Did you know…
Tidbits are small metaformic anecdotes, mostly from the oral tradition.

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Blessings and blood

Although on page 150 of Blood, Bread, and Roses it says that the word blessings comes from “blood songs” neither Debbi Grenn nor author Judy Grahn can come up with a source for this. Perhaps in a vernacular or old German dialect? Meanwhile Barbara Walker, who remains a fascinating source as long as we double check her voluminous entries, has what seems a solid source for the word blessings on page 110 of The Encyclopedia of Women’s Myths and Secrets. “From Old English bletsain, earlier bleodswean, ‘to sanctify with shedding of blood.’” Her source is Michael Harrison, The Roots of Witchcraft, Secaucus, NJ, Citadel Press, 1974. page 129. Walker continues, “It was the custom to consecrate altars by sprinkling them with blood, and to ‘bless’ individuals by marking them with blood, as is still the custom of foxhunters who ‘blood’ new members of the club after a kill.”

Nevertheless we love the sound of “blood songs”, especially as special songs were and are sung in honor of first menstruation and women’s bleeding times.

The Editors

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RAGs in Unusual Places

A group of anthropologists in England who research and teach menstrual origins of culture, especially from the work of Chris Knight, call themselves Radical Anthropology Group, or RAG…

Shortly after BB&R came out in 1993, RAG invited Judy Grahn to England to give a talk on metaformic theory. She was unable to do so at that time, but January of 2005 was in London and again received an invitation from Chris Knight Fortunately colleague Dianne Jenett was present and had brought the powerpoint so Judy was able to do a very successful presentation. We plan to discuss the important ideas of Chris Knight, Camilla Power and their colleagues in RAG in future issues of Metaformia Journal.

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Ragtime music —why is it called ragtime? Itinerant pianists, most of whom were black, spread a new, fast, vibrant musical form up and down the Mississippi Valley beginning about the 1890’s, or at least that is when it began to get some attention from the white world as a unique form. According to an African-American woman whose name I do not know, ragtime began in southern brothels and road houses. Whenever the sex worker women were “on the rag” they tended to bleed together during the same few days, due to the phenomenon of menstrual synchrony, and so none of the women could work for several days out of each month. To compensate the economy of the house, during “rag time,” the madam would urge the musicians to play more vigorously in order to induce customers to stay around dancing, eating, drinking and spending money. So the enthusiastic music the house musicians produced during those periods was called “Ragtime Music”. When the new musical form spread out into the country at large over the next few decades, the menstrual meaning was left off, and now “nobody knows” why it is called “ragtime”.

Tidbit was submitted by Keri Wayne, a graduate of NCOC Women’s Spirituality Program. She was told this story by a woman she met in Nebraska.

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On Synchrony: the body is a sensitive instrument; the onset of menstruation, the timing and even the amount of bleeding, is capable of “entraining” with other rhythms, and to be sensitive to such factors as pheromones and sitting in moonlight (see Proctor’s article), dancing (see pp in Blood Relations, Knight), and even certain words (forthcoming in a future issue). Now we have a metaformic anecdote about singing a particular note in the scale, and onset of menses.

Master singing teacher Dwayne Calizo (at New College of California), working with Sarah Starpoli, one of his woman students, discovered that giving her a particular exercise of eight bars with a tempo of 80 bpm to sing high G over high C would bring about her bleeding, if she was within “any day now” in starting her period. He used the same technique with two other students, and the effect was the same. The bleeding begins about half an hour after the singing exercise, which he does with the students. And he is sure the same effect would occur if they did the exercise without his voice.

Tidbit submitted by Dwayne Calizo.

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