Metaformia Articles

• The Emergence of Metaformic Consciousness
• by Judy Grahn, Ph.D
• The theory of origins I am espousing is epistemological, in that it asks the question "How do we know what we know, and has that made us human beings, and different from other animals?" In postulating "the particularities of menstruation" as the source of our human uniqueness, the first quality we can notice is that ancestral humans have understood, quite reasonably, that the jelling up of menses within the womb produces a new being. Read more >>



• Shedding Old Skin: A Search For New Origin Stories
• by Luisah Teish
• So there I was meticulously dressed in my can-can slips, hot starched and ironed under a spotless dress. I was the kind of little Black girl who loved to dress up and also enjoyed craw fishing, hanging from the willow tree and shooting marbles with the boys. On this day I was just about to win another cat-eye marble when my mother called out, "Heifer, come on in here!" Read more >>



• Women, Orangutans and the Moon
• by Tina Proctor, M.A.
• Nothing could have surprised me more when I began my menstrual flow at the dark of the moon in October, 2004. I am post-menopausal and haven't bled for 2½ years. Why did this happen? Was it because I had just finished readingBlood, Bread and Roses: How Menstruation Created the Worldby Judy Grahn? [1] Was it because I had written a short paper describing my own menstrual story to share with my Metaformic Theory[2] class? Could my own focus on menstruation actually... Read more >>



• Are Wars Metaformic?
• by Judy Grahn, Ph.D.
• Mass warfare is not sustainable, is not noble, and is not between warriors. Civilian deaths far outnumber those of soldiers; terrified and furious soldiers go mad in war and murder civilians, and many ex-soldiers never recover from the traumas—physical, psychological, and social—of modern warfare. War is addictive and attractive because it appears to be about meaning, [1] but it is actually about sensation and loyalty, grotesquely out of balance emotions of the people who endure it, and grotesquely out of... Read more >>



• Blood Relics: Menstrual Roots of Miraculous Black Madonnas in Italy
• by Mary Beth Moser, M.A.
• Throughout Italy, highly venerated images of the Virgin Mary portrayed with brown or black skin may be found. The traditions surrounding these dark statues, paintings and frescoes, which I have collectively termed Black Madonnas, are ancient. They are often the central image of honor in the cathedrals, caves, and mountain top shrines and sanctuaries where they are found, and are very often considered miraculous.  In my thesis, Honoring Darkness: Exploring the Power of Black Madonnas in Italy, I studied the... Read more >>



• Connecting With Deity Through a Feminist Metaformic Thealogy
• by Deborah J. Grenn, Ph.D.
• Let us bless the flow of life That revives us, sustains us, And brings us to this time Read more >>



• Goddess of the Blood of Life, Part One
• by Judy Grahn, Ph.D.
•  In a series of articles for Metaformia I want to explore what seems to me a pressing question in Women's Spirituality circles, with implications for women and gender relations overall. That is the two part question of what the relation is between the goddess and menstruation, and why the goddess was or is considered "bloodthirsty."  By "goddess" I mean various female deities in a number of traditions, both historic and contemporary. Read more >>



• The Swallowed Mother: C - Sections, Metaforms and Male Cuts
• by Nané Ariadne Jordan
• But Athene's own priests tell the following story of her birth. Zeus lusted after Metis the Titaness, who turned into many shapes to escape him until she was caught at last and got with child. An oracle of Mother Earth then declared that this would be a girl-child and that, if Metis conceived again, she would bear a son who was fated to depose Zeus... Therefore, having coaxed Metis to a couch with honeyed words, Zeus suddenly opened his mouth... Read more >>



• Menstruating Women/Menstruating Goddesses: Sites of Sacred Power in Kerala, South India, Sangam Era (100-500 CE) to the Present
• by Dianne E. Jenett, Ph. D.
• Poetry written two millennia ago in the geographical areas now known as Tamil Nadu and Kerala, South India described women as filled with ananku  [1], a sacred power associated with their sexuality that was considered particularly potent during menarche and menstruation. The Sangam era description of ananku is a precursor of the later concept of shakti (divine vivifying female power). The connection, between divinity and menstruation, is shown both in fieldwork and through an ethnographic analysis of literature in Kerala,... Read more >>



• Soaked in Semen and Blood: Gay Men and the Queering of Metaformic Conscisouness
• by Gregory Gajus, M.F.A.
•  “…all the gatekeepers are going to find their positions Read more >>



• Metaforms of a Monotheistic Religion: The Menstrual Roots of Three Jewish and African Rites of Passage: Khomba, Bat Mitzvah and the Mikvah
• by Deborah J. Grenn, Ph.D.
• B'rucha at Shekhinah [1] eloteinu malkah ha'olam she'asani ishah: Blessed are you, Shekhinah our god, Creator of the world/Source of Life, who has made me a woman. Read more >>



• MOOSE, FOOSE and FAMOSE
• by Judy Grahn, Ph.D.
• Archeomythology, a genre defined by Marija Gimbutas, catches the imagination by ordering multiple sets of findings from the Neolithic into a single origin story. That an origin story rests in the Sacred Feminine is what makes it news. Poets and mythographers, Jungians and many indigenous people and the grassroots Goddess movement have all put forward female origin stories; but they did not have archeological input or scientific standing. Read more >>



• Cultural Obversity
• by Judy Grahn, Ph.D.
• The category "culture" is in question today, as so many diasporas, migrations, and invasions occur, and as we watch globalization of education and economies, and other ways of mixing, matching and relocating shred relatively stationary ways of life that were formerly understood as intact cultures. Even leaving aside the extremes of warfare, cultural differences remain real, contentious and dangerous both in the international domain and in families, workplaces, schools and other institutions in which people sometimes fail violently and distressingly... Read more >>



• Metaformic Economics
• by Polly Wood, M.F.A., M.A.
• How does one measure that which is sacred? If something or someone is valued beyond measure, they are called "priceless." Trees are priceless, like clean air, safe water, and a healthy body. We care for the things that are priceless to us, not only because we want to protect them, but because they lack the protection that comes with having a measurable value. If you could measure the value of your very favorite tree, by adding all of its gifts... Read more >>



• Thug Life: Call of the Ancestors
• by Toya Groves
•  Nynah's body crawled from beneath the bellowing and howling mounds of sea waves. Waves that had once massaged her cold limbs into motion when her heart and lungs took their breaks. Each muscle and vein pulsated in a rhythmic harmony creating an orchestra of melodies that never outshined the other. It was as if each body part took its place under the sun singing solely at a time but only briefly touching each other's note dancing on the trail of... Read more >>



• Menstruation Tales From the Land of the Rainbow Serpent
• by Sharon Moloney
•      Menstruation -- the shedding of the lining of the uterus -- is a uniquely female experience. In pre-patriarchal and some Indigenous societies, menses was recognised as a spiritual phenomenon, a potentially liminal state of heightened transparency to the sacred. My doctoral research has explored Australian women's experiences of both menses and birth as dimensions of female spirituality. It reveals that menstruation is experienced by some Western women as a contemporary form of Goddess spirituality, inspiring self-love, self-nurture, empowerment and... Read more >>



• Bleeding in Kerala: An Embodied Research
• by Anya De Marie, M.A.
• Crouching and with slow steps, I make it back to the bed. As I curl up and replace the hot water bottle on my lower stomach, all of my attention is riveted in this body, in this moment. As I give way to this meditative focus, the exhausting movement and irritability will soon calm into a stillness that makes my agonizing cramps seem less chaotic. I am horizontal, silent, and overwhelmingly steeped in an altered state of consciousness - the... Read more >>