Who are the Babas?
Stone Babas at Kamiana Mohyla
Who are the Babas? Sometimes stone hags and sometimes ethereal, mountain fairies. The Babas are undoubtedly female but exist on a plane that spirals parallel to the feminine shackles of motherhood, desirability, and male partnering. Yet even as they transcend gender roles, the Babas are defined by a potent brew of femininity, magic and a wealth of domestic wisdom.
The Babas are known to have bestowed the skills of farming, weaving, bread baking and herbalism onto humans, as well as offering their protection. Because of their cyclical and circular natures, the Babas also deliver taboos and consequences as the balancing counterparts to skills and protection. Wrath is also their gift. They are guardians and representatives of the inherent and dynamic equilibrium of the forces of nature.
The Babas stir me, slap me, inspire me, teach me, and guide me to generate and occupy new cells, proliferating at my edges, that grow into the wide open wonder of the ‘what is possible?' realm. The Baba’s teach me about the liminal. It is in the liminal that I find the space to develop adjacent cellular and synaptic matrices. Here I play by, and break the rules of my life.
I see the Babas in my dreams, and in my nightmares; they incubate and ripen in my unconscious. From art, to potions, to writing, I create to give them form.
The most familiar form of the Babas is the mask of the powerful Granny, the Old Witch. Yet, this mask is loosely tied, and the Babas slip out of it all the time. Sometimes, it is necessary for her to take on new forms, to be dazzling, or downright terrifying, meek or murderous.
When I unselfconsciously embrace the power of my body, when I make medicine, when I piss outside, when I compost, when I feel the mushrooms come on, when I split my sides with laughter, when I’m furious, I feel the Babas.