BLOOD MAGIC - FEMININE ALCHEMY
A reframing of Menstruation
Photography and collage by Katriena Emmanuel
As I write, we are currently in a time where the definition of a woman is up in the air. One could say a woman is a man with a womb - a “womb-man”, but there lies the problem for the last few thousand years. Defining a woman always seems to come at the cost of being relative to a man, never independently viewed as a whole being in her own right. For centuries, if not thousands of years, women were second class citizens, subordinate to a man because our contributions to the evolution of mankind has always been viewed through the masculine framework, in how one’s worth is measured. Even in medicine, up to half a century ago women’s bodies were considered atypical while men’s bodies were held as “the norm”. Even to this day, so little is known and understood about the female body, as we are surprisingly a lot more complex with our ebb and flow of hormones cyclically. It wasn’t until the late 1980’s that medical research started to include some women in case studies, but it is still very limited even to this day, as a popular excuse is how much more expensive it is to include women, even female mice, due to the trickiness of fluctuating hormones. We are women essentially living in a man’s world and we have to sacrifice parts of our femininity (except the “sexy” parts of course, as they give man pleasure), in order to compete at the same level as man. To this, I ask the question - What if equality does not mean sameness? That I do not have to be more like a man to be considered valuable and equal. Why can’t we stand together in our differences as male and female and still be appreciated and respected.
Perhaps we could trace this conditioned worldview of women to one fateful day - the day a masculine god birthed Man, and from Man’s rib, fashioned the Woman. Always to be seen from then onwards as his subservient mate… an afterthought, something to serve Man’s needs. Then a few days later, the fall of humanity is blamed on said Woman, who tempted the Man to bite into the forbidden fruit. So you see already the dilemma in being a woman. We are always at the mercy of men in defining who and what we are.
In modern society, women scoff at their menstrual cycle. We curse it, take pills, insert IUD’s, and stuff tampons up our vagina (as god forbid we want to see the blood), anything to avoid it, because it’s generally perceived as an inconvenient monthly nuisance, that slows us right down. Even childbirth, where women once held dominion over, that too has been taken away from our bodies’ rights to experience fully. Nowadays, a woman is not allowed to feel childbirth without epidurals, laughing gas and if she’s not cut open to deliver the baby, then she lies unnaturally flat on her back (which is counterproductive when pushing a baby through the hips/ cervix). We’ve lost autonomy over our bodies’ ability to feel and push through the birthing pains, that actually can serve to empower and fill us with self belief and greater body consciousness. We’ve been manipulated into believing that we can no longer trust our own bodies to do what they have naturally done since the beginning of humankind. Likewise for menopausal women - life has officially ended for the woman - she’s no longer perceived as desirable or relevant to society. Once again, women find themselves doing everything to avoid the inconvenience of aging, from using hormone therapy, botox to plastic surgery. Whilst a man grows more endearing and wiser as he gracefully ages.
It’s also becoming painstakingly obvious that the woman was completely censored from history (emphasis on the HIS), even so far as putting words in her mouth to reinforce the ruling belief systems of the times. We have to become like archeologists digging and sifting through the dirt for remnants of the feminine mysteries, that lay buried under the weight of patriarchy, in order for us, to once again reclaim and embody the sacred feminine wisdom. It is here that I will try to attempt to reframe the power and magic that lies within a woman’s menstrual cycle.
BLOODY CURSE OR BLESSING
Some faint at the sight or smell of blood, then there is “Blood Moon”, “blood magic”, “the blood of Christ”, blood sucking vampires and blood spraying out like a hose in a Tarantino film to blood stained dead bodies ripped apart in warzones. Blood is everywhere, yet there is one blood we must be ashamed to show publically or dare we even speak about the dirty menstrual blood.
In the same year that I menopaused (before I turned 42), my daughter attained menarche at 12 years old, much to her annoyance but I’m still trying my best to convince her that menstrual blood is not dirty or gross but magical and empowering for a woman. We are blessed to menstruate. In fact, the original meaning of the word “blessed” was “to be bled upon”. This blood is indeed a blessing as it is not only rich in stem cells, plasma, electrolytes and proteins, but symbolically it is the liminal phase that a woman enters, where she bleeds without dying (although there have been some period pains where I thought I was dying). It is here that we often find the repetitive motif of the snake, emblematic of the cyclical life-death-rebirth which is synonymous with the Mother Goddess and with woman. The snake sheds its skin like a woman’s uterus sheds its endometrium and both are reborn anew! How miraculous!
