My First Blood Rite.

Locking the doors felt both foolish and oddly securing. I was shaking with the anticipation of what I was to step through. The rite I had conjured for myself felt so very dangerous, as if I was about to step into, through and beyond something that would change me forever. A threshold I could never come back from. This was the point; Really truly deeply changing something took this kind of sacrifice of fear, of terror, as the edges of it were felt through.
Who would stop me? Who could stop me? Who would know? There have been many moments of my life spent this secretively. Times where I would explore something never seen in a book. But ached for by my skin or by my heart, in such a way as to build the entire path to it. Every little detail of the encounter with self, alone and in so many ways All one, every part created with such joy and true abandon.
This here was the passageway to reclaim my blood. I had been using a menstrual cup for a year by then. I dearly loved it and the truth it afforded me, by virtue of its design that I may have such direct contact with my blood. So many questions arose from its use, so many wonderings that my bloodmind would wonder. But it would be years before I would even conjure that notion of my being… the recognition of bloodmind… by this stage I was barely able to see, to smell, to witness the bloods effect on my being… by being safe with it. This was another step along the pathway to understanding why we are so very forbidden from this blessed gift from within.
I had fashioned a simple spell working, from my basic and newbie relations to witchcraft. My sacred tools assembled, I cast circle. I created a sacred space, naked now, dripping in sweat, I sang a simple Goddess chant, The River… returning back unto She Then, taking my menstrual cup from my body, trusting it would be rather full, which it was, I opened to the blessed wonder that was this sacredness and added this cup of blood to my bowl of ochre.
I felt like an original witch. Working with the most primitive of elements, blood and earth. I made my sacred paste. Stirring and blending till the consistency was just right for painting. Singing quietly to myself as I built such an offering, to me, to Her, to the life force that engaged me to continue, to move through any resistance, anything that would tell me this was too wrong, too far away from what is considered “normal”.
Once this sacred tool was ready, I turned and faced each element to ask for the blessings of each quarter. I conjured a power-filled brew, and turned to the mirror to apply it to my being, to reach ALL the way in. I was after what ever had made this feel wrong. I was chasing the tail of the beast that had stolen my first blood and made me fetid, filthy and dirty for being a woman that bleeds. I was chasing the demon that had laid this curse, so that I may shift it within myself. As I faced that mirror, I painted a crescent moon upon my third eye with my sacred blood earth, and knew myself a blood witch. I painted a spiral upon my heart to journey further and further within to the heart of woman.
I felt then, what I do now. A peace, a profound peace where there now lives an incredible life, sharing such life giving possibility of the sacred blood.
That first blood rite led me to the sharing of blood wisdom with many women. A life led deeper and deeper into the flow of what lay within a curse, what lay within the meaning and value we place on being a woman. I have sought the source of the curse in myself, in other women, in the texts that support it to remain. Those still invested in a woman’s perceived weakness rather than making room for the rest of her to be welcome at the table.
What I was after, what I am still opening to, is the state where in my body, the menstrual cycle has the rest of its worth enacted upon. Where I reach into the emotional realms, the heart tools of being whole as woman. Being real in this bloody glory.
I still remember the mortification of realizing a small drop of blood had landed on our rental carpet and the panic of having to explain how it got there to my housemate. I did all that I could to clean it, but in the end I confessed what it was, and how it got there. In testament to our friendship she heard me, and helped me remove my exposure. This beautiful sister became the first woman that I shared what I had learnt from within the blood circle, the first of many. She was to remain a deep sister that held me sane during a time when I could have easily slipped off an edge and been lost. For it feels like there is a madness, an agreement that we break outside of our current thought … a treason we commit by turning to the blood, away from everything else, when we bleed.
I know I am not the first woman to have my attention taken by the flow of wisdom down my thighs.
I know that I will not be the last woman to re-frame my blood, my bleeding as sacred.
I hope that this story touches any woman that has felt this place and had no language for it. For where do we find such a language in the world of men that have never felt the entire dissolve that is menstruation.
Blessings of the Blood, for there are so many!
Katherine Cunningham.

Artifacts: Creating the tools we need when they don’t already exist

I am eternally grateful to Kathleen Agius (https://www.facebook.com/kathleen.agius.9) for her artistry and that it lives in my world.

When I share my beautiful “Fragile Please Touch Me” Teraphim with the circle, I feel the ancients holding her with me. This tool, I explain, comes from a time when our Goddesses where close enough to touch. When we built forms we could hold on to when the shit got real! Something power-filled to walk with us as we stretched open in a thousand directions to allow our daughter’s birth through us. Our Goddesses were for support, like we were as women to each other, like we can be now if we let go of our shields and use our swords with respect and tender loving care.

Artifacts are those things that embody what you are investing your whole self into. They are the shapes and vessels to pour oneself into, that maybe others may share, or maybe we get to really anchor our self into a moment for future application.

A telling part of an artefact is time… when I build something, and I don’t really consider myself an artist, so I don’t often call it sculpture, but once built, do I find that it becomes something I reach for, when I am doing the work. For emotional work, is work, and every field of work has its tools.

You know, when we realized we are now in the realms of “Knowledge Workers” where a lot of our day is spent digging a hole in data not the earth, we recognized that we needed to be with this type of workflow differently than you do when you are digging a hole. I feel the same about the emotional workings that many of us do, whether by our self or working with another, there is a whole lot of digging that can be going on, and a lot of “work” that is real and good and the whole we are after has a different expression… but perhaps we have yet to acknowledge the process that we are utilizing, like we have with “knowledge workers”… I bring this up, because I feel we were building emotional tools, physical ones, like sigils but in 3D form, back in the days of the Venus of Willendorf. We called them Goddesses and Gods, but for me, they are applications of the human experience, and can be held in a form.

These tools, these artifacts are often unique unto the practitioner, depending on the language they are using, the flavours and colours that are their style. For me the exciting bit is when we have the impetus to make the tool, sometimes with absolutely no idea what it is for, and the trust it takes to make something for as yet to be experienced intent… well perhaps I am an artist, for that is the artists edge, to just begin, allow through what will be made today, through you.

What artifacts have you built? How do they assist you to do the work?