubo Verified | 21 |
Festival Sacrament Sacred Laughter | 29 |
Copyright | |
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Amaterasu ancient archaic aspect Athens Attic Baubo birth body Burkert carved cave century BCE ceremonies circa culture deity Delporte Demeter Devereux divine earth Egypt Egyptian Eleusinian Mysteries Eleusis fecundity female sexual feminine fertility festival FIGURE figurines frog genitals gesture of ana-suromai Giedion goddess gods Greek Religion Hades Harper and Row Hathor Hellenistic Hermes Herodotus Hittite Homeric Hymn Hymn to Demeter Iambe Iambe/Baubo iconography images Isis jokes Kalinga Karl Kerenyi Kerenyi Keuls kykeon laughter legend Lepenski Vir magic male Marija Gimbutas Marshack Maurice Olender Medusa mother Murray Museum Mylonas myth mythic Mythology Neolithic nurse obscene Orphic painted Paleolithic Perdrizet Persephone phallus Picard poem posture Priene priestess religious rites rituals role sacred Sekmet sexual energy Sheilahs squatting statuettes stone story Sumerian symbol Telipinu temple terra-cotta Thesmophoria trans transformation underworld unearthed University Press vulva Walter Burkert William Irwin Thompson woman women worship York Zeus