History is written by the dominant cast of society. That is why history is His story. “Her “story is not what we learn at school. Even though there are thousands of very old figurines representing the feminine, and many graves of female queens and warriors, the finding of these artifacts is not translated in a worldview that is taking the possibility into account of advanced societies that worshiped the Goddess, where men and WoMen occupied equal positions and where WoMen were influential as priestesses, oracles, politicians, medicine women and so on…Still the time span before patriarchy is much bigger, going back ten thousands of years. And probably much further. “When God was a woman” is a wonderful book by Merlin Stone that tells us all about our herstory before history…

In ancient traditions where the feminine principle was revered, there was automatically a lot of respect for the lifegiving faculities of women: birth, fertility, menstruation, menopause. These lifegiving qualities were seen as so important that WoMen played a major role in agriculture as fertility is also very much an an aspect of this area of life, and Mother Earth and even the Cosmos were revered as a Womb. Our ancestors were very much aware of the influence of the moon on the cycles of WoMen and the seasons in agriculture. Many rituals, ceremonies and festivities centered around these themes.

Returning the cyclical blood to the earth is a powerful technology that our ancestors practiced since time immemorial. It is probably the oldest ritual on earth, a sacrifice that requires no violence or lives! By activating this ancient feminine technology we heal ourselves and our environment. We amplify the Earth’s magnetic field and we ourselves become part of the Tree of Life.

There was a time when menstrual blood was considered sacred even in Western societies. As late as the 17th century, the menstrual blood was believed to be a magical elixir and aphrodisiac, and women let their blood flow freely down their legs. In the lore of the Irish goddess, the first blood at the altar was menstrual blood. In the Traditional Chinese Medicine, menstrual blood is called “heavenly water.” When a girl bleeds for the first time in South America, she begins to “florecer” (flor is flower). To this day, Tibetan lamas use menstrual blood in their rituals for the goddess Tara. 

Fun fact: The original meaning of the word ‘taboo’ was ‘sacred’ and ‘katharsis’ meant ‘menstruating’.