The Underworld

In my life i've felt there was always a stigma around talking about a woman's period.  In high school it was something rude boys teased you about when they thought you were being "too emotional".  Always annoying. But as i reach deeper within, i find my relationship with my body and the way i view this monthly cycle changing drastically. 

What use to be an impractical nuisance to deal with, while having to function in every day life, has now evolved into an appreciation for what it allows to unfold emotionally.  I fully believe the "underworld" is all our fears, insecurities, unhealed memories, coming to the surface ~

I'll wrap up by bringing up Persephone & Innana and their trips to the underworld, in a minute...

~ What the ancients believed ~

The Mayans thought menstruation & childbirth were linked to the Moon Goddess; referring to menstruation as “the blood that stems from the moon”.  Menstruation was seen as a form of sight, not from the eyes but from the womb. (They were not alone in connecting the moons power to a woman's cycle and i do so find this interesting.)

The Ancient Egyptians viewed menstruation as a form of purification & believed that the blood had medicinal properties.

Greeks believed the bloody process actually purified the body.  (This goes along with some of my own philosophizing lately.)

In Tantra the menstrual cycle in the female body represents the changing seasons and universal order.

The Kung people in southern Africa believe that menstrual blood is a powerful life force, and a girl’s first menstruation is believed to contain especially powerful spiritual energy, they go through a "right of passage ceremony". 

In South India, girls who get their period for the first time are given gifts, & celebrations are made to mark this special occasion.

Ancient Taoist believed menstrual blood was the source of female energy, calling it chilong, or Red Dragon.

In Norse mythology, Thor reached the magic land of enlightenment and eternal life by bathing in a river filled with... You guessed it.  Gnarly.

I personally have begun to see this time of the month as a spiritual cleanse.  Everything that plagues you subconsciously comes up to be felt; you literally get to bleed for your own pain.  Is that not beautifully poetic?

Innana is a Sumerian goddess whose story deeply mirrors the more common one of Persephone & Hades.

(around 1600 BCE) chronicles Inanna, Queen of Heaven, who leaves her realm in the sky to visit her recently widowed sister, Queen of the Underworld.  Her sister, upon hearing of this visit, has a servant bolt the seven gates of the underworld against Inanna, only to let her in one gate at a time; requiring her to remove one of her royal garments at each gate.  Shedding 7 articles that matter to her, stripped of her crown, beads, ring, sceptre, even her clothing before she can get to her sister... Who then kills her.  She is brought back to life after 3 days (-stopping there because it goes off in a different direction & i''l lose my point haha) As an archetype, we can view this like the journey each individual must take to reach wholeness. Inanna is not a `whole person' until she appears vulnerable before her shadow self & dies; returning to life after shedding all of her former self, now completely aware. 

Persephone also shares a similar decent, yearly going through the phases altering between life&blooming to the depths of hell.  

If we look to these stories we can understand that the ups and downs are part of the process ~ part of being a spiritual being in a physical body.  The spirit of the woman traverses the underworld on a monthly basis.  I hope this makes you feel like more of a badass.

And although i might have felt differently about this when i was younger,

now i think its actually kind of brilliant that women were often separated, in many different ancient cultures, to go through this monthly shedding alone.  It's a profound time to meditate.  How many times i've wished i could just be by myself to process the feelings or so i didn't snap at my kids!

It's a hope of mine that SOMEHOW (maybe that could be something we all brainstorm on?) women stop having to act like men, actually accepting that we have PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES LIKE BLEEDING FOR A WEEK OUT OF THE MONTH *ahem, excuse me.  Didn't mean to yell. haha Maybe it's for the people in the back.  Seriously though, things need to be FELT, we can't keep pretending.  Emotions need to be RELEASED.  This is the absolute perfect time for a women to do so.  It would have a profound impact on mental health, i believe.