Womens circle



I am a circle

I am healing you
You are a circle
You are healing me

U-oo-oo-nite us, be one

U-oo-oo-nite us, be as o-u-u-ne

spiritual song for women
unknown author 
click on the image to see the video

Ode to wise blood


Earliest humanity
believed menstrual blood coagulated into new life
Maoris and Africans thought human souls
were made of menstrual blood

The Greeks called it "supernatural red wine"
and the Celts, "red or royal mead"
One Norse god bathed in a river of menstrual blood
from the giantesses

The Chinese gained immortality by drinking
red yin juice
Egyptian Pharaohs defied their dead
with amulets of menstrual blood
In Mycenae, the word for "the people"
was "mother blood"

The Bible calls it "blood the flower"
or "fruit of the womb"
and Adam means "bloody clay"

Some called it
wise blood
moon dew
elixir of immortality

And the Goddess - given menstrual calendar
with thirteen annual lunar months
was established by Chinese women
three thousand years ago

That's a lot of history
to ignore
every twenty-eight days.

taken from the womens quest

Yemaya


Yemaya, Goddess of the waters…of life. This song feels very much like the summer of my cycle. It’s a care free woman, full of live, full of joy, full of creation.


Enjoy!
Belinda ♥

The Red Tent


She began to nurse dark fears about the future. She would never bleed, never marry Jacob, never bear sons. Suddenly, the small, high breasts of which she had been so proud seemed puny to her. Perhaps she was a freak, a hermaphrodite like the gross idol in her father’s tent, the one with a tree stalk between its legs and teats like a cow. So Rachel tried to rush her season. Before the next new moon, she baked cakes of offering to the Queen of Heaven, something she had never done before, and slept a whole night with her belly pressed up against the base of the asherah.

But the moon waned and grew round again, while Rachel’s thighs remained dry. She walked into the village by herself to ask the midwife, Inna, for help and was given an infusion of ugly nettles that grew in a nearby wadi. But again the new moon came and again Rachel remained a child.

As the following moon waned, Rachel crushed bitter berries and called her older sisters to see the stain on her blanket. But the juice was purple, and Leah and Zilpah laughed at the seeds on her thighs. The next month, Rachel hid in her tent, and did not even slip away once to find Jacob.

Finally, in the ninth month after Jacob’s arrival, Rachel bled her first blood, and cried with relief. Adah, Leah, and Zilpah sang the piercing, throaty song that announces births, deaths, and women’s ripening. As the sun set on the new moon when all the women commenced bleeding, they rubbed henna on Rachel’s fingernails and on the soles of her feet. Her eyelids were painted yellow, and they slid every bangle, gem, and jewel that could be found onto her fingers, toes, ankles, and wrists. They covered her head with the finest embroidery and led her into the red tent.

They sang songs for the goddesses; for Innana and the Lady Asherah of the Sea. They spoke of Elath, the mother of the seventy gods, including Anath in that number, Anath the
nursemaid, defender of mothers. They sang:

“Whose fairness is like Anath’s fairness?

Whose beauty like Astarte’s beauty?

“Astarte is now in your womb,

You bear the power of Elath.”

The women sang all the welcoming songs to her while Rachel ate date honey and fine wheat-flour cake, made in the threecornered shape of woman’s sex. She drank as much sweet wine as she could hold. Adah rubbed Rachel’s arms and legs, back and abdomen with aromatic oils until she was nearly asleep. By the time they carried her out into the field where she married the
earth, Rachel was stupid with pleasure and wine. She did not remember how her legs came to be caked with earth and crusted with blood and smiled in her sleep.

She was full of joy and anticipation, lazing in the tent for the three days, collecting the precious fluid in a bronze bowl—for the first-moon blood of a virgin was a powerful libation for the garden. During those hours, she was more relaxed and generous than anyone could remember her.

As soon as the women rose from their monthly rites, Rachel demanded that the wedding date be set. None of her footstamping could move Adah to change the custom of waiting seven months from first blood. So it was arranged, and although Jacob had already worked a year for Laban, the contract was sealed and the next seven months were Laban’s too.

Extract of the book The Red Tent

Menstrual creativity

Lara Owen & Miranda Gray talk about menstrual creativity on their books, but what exactly is menstrual creativity?
“The disperse conscious state that comes with menstruation makes it a time to let go what Don Juan from Castaneda calls nagual and the Australian aborigines call time to dream  which is our own unknown where there is knowledge and wisdom” Lara Owen.
Why not write in our diary all the messages we receive, a letter to yourself where you welcome yourself to this new phase. It could also be a letter from your adult self to your inner child where you welcome yourself to your first menstruation; you could even write something you would’ve liked someone had told you. This letter could be helpful later in your cycle (days 20 - 28) where it is very likely you will need words of encouragement and affirmation.
Why not expressing yourself through painting, and if possible with your own blood. You can use fabric, paper, etc. You can make your own ritual with your blood, offering it to Mother Earth or to the Moon. You could even decorate your body with it and dance in your room adding candles, incence and really connecting with it, touching it, feeling it, letting those feelings of embarrassment or of “being dirty” disapear. 
Miranda Gray in her book Red Moon also suggests creating our own Moon Dial. In your menstrual phase you would have gone through most of your cycle, so it will be easier to gather all the information of previous days and see your cyclical nature in paper and learn more about yourself.
All these exercises are very personal and also very powerful; they will help you shift any negative emotions you have about you moon blood. They are beautiful exercises of self-healing so why not try them, you have nothing to lose, on the contrary, there is so much to gain!
I share here some photos of my own menstrual creativity made with my moon blood. I hope you enjoy them!
Belinda
embracing my cycle

my own version of the womb tree

full moon dance

moon dial