Goddess is Metaformic

Judy Grahn

In my 1993 book, Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World,¹ I introduced the notion of Metaformic Consciousness, my idea that menstruation is at the base of our distinctly human cultural habits, including our religions, sciences, and household arts and crafts. Briefly, Metaformic Consciousness is a theory that ancestral females recognized that their menses had synchronized with the lunar cycle, giving them a means of identifying with an exterior time pattern. This gradually pulled their minds into a radically different consciousness than that of other primates. Recognition of the synchronized cycles, combined with the danger posed by blood flow on the open plains, led to timed seclusions producing rituals. (The core of the word ritual is r‘tu,a Sanscrit word meaning menstruation.) Human knowledge derived from rituals is constructed and held in forms I call Metaforms, meaning embodied forms of knowledge with menstrual roots or components. Males in families synchronized (entrained) themselves to female rites through parallel blood rites, and reflected their own versions of Metaforms; the dialectic between the two genders drives human culture in ever evolving cycles.

So, a Metaform is any object or gesture containing an idea and having menstruation as a component of its existence. For example, if a pot is understood as the womb of the goddess, and red rice is understood as menstrual blood of the goddess, the act of boiling red rice in ritual context is meaningful and complex far beyond the product “rice porridge.” I contend that virtually all the elements of culture can be traced to traditional menstrual rites or related blood rites.

Menarche rites in particular have been a rich cornucopia of human cultural forms, including gestures such as dance, rhythmic sound, visions, ways of holding the body and regulating speech and so on. Metaformic theory holds that the internal cycle of menses entrained, or synchronized, with the lunar and other natural cycles, so that menstruation became closely related to qualities of light in the sky, as well as to bodies of water, plants and particular creatures. Hence Metaforms held complex ontological and teleological ideas of the shape of the world “in place” for transmission through the generations. Metaformic constructs include deities, most obviously, and most originally, forms of deity designated as “She.” Kerala, South India, where I did research in 1997-98, is home to a rich number of deities, female, male, and nongendered; female deity there is most frequently referred to with affection as “Devi” and also “Mother.” For this article, I refer to female deity as the generic “goddess.”

The state of Kerala, located on the coast of the Arabian Sea and near the tip of South India, has been the recipient of waves of migration, from earliest human migrations out of Africa. Kerala has been enriched over the centuries through trading by ship and land with north and east African, pan-Mediterranean and Mesopotamian civilizations, as well as Southeast Asia, and land trade from Central Asia, China and the rest of India north into regions of the Himalayas. These ancient peoples brought their own customs with them, and in the broadly tolerant matrilineal environment, community after community retained much of its own uniqueness, and its crucially important menarche rites.

I should explain that in Kerala today, as in other modernizing countries engaging with the global economy and the demands of solar calendars and computer technology, menarche celebrations, like certain other rites, have largely disappeared. My impression is that for many younger women particularly, the constrictions and rules surrounding them now seem hopelessly archaic and irrelevant, compared to the demands and liberties of teeming new economies. Yet during my visit, some young and many older women were eager to talk to me about their experiences, and some families had made a special effort to celebrate menarche for their daughters despite distances and work or school calendars that conflicted. Although menarche rites are both present and disappearing, I speak of them in this article in the present.

Even as this area goes through rapid modernization, the village goddess festivals and devotions to upkeep of the temples continue amidst all the distractions of traffic, cell phones, and computerized lives. This is why I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to visit Kerala in 1997 and 1998, on the cusp of its most drastic changes, as a scholar needing to prove to herself that her theory about the importance of menarche rites and goddess religion to culture, even to originations of cultural forms, might hold up in a living context. I felt compelled to explore the traditional sacred rituals, the blood rituals, and especially menarche. Menarche is constructed in various communities as an awakening, a learning, a containment of adolescent energies, and a rebirth of consciousness, as well as a transition of status from childhood to adulthood.

In Kerala, less than a hundred years ago, the earth goddess herself, Bhumi Devi, was a menstruant, with an annual three-day ceremony, the Uccaral. During this time, work was suspended, debts were resolved, and the earth was understood to be in her own form of seclusion. Within living memory, in the traditional matrilineal extended family home (the taravad) of the Nayar and other communities, a room was set aside in the northeast corner for women only. This sacred room was reserved for birth and menstrual seclusion, and was considered more sacred even than the temple. ² The maiden, as I call the girl-woman at her first bleeding (menarche), and the goddess, are quite merged in Kerala practices. In some communities at least, the maiden has been constructed and worshipped as the goddess, and conversely, the goddess is frequently represented, and treated, in both icons and rituals, as though she is the maiden at menarche. The information suggests, among other ideas, that Kerala’s multiple communities have “fed” goddess ritual from traditions they may have brought with them centuries ago as immigrants, as well as traditions developed indigenously from scores of millennia ago.

