Маската Баубо в балкански контекст
Baubo Mask in Balkan Context

Summary/Abstract: Baubo has attracted the author’s attention as an extremely important rite personage in the cycle of Eleusinian Mysteries. This female character is autochthonous. It is often described as a “foreign” and most of all as a “Thracian woman”. She has always challenged the interest of her investigators with her obscene ritual behaviour: Baubo uncovers her vulva, when she meets Demetra, all in sorrow because of her daughter’s death. The author advocates that Baubo is an archaic mytho-ritual personage. It is close in its meaning and function to a prosopon, because of its highly semiotic ritualised behaviour and its fixed hybrid appearance. She also gives way for the presence of the world beyond (i.e. the one exteriorising the internal world) and changes the norm in a liminal period. Nevertheless, as a final result she brings back the world order, opens space for resurrection and for the beginning of a new life cycle. The deeper meaning of that sexual mask presupposes its preservation under the name Baubo in the Bulgarian folk masquerade rites.

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