The Emergence of Metaformic Consciousness by Judy Grahn
Shedding Old Skin by Luisah Teish
Women, Orangutans and the Moon by Tina Proctor
Are Wars Metaformic? by Judy Grahn
Blood Relics by Mary Beth Moser
Connecting With Deity... by Deborah J. Grenn
Goddess of the Blood of Life, Part One by Judy Grahn
The Swallowed Mother: C-Sections, Metaforms and Male Cuts by Nané Ariadne Jordan
Menstruating Women/Menstruating Goddesses by Dianne E. Jenett
Soaked in Semen and Blood by Gregory Gajus
Metaforms of a Monotheistic Religion by Deborah J. Grenn

 

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The Emergence of Metaformic Consciousness
by Judy Grahn

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.

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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!"

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Women, Orangutans and the Moon
by Tina Proctor

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 reading Blood, Bread and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World by Judy Grahn? Was it because I had written a short paper describing my own menstrual story to share with my Metaformic Theory class? Could my own focus on menstruation actually bring on a period after such a time? Perhaps it was because we were two weeks away from a total lunar eclipse and I was feeling the lure of the mistress of tides.

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Are Wars Metaformic?
by Judy Grahn

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, but it is actually about sensation and loyalty, grotesquely out of balance emotions of the people who endure it, and grotesquely out of balance power urges of the men who decree it to happen. Yet, the bloodshed of war is glorified above all other bloodshed.

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Blood Relics: Menstrual Roots of Miraculous Black Madonnas in Italy
by Mary Beth Moser

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.  

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Connecting With Deity Through a Feminist Metaformic Thealogy
by Deborah J. Grenn

I developed metaformic thealogy as an extension of metaformic theory, developed over a thirty-year period by cultural theorist and poet Judy Grahn. The theory, detailed in her Blood, Bread, and Roses (1993) and her more recent work, "Are Goddesses Metaformic Constructs?" is complex; I will focus on only one key aspect here.  

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Goddess of the Blood of Life, Part One
by Judy Grahn

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". 

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The Swallowed Mother: C - Sections, Metaforms and Male Cuts
by Nané Ariadne Jordan

Athena, the mythical Greek goddess of war, was born from her father, a god who gave birth by swallowing her mother whole. How might this ancient story pose significance for a study of the modern act of giving birth? Such a study would incorporate the seeming absurdity of swallowed mothers, fathers giving birth, and daughters leaping to war. Yet myth, a story beyond story, acts as a psychic and temporal map – a way into both past and present.  

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Poetry written two millennia ago in the geographical areas now known as Tamil Nadu and Kerala, South India described women as filled with ananku, 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, India; where the pan-Kerala goddess Bhagavati’s rituals appear patterned on those of menstrual maidens. Indeed in some communities, during menarche rituals, the menstruant is understood to be the goddess. 

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As a Queer Cultural Theorist and a Gay man, I have spent twenty years thinking and writing in handcuffs.  Inside of the Academy, these restraints are called Queer Theory, Post-Colonial Analysis, Post-Modernism and Social Constructivism.  I was enthralled with the ideas of queer identity being the product of colonization.  My research, and almost everyone else’s asked how do we construct our sexual acts and gender presentation and how does society respond.  It may seem plain that this is a circular argument; but, oh the romance, how we kissed this discourse and whispered in the ears of Structuralists and Linguists.

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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

What connects women to nyama, ase, ruach, our own lifeforce? What pre-patriarchal roots and contemporary customs do women from different continents and traditions share? In exploring these questions through an examination of women’s ancient and modern religious rituals, I apply Judy Grahn’s metaformic theory. I look at three rituals: the mikvah and the bat mitzvah, women’s rituals in my own European-American Jewish tradition, and khomba, a puberty ritual practiced by the Lemba, a Southern African people practicing Judaic customs since ancient times. All three rituals meet enough of Grahn’s criteria to allow us to consider them as possible metaforms—acts or practices containing knowledge which emerged from women’s earliest menstrual rites. The mikvah, though rarely done as a coming-of-age ritual as are the khomba and bat mitzvah, contains enough parallels to early menstrual rites to be included here. All three are transformative transitional rituals that include a period of sitting in the unknown, in psychological if not physical darkness—and emerging with new consciousness and greater knowledge than one had before the rite.

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