Many cultures perceived menstruation as the body’s natural process of purification. Curiously, hesmen, the ancient Egyptian word for purification is the same word for menstruation.
Dr Jemma Evans at Hudson Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne says that “menstrual fluid is rich in proteins and bioactive materials that could have applications outside of the womb in healing chronic wounds.”
Photo and Moon Phase makeup by Katriena Emmanuel
THE FIRST CLOCK - BODY COSMOLOGY
In researching this topic, I discovered that many of the traditional customs or covenants around menstruation revolved around the concept of seclusion. The menstruating women would be isolated and hidden from the rest of the community, either in specially made huts (sometimes referred to as moon huts), dug outs, caves or temples. Perhaps, this custom might have originated in primordial times, from a need to protect the women, to be out of reach of potential predators, attracted by the scent of blood, as well as not endangering the rest of the community. It is imagined that the earliest woman who bled for the first time, might have instinctively climbed up a tree for safety from predatory animals. The menstruants would be kept isolated for the days they were menstruating, mostly kept in darkness during that time and they’d re-emerge at first light on the morning after their bleed finished. Already, we can see parallels with creation myths and the rhythms of Venus, as she cycles through from evening star, to completely occulted by the sun, to then re-emerge as the morning star.
Mens (Latin) for Mind….. Month of the Mind?
It is proposed that a woman’s body was the earliest form of time-keeping, a sort of body clock, if you may call it, holding cycles within cycles. This is perhaps how the mathematical language of the cosmos arose. For it was the woman’s cycles that they kept count, whilst observing the omens in the sky and their immediate environment, in correspondence to the phase the woman was in, but also, whether she broke any of the covenants whilst menstruating. Already, we see the beginnings of the macrocosm of the microcosm, with the Mother Nature and the Earth metaphorically being compared to the woman and her body. There were many covenants imposed upon the menstruating women, so as to avoid any externalised calamity to befall society. If the woman’s body was the surface of the earth, then she should be forbidden to scratch her skin with her nails during her bleed, for it may scorch the earth too. So the menstruant was given a special scratching stick or tree branch. Likewise, her bare feet should not touch the earth whilst she’s menstruating, for should a drop of blood touch the ground, she may cause great floods. To resolve this, the menstruant was often carried on a chair. Then there was this issue of the “Eye of Death or the “Evil Eye”, the menstruating woman had to be occulted from society, often by way of veiling, for if she so much as cast her eyes in your direction, she may smite you down with a fatal illness. This is how powerful they thought menstruating women were, that in some cultures they became feared as much as they were revered. The menstrual blood embodies powerful life force. Thus, many such superstitions and taboos developed around the woman’s body parallelling the cosmos of the natural world.
Occult means both hidden and having magical or supernatural abilities that are practiced in secret. Could this be insinuating to us that the occulted “supernatural” powers practiced in the shadows of the moonhut, were simply the secretions of a woman in isolation? Was this the beginning of “blood magic”?
Photo by Katriena Emmanuel
The female is a natural FLOW-ER of blood, i.e. it is not traumatically induced or self inflicted. While the male had to become the PRICK-ER. The only way a man can mimic genital blood flow is through various blood-letting practices such as penile subincision, circumcision, piercing the penis, buttocks, or even slashing the inner thigh. Early religions even as far back as primordial shamanism all reference blood sacrifice in some form or the other, whether it was in the form of a human or animal, some ethnographers propose these customs may have originated from a menstrual cosmology. As we will see later on, that “Woman is by nature Shaman” (Chukchee proverb) and how the cycle of menstruation is pivotal in this role.
Video by Katriena Emmanuel
The Blood of the Gods - Photo by Katriena Emmanuel
CREATION MYTHS AND THE UNDERWORLD
Mythology is built upon metaphorical language, as humans we naturally express meaning through comparison with something similar in symbolism. It has been proposed by some historians, anthropologists and ethnographers like Judy Grahn (Blood, Bread and Roses: How Menstruation created the World) and Chris Knight (Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture) that we re-analyse the metaphorical language in the creation myths, viewing them through the red tinted lens of menstruation.
