Amenouzume And Baubo

In a world often dominated by seriousness and societal pressures to conform, some ancient goddesses offer a vital counterpoint. They remind us of the essential role of laughter, not just as a pleasant pastime, but as a powerful force for healing, renewal, and even revolution. What's more, they celebrate the body, not as something to be ashamed of, but as a source of power, joy, and connection. Among these spirited figures, Amenouzume the Japanese Shinto goddess of the dawn (a uniplural form of Aurora) and Baubo from ancient Greece stand out, leading a raucous chorus of goddesses across cultures who celebrate the earthy, the comedic, and frankly, the bodily.

Amenouzume: Dancing Light Back into the World

Imagine a sun goddess, Amaterasu, withdrawing into a cave, plunging the world into darkness and despair. This is the crisis at the heart of the Amenouzume myth. Faced with universal gloom, the other gods are at a loss. Enter Amenouzume, the "Heavenly Alarming Female." She doesn't offer sage advice or brute force. Instead, she dances a sacred dance called Kagura, performed to placate and venerate the gods.

Amenouzume’s dance is not a delicate ballet. It’s described as raucous, wild, and explicitly sexual. She overturns a washtub and performs her dance on it, stamping her feet, exposing her breasts, and reportedly even flashing her genitals. The spectacle is so outrageously funny that the assembled deities erupt in thunderous laughter. This cacophony of mirth, intriguingly, coaxes Amaterasu out of her cave, drawn by the sounds of joy and curiosity. The light returns to the world, all thanks to Amenouzume’s audacious performance.

Amenouzume is more than just a comedic figure. She is a force of life, a catalyst for renewal. Her uninhibited behaviour, considered shocking even within the divine realm, breaks through the stagnation of despair and re-ignites the creative and life-giving energies of the cosmos. She embodies the disruptive, transformative power of laughter – a force capable of shattering darkness and ushering in light.

Baubo: The Laughter that Heals

Across the seas in ancient Greece, we find Baubo, a figure often associated with the Eleusinian Mysteries, sacred rites connected to Demeter, the goddess of agriculture. In the myth, Demeter, distraught over the abduction of her daughter Persephone, refuses to eat, plunging the earth into famine. Desperate to cheer the grieving goddess and persuade her to nourish the world again, Baubo appears.

Similar to Amenouzume, Baubo’s method is unconventional and decidedly bodily. She performs an obscene gesture, reportedly lifting her skirts and displaying her abdomen or genitals to Demeter. Baubo's obscene gesture, known as anasyrma, reflects her function as a symbol of fertility, sexuality, and life's regenerative forces.

This act, far from being offensive, elicits uproarious laughter from the sorrowful goddess. This laughter, like Amenouzume's dance, breaks through Demeter's grief and allows her to reconnect with the world, ultimately leading to the return of Persephone and the renewal of life.

Baubo, like Amenouzume, utilises the unexpected and the taboo to break through barriers. Her humour is visceral, rooted in the body and challenging societal norms of decorum. She reminds us that even in the face of profound sorrow, laughter has the power to heal, to reconnect us to our bodies, and to re-engage with the cycle of life.

Restoring Balance 

Despite the geographical and cultural distance between Japan and Greece, Amenouzume and Baubo share striking similarities. Both figures use humour, dance, and sexuality to restore balance and banish despair. They represent the dual nature of existence, merging the sacred and the profane, life and death, order and chaos.

In their respective cultural contexts, Amenouzume and Baubo subvert societal norms and expectations, playfully challenging the status quo. By coupling mirth with eroticism, they embolden individuals to embrace life's inherent contradictions and complexities. Moreover, their influence extends beyond mythology, for their legacies continue to inspire contemporary discussions on sexuality, empowerment, and self-expression.

Beyond the Shock Value: Anasyrma as a Symbol of Power and Renewal

The stories of Amenouzume and Baubo offer valuable insights into the complex symbolism of anasyrma. It wasn't merely about sexual exhibitionism. Instead, it represented:

Disruption and Transformation: Anasyrma disrupts the status quo and challenges established norms, forcing a shift in perspective and opening the door to transformation.

Fertility and Rebirth: The depiction of the female genitals is often associated with fertility and the cyclical nature of life, death, and rebirth.

The Power of Laughter: Humour, particularly bawdy humour, can be a powerful weapon against despair and stagnation. It can break down barriers and create connection, even in the darkest of times.

Female Agency and Power: Both Amenouzume and Baubo wield anasyrma as a tool of their own choosing, demonstrating a powerful and assertive form of female agency.

While the practice of anasyrma may feel jarring to modern sensibilities, understanding its historical and mythological context allows us to appreciate its symbolic significance. It reminds us of the power of laughter, the importance of challenging societal norms, and the resilience of the human spirit, even in the face of overwhelming adversity. 

The goddesses Amenouzume and Baubo, through their acts of anasyrma, demonstrate that sometimes, the most unexpected and unconventional approaches are the ones that can save the world.

Echoes Across Cultures: A Sisterhood of Subversive Joy

Amenouzume and Baubo are not isolated cases. They are part of a broader spectrum of goddesses across cultures who embody similar themes:

Sheela-na-gigs (Celtic): These carvings found on churches and castles in Britain and Ireland depict women exposing their vulvas. While their exact function is debated, they are often interpreted as apotropaic figures, warding off evil and embodying the potent life force associated with female sexuality. 

Goddesses of the Vulva/Yoni (Various Cultures): Many cultures have deities, often linked to fertility and creation, who are explicitly associated with the vulva, such as Shakti and Kali in Hinduism, Ch'ang O in Chinese mythology, Aphrodite in Greece, Isis of Egypt, Inanna, Ishtar and Lilith of Mesopotamia. These figures emphasise the sacredness and power of the female body in its most primal form. The directness and unashamed celebration of the body in these depictions resonate with the spirit of Amenouzume and Baubo.

