Blood and incense.

[kiya]

This is me going on abot ritual purity and my thoughts upon same. Will primarily be of interest to female Kemetics, I think, and people who deconstruct rituals.


Specifically, blood taboo and regular Kemetic rites.

When I made my commitment to keeping regular ritual practice, it was a long time before I had to worry about reconciling my menstrual cycle and the blood taboo; my cycle is artificially regulated, and thus the new and full moons drifted in it slowly. Of course, that meant that there was, after a while, a long time when I was stuck trying to deal with the problem.

Skipping the ritual work is extremely discomfiting at this point. At the same time, I want to keep the strictures.

I've gone and poked at the ritual structure. I think I've come up with a compromise position.

If one breaks the ritual structure into segments, I have:

• Purification
  
• Opening offerings and prayers
  
• Libations
  
• Internal ritual work
  
• Closing

I got here by chewing on the question, "What is this ritual component intended to accomplish?"

Purifications are cleansing and aligning, of course. I also find that going through the ritual wash has a preparatory and slight consciousness-altering effect: cleansing myself by that formal mechanism specifically clears my possibility of connection through to the Unseen. I've made a subritual of the cleansing process in order to consistently achieve this state of openness.

Opening prayers and offerings: flame, incense, other offerings, prayer. These are all things that can be and are done outside the context of formal ritual context. They define the space as an active one being used for worship in this context, but I don't think that they are constrained by purity concerns.

Which brings to the libations. This ritual component explicitly connects the worlds and draws them together, and formally invites the akhu and netjeru into presence. Wepwawet's intervention is petitioned to open the way. Here the extraordinary is being worked in the ritual and others are invited in; when the direct presence of others is requested and made possible by the flow of water, then purity concerns are in play. This is the place where the shrine is opened, in the metaphysical structural sense, where the way is opened.

Internal work: there are things that can be done (such as prayer) before a closed shrine. Other things are best done with the opened way. Prayer and petitioning before the closed shrine strike me as acceptable; personal communion should be postponed until purity can be properly accomplished.

Formal closings and obeisances do not depend on the way being opened. The candles still need to be put out and the shrine honored.


So, when I'm bleeding, I do not perform the parts of the ritual that open the shrine: the libations. I do everything else before the closed shrine, as those are things that I consider acceptable outside of formal ritual space. The abbreviated ritual goes purification (no sense in not cleansing what can be cleansed and accomplish the liminality) -- offerings and prayers -- more prayer -- obeisances and closing the space.

Thoughts?

Comments

[whispercricket]

These are not specific thoughts on what you're proposing - it sounds fine to me, as a complete outside layperson - but rather curiosity on the blood taboo. I know that this is rather a common one across many cultures and religions, but I was wondering if you could provide more information on the background of it from Kemeticism (your ritual stuff) in general?

[kiya]

My understanding is that it is important to present to the gods in a state of good health. (I do similarly restricted ritual stuff when I'm actively sick for similar reasons.) The cleansing part of the ritual has been compared to making sure to bathe and dress nicely before a date. :}

For blood in particular, blood is a carrier of life energy, life flow. Someone who is losing blood -- due to a wound or whatever other reason -- is leaking life energy. This is thus a state of not being in proper balance. The rituals in question are, metaphysically, intended to bring about a state of balance, and that's damn hard when someone is leaking life energy. :}

Further, there are gods in Whose vicinity I sure wouldn't want to be bleeding -- Sekhmet's bloodlust, in particular, is infamous. While I am not in close contact with these gods on a regular basis, I would not want to risk Them choosing to drop by to share the offerings (my typical rituals are directed to all the gods as They choose) and weird consequences thereof.


One of the reasons I wanted to work on the ritual structure and find something compatible with menstruation was that I am comfortable with avoiding ritual entirely when I have an open wound (unnatural matter that affects my life flow), but feel that a natural and cyclical disruption should be at some level accomodated.

[mindways]

Your take on things makes sense to me.

(And a connected thought: under the right circumstances, the decision to leave a door closed can be as powerful and meaningful as the decision to open it.)

[jadecat9.livejournal.com]

From what I've researched in the past, menstrating women were prohibited from performing rituals in temple in front of the open statue. Homes had shrines and personal altars where the women were menstrating.

There is nothing to stop a menstrating woman from communing with Netjer, in any way shape or form, but in front of an open statue where the essence of god is being housed, then it becomes a problem, because of the conflicting energies that occur, and the ritual-ist needing to be more 'pure' when communing with the Netjer being housed in said open statue.

At Per Ankh, we encountered an issue where we had a woman who, due to medical reasons, was constantly menstrating 3 weeks out of the month (or something akin to that). This was extremely upsetting for her, because she thought it meant that she could not commune with Netjer. After some discussion, we felt that as long as she did not have an "open" statue in her shrine (which she didn't) then she was probably okay to do ritual.

Having said that, I don't think there are other restrictions in regards to the blood taboo (outside of the open statue issue) beyond what the person in question feels is necessary for their purity concerns.

[kiya]

It was the open-ness of the space that has had the libation poured to Wepwawet that struck me as the essential thing -- that the shrine was open to Netjer. I wonder if I hit that as the essential dividing line from discussions of open statues ....

[jadecat9.livejournal.com]

You don't have an 'open' statue, do you?

If you don't, then I could definitely see your point on having the water being poured to Wepwawet as "opening your shrine to Netjer"...versus having an actual open statue.