At the same time, the complex paraphernalia of menarche, the cultural forms surrounding the maiden while she sits in seclusion, are each also considered in various sacred contexts to be the goddess. These forms include the pot, especially the stout red clay pot whose mouth is covered with a small square of red cloth. In addition, the goddess is seen in the form of the tall silver, steel or brass water vessel often used in Brahminic pujas, and said to contain “all the sacred rivers.” Also, largely in the past, the traditional washerman’s pot for ritual cleansing of menstrual cloths was worshipped as a goddess by the washer people. These cloths are long and worn wrapped around one’s entire body and constitute a dress, not the little sliver of cloth that was used in, say, my mother’s family to catch the blood. A length of cloth can in and of itself receive worship, as is true of the red cloth hanging behind the installed icon of goddess Bhagavathi in Sjree Kurumba Bhagavathi temple in Kodungallur, said to be Kerala’s oldest goddess temple.

Besides special cloths and pots, other sacred objects used in various menarche rites (but not all of them together) are a particular brass mirror, an umbrella, lamps of various kinds, and the crescent-shaped metal scythe, called a val. This last object is a hand-held village agricultural tool, frequently held by a goddess icon in the temple, especially Bhadrakali and other versions of Kali, and the implement is, in Her hands, called a pallival, and in paintings is dripping with blood on its inside edges, a depiction of the crescent moon, bleeding—that is to say, the moon in “her” menses. A maiden of at least one agricultural community of old was likely to sit in her seclusion holding such an implement.

The maiden at menarche and the goddess are overtly conflated in some communities still. Particular energies of Shakti (also a primal goddess) course through women and especially through the maiden at menarche, who may be susceptible to the enormous surges of power, and therefore certain precautions need to be taken. For example, the maiden holds an iron object, such as an iron key or other small iron bar. It was explained to me that this grounds the energies that course freely through the maiden’s body during menarche, and might cause her harm. A contemporary woman might also carry such an object with her during regular menstruation, I was told, even when not practicing seclusion.

As I said earlier, various objects are also worshiped as forms of the goddess. In Table 1, below, I have selected seven cultural forms that have prominent place in some menarche rites, and compared them with their presence in goddess rites. The fourth column indicates that the form is sometimes considered to be the goddess herself, and is set up in such a way as to receive worship—not only as part of a formal altar in a temple installation, but in less obvious ways in various locations on the temple grounds.

For example, a very tall lamp may be situated in front of the installation of the goddess in a temple setting; in certain menarche rites, a lamp was set in front of the maiden. A lamp may be understood as a replication of the sun, and of the life force; sometimes the lamp is the body of the goddess, and is worshipped with flowers, red powder, incense, ash and so on. The maiden at menarche has a powerful relation with the sun, in that she must cover her head so its rays do not land on her if she is outside. In at least one community practice, a maiden went outside (to visit the toilet) only if she had an umbrella held over her head. The umbrella in Kerala is a form of the goddess in some temples, and is held over the heads of icons of both gods and goddesses mounted on elephants in procession. The umbrella is also said to be the full moon. Thus the maiden, the goddess, and the moon (through the Metaformic umbrella) are in sacred relationship.

Table 1. Material forms in menarche rites compared to goddess rite and goddess identity

Form	Menarche Rite	Goddess Rite	Is Goddess
1. cloth	she sits on, wears cloth	yes	yes
2. pot	w/red cloth, others	yes	yes
3. lamp	she has her own lamp	yes	yes
4. umbrella	Nambuthiri, Kshatriya	yes	yes
5. nail	Pulayan/Cheruman	mental cure	part of icon
6. val	Parayan	Bharani, Mudiyettu	yes
7. mirror	Nayar	commonly	yes

Explanation of Table 1: I have listed seven of the forms that commonly have occurred in the menarche rites of various communities. Please note that not all seven occur in the menarche rites of any single community, although lamps, cloth, and pots are so common they probably do occur in virtually every menarche. With forms that seem more specific to particular communities, such as the val or umbrella, I listed a few of the groups in the table. And under the heading “Goddess Rites” I suggested names of festivals, Bharani Festival, or ritual performance offerings such as Mudiyettu in which these objects are treated as sacred manifestations of the goddess. Many more such festivals and ritual performances could be named.

Six of these objects are also worshipped in other contexts as forms of the goddess. The exception to this is the nail, which has been used in some communities to transfer an evil force or chaotic Shakti from the maiden at menarche to a tree sacred to the goddess, the pala. Again, the idea is to transfer the chaotic power to the trees. While in my short stay I came on no information that the nail is ever worshipped by itself as a goddess, it may well be, somewhere—perhaps in communities of traditional carpenters. Jayakar describes a nail driven into the waist of a wooden icon of Shakti, as though to “nail” a negative spirit to the goddess to contain its power. Another writer reported in 1983 that the nails (spikes) used to transfer disparate energies from emotionally suffering people (chiefly women) to huge trees at Chottanikkara Devi Temple were smeared with cumcum (red powder)and some had red rags tied to them (Kapur, 93). But that does not mean they were understood to be, in and of themselves, the goddess, though this might be the case in some settings.

The other objects are each treated as “goddess” in certain rituals. The sacred approach taken toward these common household goods, cloth, pot, mirror, lamp, suggests to me that the forms themselves arose from women’s rites and in sacred context, and that religions honoring women’s consciousness and connection to cycles of nature produced the elemental forms we take as “ordinary” human culture every day of our lives.