Trickster Goddesses (Global): While tricksters are often male, some goddesses embody trickster qualities. These figures challenge societal norms, use humour and cunning to disrupt the status quo, and often bring about positive change through unexpected means. Their playful transgression aligns with the spirit of liberation present in Amenouzume and Baubo.

Why These Goddesses Matter Today

In a world often dominated by seriousness and societal pressures to conform, these goddesses offer a vital counterpoint. They remind us of the essential role of laughter, not just as a pleasant pastime, but as a powerful force for healing, renewal, and even revolution. What's more, they celebrate the body, not as something to be ashamed of, but as a source of power, joy, and connection.

Amenouzume and Baubo, and their kindred spirits, invite us to embrace our own uninhibited joy, to find humour in unexpected places, and to recognise the transformative power of laughter in our own lives and in the world around us. They encourage us to shed the constraints of unnecessary decorum and to dance, laugh, and celebrate the messy, wonderful, and ultimately liberating reality of being human. In a world that often feels too serious, perhaps we need a little more of the goddess spirit – a willingness to laugh in the face of darkness and to dance our way back into the light.

Beyond Taboos

While controversial and often associated with the taboo, anasyrma, the gesture involving the lifting of the skirt or revealing of the genitals holds deep roots in ancient mythology and ritual, embodied by powerful goddesses like Amenouzume in Japanese mythology and Baubo in Greek lore.

Understanding anasyrma requires moving beyond its potentially shocking surface and delving into its symbolic meaning. In ancient cultures, it wasn't simply about lewdness. Rather, it was often a ritual act intended to revitalise, to break through stagnation, and to spark fertility and renewal. It was a visceral, powerful form of disruption meant to jolt the world back to life.

Reclaiming Lost Perspectives

The ancient stories of Amenouzume and Baubo offer valuable insights into cultural attitudes towards femininity, sexuality and the divine feminine principle that can enrich our modern understanding. In the mythology of Amenouzume we see a powerful archetype of feminine life force and sexuality as a source of creation and transformation. Her lewd dance, exposing her genitals, was not considered shameful but sacred ritual. This speaks to a time when women's bodies, pleasure and fertility were revered as divinely imbued and ritually celebrated, rather than shamed or connected to sin as in later patriarchal religions.

Amenouzume's unabashed expression of feminine power and erotic energy points to a more primal, earthy understanding of female sexuality and the goddess in cultures past. 

Similarly, in the Eleusinian mysteries, the story of Baubo ritually celebrated feminine genital power as generative. Women's vulvas were seen as life-giving, creative forces to be honoured, not as vessels of temptation to be controlled. These stories convey a much more embodied, holistic view of femaleness as sacred in and of itself, not as secondary to or in service to masculine archetypes of divinity.

Modern portrayals of the Divine Feminine often prioritise gentleness, intuition, and healing, potentially overlooking the more challenging, assertive, and even chaotic aspects that were once integral to its wholeness. This narrowing of focus might mean we've overlooked a vital connection to the wild, untamed energy of the Feminine Divine, diminishing its capacity for complete and transformative power within ourselves and the world.

From these narratives, we can glean positive lessons about the nature of the Feminine Divine: it is not solely nurturing or passive but is also dynamic, transformative, and deeply connected to the cycles of life. In a modern context, where the feminine is often portrayed through a narrow lens of fragility or submission, these stories challenge us to redefine our understanding of femininity. They encourage a broader appreciation for the multiplicity of female experience—embracing strength, humour, and creativity as vital aspects of womanhood. The cultural attitudes reflected in these stories promote community bonding and resilience, suggesting that embracing joy and humour can be a form of resistance against despair and isolation.

However, in our contemporary understanding, we may have lost some of the richness associated with the Feminine Divine archetype. The complexities of figures like Amenouzume and Baubo have often been simplified or overlooked, leading to a diminished appreciation for the multiplicity of feminine experiences and attributes. As we navigate a world that increasingly recognises the importance of gender equality and empowerment, we risk losing touch with the wisdom these archetypes offer about the interplay of strength and vulnerability. To reclaim and honour the Feminine Divine, it is essential to revisit these ancient stories, allowing them to inform our current narratives and inspire a more holistic understanding of femininity that honours both its power and its playfulness. In doing so, we not only enrich our cultural heritage but also foster a deeper connection to the emotional and spiritual dimensions of the human experience.

It's clear then that we've lost much in our current disconnection from this celebratory reverence of femininity and the life-affirming powers of the vulva and womb. Our patriarchal cultural fetishisation of women primarily as passive sex objects, meanwhile denying female sexual autonomy and pleasure as inherently sinful, is a far cry from these primal feminine archetypes. The female body as desacralised and commodified, women's erotic power as suppressed - this has led to immense suffering, oppression and disconnection from the divine feminine.

Reclaiming and reembracing these earthier, embodied goddess archetypes as seen in Amenouzume and Baubo could help us recognise female sexuality and womanhood as inherently positive and life-giving, rather than shameful. It would point us towards a more reciprocal, egalitarian dynamic between the sexes, honouring pleasure and women's bodily autonomy. 

Reinstating the symbols of the goddess as sacred (including the divine Yoni), rather than sinful, could lead to liberation from immense patriarchal repression and trauma (see 1 Corinthians 14:34-35: 'Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says.'). The primal feminine archetypes of old, as embodied in these stories, are a potent symbol of the powerful forces of life and creation that femininity has always been, when allowed to flourish freely. They point us to a more sensually celebratory culture that honours the goddess in all women's bodies.

Perhaps, if we heed the lessons of these stories, light will return to the world again?

-

Recommended reading:: Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.