Perhaps the most telling of the creation myths is of the Aboriginal Australian story of the Rainbow Snake and the Wawilak Sisters. I see a few parallels with the Sumerian epic poem “The Descent of Inanna”. In both stories, we have two sisters where one sister is in childbirth, while the other sister is bleeding (menstruating). Let’s consider again some of the key elements of each story through the red stained “menstrual lens” and see how the act of menstruation could actually be playing a bigger role in the meaning of these mythologies. After all, without a menstrual cycle, a woman cannot conceive life.
In the Sumerian Descent of Inanna (as the planet Venus), Inanna journeys to the Underworld to visit her recently widowed sister, Ereshkigal. In order to enter the 7 gates (7 being the days of creation), she is stripped of all 7 items of clothing and stood naked to be judged, flayed and then Ereshkigal “fastened on Inanna the Eye of Death”. Inanna was left to hang on a peg to bleed out for 3 days. Meanwhile, Ereshkigal is in labour and gives birth. Lochia, is the name of the bloody vaginal discharge postpartum. Alas, we have two sisters synchronising their bleed, one menstruating, while the other postpartum. Long story short, Inanna is allowed to leave the Underworld, using what some may argue as the menstrual “Eye of Death” to find another to take her place, which she fastens on her consort Damuzi. Here marks, what I also suspect is the shift to patriarchy, as we begin to observe the transfer of duties from the Goddesses to the male deities.
In a version of the Australian myth of the Wawalik Sisters (sometimes called by other named depending on the clan), the sisters were creator beings who were travelling together to the Arafura Sea. The elder sister was pregnant and they stopped at a river to birth the child and the sight of blood triggers the menarche of the younger sister, who begins to dance in celebration. Meanwhile the scent of blood draws out of its waterhole, the Rainbow Snake/ Serpent and it creates a thunderstorm and flooding in it’s excitement. In order to protect themselves from the storm, the sisters build a hut (a menstrual hut perhaps). When they see the Rainbow Snake approach they begin to dance and chant sacred songs to protect them from both the storm and the Snake. Exhausted, both sisters retreat to the hut with the baby and fall into a deep sleep, during which time the Rainbow Snake finds them and swallows the sisters and the baby. Eventually, the Rainbow Snake regurgitates them, symbolic of regeneration and rebirth.
If woman is a metaphor for the Earth, then agriculture and its seasons of seeding to harvest are an externalisation of the menstrual cycle. The Descent of Inanna is a story of female seclusion, metaphorical death (menstrual bleeding) and regeneration and likewise in the story of the Wawalik Sisters. We find this signature echoed in numerous similar myths from around the world, like Nisan Shaman of Mongolia, Nana and Balder, Isis and Osiris, and Demeter and Persephone.
THE WOMB IS THE ORACLE
Painting by Katriena Emmanuel
The womb is the original cauldron, the Holy Grail, intrinsically linked to the woman’s psyche and to Nature. The womb is a vortex of creation, contained within it, is an internal river that eddies and flows outwards once a month, allowing women to journey to the underworld. This ties into the shamanic concept of the descent along the “river of the world”, as did the Greeks have the River Styx, the Japanese Sanzu River, the West Bank of the Nile as the entrance to the Egyptian Duat and the Gjöll in Norse mythology; all forming sacred waters that separate the living from the land of the dead. The flow of menstrual blood brings forth a stream of consciousness as it lies in this liminal space, which I’ll briefly later examine, in terms of the neuroscience of a woman’s brain during menstruation.
According to Dr Ngahuia Murphy, author of Te Awa Atua - Menstruation in the Pre-Colonial Máori World, “We (Women) are the gateway between worlds, as the river of blood flows, consciousness flows”.
This is a time of rest, release and inward reflection within woman’s space for dreaming and revelations. Native Americans believe that a menstruating woman has the capacity to be more psychically and spiritually powerful and considered the dreaming around this time to be highly prophetic. The Greek word “Delphys” means both “womb” and “dolphin”, forming the root word for the infamous Oracle of Delphi, home to the great seer and her priestess Pythia.
