Reclaiming Menarche
The Mysteries of the First Blood
We have been journeying with the maiden and as we move fully into summer, we are in Fire and developing our deep relationship with the Lover and Warrior parts of ourselves. The transition between these 2 archetypal realms for women is distinct and sacred. It is the time of our first moon cycle. This time is technically termed menarche, the onset of our menstrual cycle.
This is a huge threshold and in the modern mainstream world is not generally given much attention. It is important that we go back and reclaim this time for our souls.
Rites of passage give our elemental bodies developmental anchors to understand their changing relationships to each other and are essential to true and full embodiment of our potential. Our soul runs on sacred time and needs these markers to understand it’s passage through earth life.
This time is a time that is so incredibly full for human development and especially for women. The shifts and changes that happen at first blood, well, really they start during the preparation of the tween years are one of the biggest shifts of consciousness that we undergo as women. When our wombs quicken, we enter into the capacity to conceive and grow a baby in our body.
We become a portal and many currents of the Mystery begin to flow through us. One of the main things that shifts is the change in the relationship between the mental body and our imagination and our fire body, our creative erotic force. This starts a while before the moon cycle initiates. The third eye glands (pituitary, pineal, hypothalamus) work in concert with the ovaries and womb and change the hormonal balances of communication between head and womb.
This axis of connection is sending signals back and forth through hormonal secretions. What are hormones? They are chemicals made of amino acids, amino acids are organic compounds made of elements, elements are the basic building blocks of physical matter…and were created by the Big Bang and star births. So we are talking about star light communicating to and within us as we go through our cycles.
Menarche Ceremony Preparation
First, choose a date to set aside to do a ceremony. You could link this up with the full moon on Solstice, since this is such a powerful day this year. You could do it on the New Moon in Cancer on July 4 th , or anytime during the dark moon leading up to the new moon. This would be the time that I would choose to do it as in a natural setting, women would generally bleed during the dark of the moon, it is releasing and purifying energy.
Ceremony Supplies: *red pen *a red candle * a red dress *and a gift for yourself
Journal
Your First Blood Story:
• When did you start to develop?
• How did you feel about it?
• What messages did you get from your mother, from your community?
• Was your first blood celebrated and honored?
• Were you late in bleeding or early?
• What was your connection to other girls going through this rite of passage?
• We must remember and tend to our past experience with this, as it sets the tone for much of the way we grew into our womanhood.
The Mystery of Hormones
Science really doesn’t know why the pituitary and ovaries start puberty when they do…the functioning of the hormonal system is one that still shrouded in a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. It is important to understand how extraordinary and mysterious our biology actually is. We think we understand puberty but really we don’t!
First Blood is an ancient ritual of maturity and initiation and it is imperative that we go back to this time in our lives. One of the things that often happens when we make this transition without the great support and respect given to us as young women, we lose connection to ourselves in the wash of the hormones and the way the modern world shows us what womenhood is. This is the beginning of our sexually creative lives. Now, before this happens, all beings have eros moving through them, so sexuality doesn’t start at puberty, but it does shift, especially for girls as the womb ignites its creative power.
This gets lost when we don’t nourish this equal connection. We lose the imaginative powers of the mythic mind, and we relegate the womb to making babies and women to being sexy for men. There has been a diminishment of both of these great portals and their potentials. So, during your menarche ceremony, you will redo this time, and re-weave the connection between head and womb that gets severed because of the misunderstandings, the lack of witnessing and nourishing of this great partnership.
The Third Eye and the Mythic Mind
We have a distinct anchoring of eros into the womb and oftentimes a subsequent disconnect from the mind and imagination. As a maiden, our minds range free and imagination is a primary way of relating to the world. You will recall that imagination is the Mythic mind’s capacity to create. The Third Eye, mythic mind and the womb are truly sacred partners.
They are meant to work together…the womb receives the primal powers of the Earth, the third eye receives the eternal powers of the Heavens…at puberty they should fully activate each other…it is a dance they do… it is not the pituitary as “master” gland that starts this all off, it is the ovaries and womb in connection with the pituitary and pineal that create this threshold of growth.
The Menarche Ceremony and the Red Lady
At your time that you have set aside, you will take a bath or shower, get in water somehow as a ritual cleansing, put on your red dress and anoint yourself. Go to the place you have chosen to do this ceremony. Outside, at your altar, some place you have sanctuary and privacy. Take some time to settle in, making yourself comfortable.
Call the circle, outloud, invoking the elements. In the center, after calling in the Underworld and upperworld, when you call in your heart space, also call in the Red Lady of the Blood. Sit straight or lie with your spine straight and place a hand on your vulva and also on your crown. Ask for these gateways to open. Then move your hands to womb and third eye, and imagine a swirling vortex igniting each of them. Get a sense of what their connection is like right now and then also when you had your first blood.
Read your story of your first blood out the Mystery at this point. It will be heard in sacred space. Especially if we did not have honoring and celebration during the actual time, this can be very potent. The Feminine needs celebration and adoration and acknowledgement to flourish. Take time to hear your story, the vibration of your words as you speak it and then time after to feel the field receiving it. This is so important, to be in the assimilation of your sacred story. When it feels right, place your hands back on your vulva and crown and then womb and third eye. Take your time here too, to sense what these areas are experiencing. Then ask the Red Lady to activate her full power of creation within both womb and third eye and to reweave the connection between these two power centers in your body.
Use your breath to connect them as well as drawing with your hands the lines of transmission between womb and third eye. This axis is a two way street…energy goes both ways.
Be open to messages and visions and sensations during this.
What does your connection between head and womb look and feel like?
How does the Red Lady come to you?
Do you feel/sense/see your essence as a woman fully in bloom?
When you feel complete with this, stand up and make a statement about fully stepping into your womanhood and a commitment to the creativity in your blood. There are deep mysteries in the blood. Acknowledge your role as carrier of those mysteries. Know that this ceremony is meant to activate DNA and you will be turning off off shame in the code and igniting new brilliance of your power as a woman.
After you make your devotion, give yourself the gift you have gotten for you. A gift on becoming a woman, a gift that you would have loved to receive when you were having your first blood. Release the circle with gratitude for their presence, thank the Red Lady and know that she is guiding you as we move through Summer and the fire season.