Notably these forms are also conflated with Metaformic nonhuman beings. The sacred mirror is shaped like a cobra; the umbrella is compared to the moon; the val is depicted in temple art as the bleeding crescent moon, and the lamp is connected ritually with the sun. The metal vessel, like mother earth, is said to contain all the world’s rivers. The red clay pot has been directly associated with the womb of the goddess not only through its shape but also through its name, Kumbham, which means both womb and pot. All these natural forms, the cobra, moon, sun, and rivers, have also been deified and continue to be worshipped in rituals associating them with women, menstruation, and forms of the goddess.

Witnessing the intense honoring of pots and many other goddess rites during my months of research while living in Kerala; participating in a women’s ritual of honoring the goddess with flowers, red powder, and incense in her form as a small open flame lamp; seeing the long red sheets of cloth stacked up as offerings to the goddess at a Bharani Festival; hearing about the iron nails and their effect of “grounding” energies and transferring them to sacred trees, had a heartfelt effect on me. I no longer take the existence of these forms for granted, as “ordinary,” as mere commodities made for practical use. I now also perceive them as deeply meaningful, as Metaforms.

If Kerala’s village rituals are in any way a microcosm of the prechristian, premuslim ancient and medieval worlds, then these elemental cultural forms are completely tied to the sacred feminine.

One contribution of Metaformic studies to women’s spirituality and goddess studies is in defining a new origin story that is irreducibly inclusive of women. Meme is the term scientists use to indicate a unit of culture, handed down, that distinguishes us from other creatures. Memes can be traced to menstrual and related rites, and are, therefore and in my terms, Metaforms. A Metaform, unlike the idea of a meme, cannot be separated from menstruation as its origin. We live surrounded by, literally within, a matrix of Metaforms. We continue to use the once sacred but now secularized Metaforms of the past in our daily lives—as bowls, pots, clothing, lamps, etc.—such that a dining room table set for dinner, a cup of morning coffee, a bowl of porridge, a towel, the bathroom mirror, red sunsets, moonrise, a coffeepot, and any open flame, to use just a few examples, become ways I can re-member both the sacred feminine and the power of ancestral accomplishment vested in me, and in all of us, living today.

When I take the time to consider my daily habits as something precious and beautiful, with that dimensional aesthetic we call “sacred,” something for which I can have gratitude toward people all over the worlds ancient and modern, time slows down, and feelings of love and appreciation flow in.

Moreover, no matter how trivialized women and women’s efforts may be, in the face of “big screen” male-only origin stories, male sciences, male war rituals as primary historic markers, Metaformic Consciousness gives me ways to credit women’s rituals (and the multitude of overlooked men also associated with them) with the elementals of our lives: circles, triangles, fires, cooking, containers, clothing, furniture, calendars, and so on, to all of which I am, because I am paying attention, related.

As I go about my daily life, the goddess is in my hands, courses though me, and in various forms lives and interacts with me, everywhere, all the time. While as both a teacher and a seeker I experience goddess and spirit in a multitude of ways, this everyday connection of the sacred feminine to the mundane gives me consistent delight, and feels to be consistently subversive of anything that would undermine my agency as a person inhabiting a female body with a female history and lineage, a person completely, inextricably connected to creation of culture.

This work has been extended in an online journal, Metaformia: A Journal of Menstruation and Culture. (www.Metaformia.org). English anthropologist Chris Knight also has posited menstrual origins of culture, in Blood Relations: Menstrual Origins of Culture (Oxford University Press, 1991).
Amarananda Bhairavan, personal communication.

Sources

Grahn, Judy. 1993. Blood, bread, and roses: How menstruation created the world. Boston: Beacon Press.
Grahn, Judith Rae. 1999. Are Goddesses Metaformic Constructs? An Application of Metaformic Theory to Menarche Celebrations and Goddess Rituals of Kerala and Contiguous States in South India. Integral Studies, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco.
Induchudan, V. T. 1969. The secret chamber: A historical, anthropological and philosophical study of the Kodungallur temple. Trichur: Cochin Devaswom Board.
Iyer, L. K. Anantha Krishna. 1937. The Travancore tribes and castes. Trivandrum: Superintendent Government Press.
———. 1981. The tribes and castes of Cochin. New Delhi: Cosmo Publications. (Original work published in 1912.)
Jayakar, Pupul. 1990. The Earth Mother: Legends, goddesses, and ritual arts of India. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
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About the author

Judy Grahn is a poet, cultural theorist, and teacher. She edits an online journal, Metaformia, at www.metaformia.com. Her newest books are love belongs to those who do the feeling (a collection of short poems from 1966-2006) from Red Hen Press and The Judy Grahn Reader (prose and longer poems) from Aunt Lute Press. She teaches her own theoretical work in a Women’s Spirituality Master’s Program at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. She performs her own poetry, in collaboration with musicians; and teaches writing and literature in Writing, Consciousness, and Creative Inquiry, an interdisciplinary MFA program at California Institute of Integral Studies. She lives in California, and is married to Kris Brandenburger; they are two of 18,000 legally married Gay people in the state.

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