Every month we are invited to descend into the underworld/ innerworld, back to our wombs, spent in sacred commune, as we bleed, blessed, bleed upon. However, in the modern day rat race, as women we have literally cast out this sacred time, as there is no time to rest and be in your body, it’s go! go! go! As I mentioned earlier, we take contraceptive pills or insert IUDs to minimise or altogether skip our periods, forgetting that these synthetic hormone releasing mechanisms are fooling our bodies into constantly thinking we’re “pregnant”. Ultimately, we don’t even know the price our bodies will pay, tampering with the nature of our ebb and flow.
I liken menstruation to the Bear Woman, the groans of the abdominal cramps whilst we hibernate in bed with blankets, hot water bottle and maybe some tea. The few days before one’s bleed, the emotions are in full swing from moodiness, depression, anxiety, irritability to even outbursts of anger; what we generally term premenstrual symptoms (PMS). We are so sensitive during this time, it’s like everything we’ve pushed down and not dealt with, rears its ugly head to confront us, and the waterworks begin even before the red waters flow. This is the time for self analysis, as what emotions or outbursts come forth are an insight into our inner psychology, in what needs to be addressed. As women, it is essential for our mental health to allow ourselves the time and space to release pent up emotions and opinions through the tears and moans of pain from the period cramps. I can’t help but also wonder if our irritability and hostility pre-menstruum is our subconscious yearning for that secluded moonhut, to be away from the day to day responsibilities and physical tasks, that keep us from being present in our bodies.
Menstruation is the ultimate representation of body wisdom. The heightened emotions, sensitivity to light, fluctuations in body temperature, sore lower back, throbbing abdominal cramping and migraines may be considered symptoms, but truly they are the ways our body speaks to us, sometimes having to scream to get our attention, to force us to pause and feel/listen. Even brain scans during pre-menstruum reveal that our ability to focus mentally is harder, very similar to the “Baby Brain” we experience during pregnancy. Menstruation naturally shifts our focus to our bodies, it is our time to commune with ourselves, to take that journey inwards in understanding what our body needs. In Chinese Medicine, they interpret painful menstruations as a sign of imbalances within the body. This may just be one way of looking at it. Another way, is that through our body, through those physical symptoms, it is a form of physical initiation, training us for the mental and psychic phases to come later in the cycle. Body awareness is called PROPRIOCEPTION and it basically means an inner knowing through the perception of inner sensations within the body. Our appetite and cravings also increase during this premenstrual phase, in preparedness for the hibernation of the bleed.
If the menstrual cycle was divided into the seasons, then the bleed represents the winter - this is the metaphorical death. This is when our body is using all its energy to shed the endometrium and this overwhelming need for sleep, for the dream, becomes urgent. Our appetite is also now suppressed, as it requires a lot of energy to digest food. This is the period of stillness, when our body naturally lulls us to a meditative dream state. This is when you should start paying special attention to your dreams, as we are gathering information, insights and womb wisdom, as we descend into the underworld.
It is when we return from the underworld, when the bleed is waning or has ended, that we are in the period of clarity, as we approach the ovulation phase. This is when we excel in our verbal communication and creative problem solving skills, as well as have heightened intuition, particularly with sensing when other people are fearful. This is the full shamanic journey come full circle, only to repeat it again and again every month, accumulating inner wisdom with each bleed. A woman can potentially access higher states of consciousness through menstruation. The science is just beginning to prove that women have a higher functioning brain after menstruation, as though she underwent a re-calibration of her entire system. This bleed is truly transcendental as the menstrual blood contains information beyond the genetic blueprint, antibodies and other healing secretions.