For myself, like you, I do not open the shrine at all (I have this neat Egyptian-esque cabinet as the shrine) when any blood is flowing at any given time. However, that doesn't stop me from communing with Netjer in that temple space at all (as I have a separate temple room) Often meditation or whatnought is done in there.

Going into the temple is very soothing and makes me feel better even when I'm sick. Considering that people went to the temple to get healed (and surely some of them had open wounds at any given time), I don't see a reason NOT to go in there at all even during menstral cycles.

[kiya]

No, no open statues; that's a lot of responsibility, and it isn't a responsibility that Netjer has asked me to take on.

Doing the rites is one of the things that I find most effective at keeping my emotional state stable and clear; that's one of the things that confirmed for me that I was in the right place, religiously speaking. I find it tremendously correct, just in the smooth patterns of it; it's one of the reasons that I was poking at the question of what I felt I could do when bleeding.

[jadecat9.livejournal.com]

hehe. I understand. Rite is good. :-)

In regards to the general taboos, there's a lot of viewpoints on what you (generic you) can and cannot do. I'm sure there are Kemetic groups that would absolutely prohibit you from doing anything anywhere near Netjer while bleeding.

It's a matter of how 'conservative' one is in regards to the letter of the law, versus the "spirit" of the law.

While I'm not necessarily advocate of "doing things because it feels right" in terms of spirituality (I think it leads to too much taking and borrowing w/o truly understanding), I do appreciate it when people stop and think things through and follow the spirit of the law versus the letter of the law. :-)

And it looks like you've done that here in this case.

[elf]

taboo

(Which has nothing, directly, to connect with your post, but it's what came to mind.)

[ardaniel]

It's certainly Sekhmet-tastic, in that blood in an open shrine space will get Her attention in a number of ways. Which may be either injurious to the worshipper, or a shamanic-rebirth thing if they're prepared to handle it.

[luellon.livejournal.com]

I really like this. I hate getting out of the cycle of doing daily rite.

This helps alot. I have a naos, but not an open statue. I still wouldn't feel right opening it during my period, but I could see offering flame and incense.

Would you do ritual gestures while having your period?

[jadecat9.livejournal.com]

>>Would you do ritual gestures while having your period? <<

I don't see why not. The ritual gestures are made out of love and respect for Netjer. You certainly can offer those up to the naos with the statue in there, and still make offerings as needed, even during menses.

I guess it would depend on 'conservative' you want to be in your approach to Kemeticism.

[luellon.livejournal.com]

Neat! Thanks.

[kiya]

Like Jade, I don't really see why not; those are things that I could do at any time, so they're not specific to opened space.

[luellon.livejournal.com]

So the only difference between the two rituals is not doing libations during the menses?

What about liturgy?

Thanks for writing that post, btw. This has been a problem for me, as you know.

[kiya]

Yeah, I figured I'd throw it out public so that you could see where I'd gone with it -- I started thinking about it really hard in part because of your concerns.

I don't do the libations or the libation recitations; I've found that this really does change the feel of the space during ritual fairly dramatically. I wanted to keep as much of the feel of the full Rite as I could, so I started with the one change, and found that it was a large change, one that satisfied my needs and seemed okay with Netjer.

(I suspect Aset may be more of a stickler for proper protocol around purity than many, though; I suspect asking Her if She finds the change sufficient ahead of time might be a good idea?)

[luellon.livejournal.com]

Do you mind if I link to this from my article about menstruation taboo on my website? When I wrote it I didn't have a ritual solution to the problem and yours totally rocks, so I hope that's okay.

Aset is stricter with protocol, but since not doing rite during my period, makes me less likely to do it when it's over, if this helps me do it more, maybe she'll be happy. Erm, I think asking Her is a good idea. Hehe. "Oh, Mother..."

[luellon.livejournal.com]

I would think doing internal work would be hard during menstruation because of the hormones raging and so forth. Hmmm.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

That makes a lot of sense. I've been doing a lot of reading about prayer in Islam recently, and the approach there is similar - a menstruating woman can (and indeed is encouraged to) make wudu (the ritual ablutions), put on her prayer dress, sit on her prayer mat and make dua (informal prayer) at the same five times as the formal prayer (salat). The only thing she can't do is recite the text of salat itself (or touch the Arabic Koran, but she can read it in translation or by any means which can be contrived that does not involve actual touching).

I've been finding ritual ablution useful myself lately as a way of opening the channels and getting into the right headspace. I'm still figuring out what shape I want it to take, though.

[jenniology.livejournal.com]

I never thought of that before - thanks for sharing. ^^ This is rarely a problem for me, since my menstrual cycle has gone haywire and is currently on a schedule to only appear once or twice a year, heh - but when it's there, this'll come in handy, I think. :)

Ponderings

[suzanne.livejournal.com]

Even through the cranky bits, I tend to feel more introspective and spiritually aware during menstruation. Especially true when I'm off the pill for whatever reason.

It's.... *handflaps* Honest? I guess it goes back to the years growing up when I wore the mask all the time - being who other people needed/wanted me to be. I could be /cranky/ and I sometimes dared honesty when I could attribute it to hormones.

Also could be that I was frenetically moving most of the time, when I was still I was curled up in other people's universes (other people called it reading, but they weren't looking.) But bleeding grounded me and made me aware of self in ways that very few other things did. Dancing, and standing barefoot in the rain had the same effect.

I don't have the same rituals you do, or really anything comparable. I understand your need to continue though, i can't imagine not being able to talk to the Glory.

And thanks for posting this where I could see, it gave me lots of stuff to think about, some of which may come your way via e-mail soon.