MOON MAGICK - MENSTRUAL EMPOWERMENT
Menstrual Pride is an important part of women's body/genital esteem. If we are embarassed about our monthly flow, it ceases to be a source of empowerment. By exalting our menstrual cycles in art and myth, we honor the womb of all things. Just as it is important to see powerful vulvic imagery such as Baubo and Sheela-Na-Gig, it is also crucial that we change popular menstrual lore to be one of pride, not shame.
This rubber stamp of a menstruating woman is available from Kate Cartwright.
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Women give blood without hurting ourselves. Our blood is the womb for life to grow if that is to be. It is a powerful, heavy, magic, life-giving force. It comes as no surpise that in a Patriarchy, menstruation is shrouded in shame and feelings of dirtiness. Women are something to be "sanitized," we need "protection" from our life-giving forces! The medical profession has treated menstruaton as a female "problem" for a long time.
This mentality regarding women's monthly flow has raised generations of women who are embarrased, rather than empowered, by their natural state.
One of my favorite radical menstrual sites is Pulling the Plug on the Sanitary Protection Industry. And check out a piece of menstrual art by Marabl Cruz!
Gloria Steinem's essay "If Men Could Menstruate" was first published in the October 1978 issue of Ms. Magazine. It has become a cult classic on menstruation activism...and feminism.
A white majority of the world has spent centuries conning us into thinking that a white skin makes people superior - even though the only thing it really does is make them more subject to ultraviolet rays and to wrinkles. Male human beings have built whole cultures around the idea that penis envy is "natural" to women - though having such an unprotected organ might be said to make men more vulnerable, and the power to give birth makes womb envy at least as logical.
In short, the characteristics of the powerful, whatever they may be, are thought to be better than the characteristics of the powerless - and logic has nothing to do with it.
What would happen, for instance, if suddenly, magically, men cold menstruate and women could not?
The answer is clear - menstruation would become an enviable, boast-worthy, masculine event:
Men would brag about how long and how much...click here for the rest of this essay!
"The moon is an ancient symbol of renewal as each month it grows to fullness. Our menses to us promise renewal, sustenance, life. We grow full, flow out of that fullness to once again ovulate and begin the cycle. The cycle of the moon and the cycle of menstruation are one. Among the Mandingo, "carro" means both moon and menstruation, as does "njonde" in the Congo. In France, "le moment de la luna" is the name givne menstruation. Mens which means blood is the origin of the word "month."" - L. Lanning and V. Hart
"The cycle of the moon is 27 ½ days - a time of one revolution and single rotation about the earth - or 29 days as that revolution appears on earth, because the earth, too, is moving. Our blood cycles with the moon." - L. Lanning and V. Hart
The new moon rises at sunrise
The waxing moon rises about an hour later each day
The full moon rises at dusk
The waning moon rises about an hour later than sundown each day
The full cycle takes 29 ½ days.
Check out Llewellyn’s Moon Phases for the current phase.
Women can reclaim a great deal of female power by embracing their menstrual flow. Rather than calling it your "period," "the curse," or being "on the rag," say you are having your "flow" or you are "on your moon." Anne Cameron writes books with really strong women characters and they include empowering menstrual mythology. Both Child of Her People and Daughters of Copper Woman are Native American Myths that are stunning in their telling and healing in their imagery of women.
Now wouldn't your yoni love this soft cotton pad from Pandora Pads?
And for your wilder days, try these 
Luna Pads.
Other cloth pad companies include Gladrags, WeMoon Pads, Many Moons, and Decent Exposures. Please tell these companies where you heard of them also!
Wearing cloth pads is also good for the Earth, since pads are reuseable and therefore not adding to the nonbiodegrading "sanitary" products in landfills. And you should use cloth pads because you do not want to support an industry that teaches women to fear and hate their bodies like Tampax, Kotex, etc. do. You can find patterns to sew your own cotton pads at Many Moons.
Have fun with your flow since you have probably been taught it is a drag your whole life if you are like most American women. Play with menstrual calendars. My favorite menstrual calendar is The Ever'Woman's Menstrual Calendar. It is practical, useful in ways you haven't yet imagined and worth every penny. I have used this product for years. Beautiful illustrations and menstrual lore line the margins...
And the WombMoon Menstrual Calendars are pretty, too.
Wear certain clothing, like a red velvet skirt or special jewelry with red beads, to celebrate being on your flow.
"There are people who regard semen and menstrual fluid with disgust but they forget that the body by which they hope to achieve Liberation is composed of these two matters. All things are pure, it is one's mentality which is evil"...The Kaulavali Nirnaya, Sir John Woodroffe
Celebrate a sister's first flow or reclaim your own first flow through a 1st Moon Menstrual Celebration Kit.
Just as we had to do with the fat issue, we are going to need to reprogram ourselves from the body hatred industry's message plastered all over the media! So get positive yoni and menstruation imagery in your life now!
SOME INTERESTING MENSTRUAL LORE:
In 1914, virtually every American woman wore cloth menstrual pads.
"At menarche, the first menstruation, the Cuna wimmin paint red juice from the saptur fruit upon the face of the young wommon. The wimmin gather at the Inna shrine, where only wimmin may enter. The young wommon lies on the earth, the old wimmin throw sacred soil on her, blessing her life. They dance the dance of new wommonhood. The young wommon’s hair is cut, her childhood falls from her. Omens are read from a newly cut saptur tree. She is provided with a secret Cuna name she tells no one else. Thus she becomes a wommon, among wimmin." - L. Lanning and V. Hart
In India, menstrual huts were often triangular to symbolize the womb.
In a 1921 Kotex ad, it says American nurses in France first tried the thick bandages for menstrual purposes, and thereafter well-to-do women used them. But they didn't sell well until little boxes were provided so women could put money in without speaking to the clerks at the store!
The first commercial tampons were marketed in the late 1920's, early 1930's, although women have used them for thousands of years.
In the 1920's, Sears marketed a "Woman's Comfort Sanitary Travelling Set," consisting of an apron(?!), several washable pads, belts and a waterproof carrier pouch.
In the 1890's in England, special portable menstrual pad burners were sold!
Kotex is named after COTten-like TEXture.
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