It is a fact that the female brain is massively understudied in neuroscience, with only 0.5% of studies conducted to date. Scientists are nowhere closer to understanding how the rhythmic ebb and flow of sex hormones, namely oestrogen and progesterone attune the female brain. Recent studies are already starting to reveal that the female brain undergoes expansion during menstruation, there is a re-shaping of our brains and with every menstrual cycle, we are essentially increasing certain medial temporal lobe regions, which play an essential role in episodic memory and spatial perception. This is only just scratching the surface in understanding the differences in consciousness in female brains as influenced by their hormonal cycles
Throughout the menstrual cycle, the brain changes – as does everything from spatial skills to sexual desire (Credit: Yoko Miyagawa/BBC)
FEMININE (BLOOD) ALCHEMY
As I previously touched upon in my first article, most of us are familiar with the masculine form of alchemy, the alchemy based on hermeticism and the magical practice of transforming lead into gold. While feminine alchemy is natural and innate to women. My hypothesis that men have been trying to simulate what a woman can do through ritual blood sacrifice, or in a chemistry lab, led me to deeply ponder and compare them with the wise woman traditions. Instantly, I felt there was a connection or parallel of sorts between the 4 stages of alchemy and the 4 phases that a woman’s body physically goes through in the course of a month, as evidenced in the vaginal secretions. I’m a visual person, so I thought it best to represent it with a pictorial diagram. As I’ve inferred previously, the woman is the holy grail, within which the philosopher’s stone can be attained. Is this stone gold, a seed, a child or a soul? My intuition leads me to believe it is a soul, for women are natural soul retrievers, as we descend every month to the underworld. This mystery has been forgotten, most of us don’t remember how to visit the underworld and when we do reach it, we must find our way back, whilst holding onto the treasure we found in the depths.
Above diagram illustrating the changes in vaginal discharge throughout the phases in the woman’s menstrual cycle as it corresponds to the alchemical colour changes in the transformation.
And now to quote from one of my favourite female authors, Barbara G Walker, from The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets:-
Most words for menstruation also meant such things as incomprehensible, supernatural, sacred, spirit, deity. Like the Latin sacer, old Arabian words for “pure” and “impure” both applied to the menstrual blood and to that only.
The Maoris stated explicitly that human souls are made of menstrual blood, which when retained in the womb “assumes human form and grows into a man”. Africans said menstrual blood is “congealed to fashion a man”. Aristotle said the same: human life is made of a “coagulum” of menstrual blood.
In Alchemy, the 7th and final stage of the alchemical process is COAGULATION, in which the alchemist completes the great work, creating the philosopher’s stone. Is the coagulum of menstrual blood the 7th phase of alchemy?
In conclusion, I wrote this to help me explain to my daughter, all the magical and potent ways our bleed can actually empower us, if we surrender to it, observe it and be present with it. In today’s world, there is an indisputable absence of rites of passage, which helped concretise in many ways, the transformations one undergoes from child to pubescent to adult. These rites were critical in our psychological development, in forging out identity, or as the Jungians' would refer to it as the process of individuation. Nowadays, the closest thing we have to rites of passage are obtaining your driver’s license, your first 10,000 followers and you’re officially “adulting” when you have a mortgage to pay off. Not that these milestones aren’t worth celebrating as an achievement of sorts, but besides being based on capitalist virtues of self externalisation, this is where they starkly contrast the ancient rites of passage. To some extent many indigenous cultures still practice forms of rites of passage that are centered upon the development of the inner world through challenges and sacrifices which result in greater self awareness, fortitude, purpose and self worth. All things, that we seem to suffer a lack of in modern society. So don’t deny the body’s wisdom. There needs to be a union and balance amongst the mind, body and soul, in order to achieve grace in this world.
Ultimately, a woman’s attitude towards her menstrual cycle is a reflection of her psyche, be it denial, rejection or acceptance, of a very essential part of herself. In order to cultivate wholeness within our being, we need to sit with all our parts and love them in an act of self love and that begins and ends with our menstrual cycle.
And if you’ve made it this far, thank you kindly for your time and presence. It is much appreciated!
BIBLIOGRAPHY:-
Her Blood is Gold: Awakening to the Wisdom of Menstruation by Lara Owen
Blood, Bread and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World by Judy Grahn
The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara G. Walker
Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture by Chris Knight
https://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/wstudies/grahn/chapt01.htm
https://neurosciencenews.com/menstrual-cycle-memory-24947/
https://www.aamc.org/news/why-we-know-so-little-about-women-s-health
https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/nov/13/the-female-problem-male-bias-in-medical-trials
https://shamamabear.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/power-in-the-female-body/
https://www.theexploresspodcast.com/episodes/2021/7/28/blood-magic-a-brief-history-of-menstruation
http://www.ankn.uaf.edu/NPE/CulturalAtlases/VirtualMuseum/Writings/Native%20Women.html
I loved this piece, Katriena. I would love to know more about Inanna and the Venus connection. Do you have a recommendation?
It was such a joy to read this mythology as I menstruate during eclipse season. Thank you so much for this research and writing ❤️