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A call to action for women who bleed (please pass on).

October 21, 2001

Dear Women of Power,

Those of us women who are in the menstrual phase of our lives may be wasting one of the most precious resources we have for healing world conflict: our menstrual blood.

On October 20, I attended a workshop led by Barbara Marciniak, one of the high priestesses in the United States who serves in the ancient fashion as oracle and sybil. She put out a call, which I am disseminating for her, that every month at the time of their menstruation, women offer some of their menstrual blood to the earth in a self-designed ritual.

Women should pour their blood onto the earth at this time, with the stated intention of calling the energies of the goddesses and helpful ancestors to the planet to end violence and effect the healing of all the who would perpetrate violent acts and all who are suffering as a result of violence.

The rationale behind doing so is this: menstrual blood is a very powerful magical substance for attracting healing energies. In the United States, Vicki Noble was the first scholar to bring this information to public consciousness in her 1991 book, Shakti Woman. She stated that Tibetan lamas, Native American peoples, and Gnostic worshipers, among many others, understood this as common knowledge and regularly used menstrual blood in their rituals as offerings to the earth, the community, and the goddess.

Judy Grahn in Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World (1993) and Lara Owen in Her Blood is Gold (1993), wrote similarly about the ancient understanding of menstrual blood. And we have the excellent anthropological work of Chris Knight in Blood Relations : Menstruation and the Origins of Culture (1991), which provides a wealth of information on the use of menstrual blood around the world in ritual.

While many contemporary women have already been using their menstrual blood in ritual fashion, it is now time for more of us to come to an awakening about the true power of our blood and to use it responsibly for the strange and threatening times in which we are now finding ourselves.

The ritual could be very simple: place your pads, tampons, or sponges in a container of water; go out to your yard or a spot in nature and pour the water onto the earth, calling upon the power of the goddess to be present and to activate her healing energies in the world. Then, of course, dispose of your tampons and pads properly.

It is time for us to use menstrual blood, our most sacred resource, in the ways that all of our ancestors did. It is time for those of us who are not awakened to the reality of the otherworldly realms to awaken and to communicate responsibly with those realms for the good of all of existence. It is time for us to overcome our shame and squeamishness around menstrual blood and claim the power that it and all of us as women possess.

Do not underestimate the reality and power that performing such a ritual will have! Remember the ancient ways! Remember!

At the very least, know that by pouring your menstrual blood onto the earth, you will be fertilizing all of the plant life you touch.

Please pass this e-mail on to all women; let us send this e-mail around the planet. Let us have it eventually reach the Afghani women, who are so desperately in need of ways in which they could begin to reclaim their power. If anyone has connections to Eve Ensler and the organization she has formed around her play The Vagina Monologues, please pass this call on to her, as well, and ask her to pass it on to other women through her organization.

The time is now. Let us reclaim our blood power. Let us no longer bleed in vain. Our very survival may depend on it.

In sisterhood,
Marguerite Rigoglioso
Oakland, CA


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