Blood Mysteries, Pt. I - General Information

In creating this page I was confronted with the fact that although women's spirituality is a very strongly emerging presence today, there is extremely little information on that sacred mystery that makes women sacred and unique. This page is not just intended to focus on women's blood mysteries, but on the magick and mystery of blood in general. I had planned to start with women, as I am one.


It puzzled me as I searched the web, magazines, and books for distinguishable and accurate information regarding blood, especially women's blood, as I had not thought it a taboo any longer. But make no mistake, the information may not be readily in print, but it is there and has been for more years than any of us can comprehend. Ever since the first women humans have had the gift of sacred blood.

In the beginning, according to the Wise Woman tradition, everything began, as everything does, at birth. The Great Mother of All gave birth and the earth appeared out of the void. Then the Great Mother of All gave birth again, and again, and again, and people, and animals, and plants appeared on the earth. They were all very hungry.

"What shall we eat?" they asked the Great Mother. "Now you eat me," she said, smiling.
Soon there were a very great many lives, but the Great Mother of All was enjoying creating and giving birth so much that she didn't want to stop. "Ah," she said smiling, "now I eat you." And so she still does.

We all come from the same mother. We all return to her embrace, bloody-rich womb place, when we die. Every woman is a whole/holy form of her. Every woman's blood is a holy mystery. The word "blood" is one with some mystery and stigma attached to it. It bothers no one to say the word "blood" when a person is cut and bleeding. It bothers no one to use the word "blood" in poetry and song. But it does begin to make people tense when we hear/see certain words spoken or written with of the word "blood". For example, "sacred blood" alerts most people immediately to a hushed and quiet sense of wrong or taboo. What about "blood mysteries"? That is equally shocking to some.

But blood is the elixer of life. Without it we cannot live. In fact, through the monthly cycles of blood shedding in women we realize that blood means fertility and is a metaphor for life itself. This is the beginning of blood as something sacred and blood as a mystery.

Blood mysteries teach that women's blood is holy blood, healing blood. The blood mysteries teach us to remember that life and healing comes from and returns to woman.

Every month we remember: I am woman. I am earth. I am life. I am nourishment. I am change. Even as women cycle monthly we each have patterns in that cycle. We may feel fatigued, creative, sad, happy, or introspective, for example, during certain patterned times throughout our cycle. Part of the scared mystery of this is realizing that these times are portals for magick and growth. By recognizing this we become more in touch with our bodies and our selves.

For too many years has the word "period" been hushed. We are women. We bleed. We also give life to every human being that has ever existed and ever will exist. When we hear terms like, "oh, she must be on the rag" to describe a woman's attitude it is demeaning to every woman. What person can presume to know what a woman feels or how her period affects her? That is especially no man's place to presume such things. Why, when a woman complains, is she a "bitch", or has PMS? When a man complains he is seen to be expressing justfiable woes, but a woman is called "bitch" or "nag" before what she has to say is even heard- have you ever asked yourself why that is? The answer is quite disturbing. Women, in this world, do not matter as much as men. This is not to say we need special treatment- we don't. But we live in a world oriented toward men... and it shows.

I am no feminist. At least not in the hard core sense. I enjoy a man who opens doors for me, yet I assume he knows I am capable of doing it myself. I enjoy when my husband will step forward and defend me if needed, although he and I both know I am quite capable of handling myself in any situation. I am not a "feminazi", but for those who are, I have realized the justification in that view. Women are not an extension of men. We are separate, equal, and magickal.
As a woman, I am blatantly and repeatedly confronted with my changes: hormonal harmonics stirring moon time visions, ovulatory oracles, pre-menstrual crazies, orgasmic knowings, birth ecstasies, breast-feeding bliss, menopausal moods.

I am wholeness. I am woman. I know the bloody places: the narrow space between life and death, the mess of nourishing life, the flow of letting life go. The Wise Woman tradition is a bloody-handed woman, a bloody-thighed woman, a woman who sees to the other side of things.
All shamanic powers are the powers of women's blood mysteries. Shamanic powers are the natural powers of menstruating, menopausal, and post-menopausal women.

~Source Unknown~