“This is why, in the Bible, Jehovah’s covenant with Abraham was ritually sealed with the lifeblood of Abraham, and this covenant is kept by circumcising the foreskin of every Hebraic male infant. The Hebrews, like everyone else, were originally Goddess-worshipers, and it was her magic blood that symbolically sealed covenants. As the patriarchy solidified its power, however, many of the blood ritual imitations of women’s functions were turned into taboos against women’s functions—taboos of avoidance and “hygiene.” As the biblical Old Testament illustrates, patriarchal society places heavy taboos and penalties of shame on menstruation and on women during and after childbirth. Such taboos were originally restrictions made by women themselves—menstrual-hut customs—to protect their bodies and guarantee their sacred solitude during the moon functions, their separateness from men and children. But as male power structures and religious reactions against the Goddess rise, seeing the Great Mother more and more as the castrating other, the terrible devourer, these moon-blood taboos are given negative connotations: Women during their menstrual periods and childbirth are defined as “unclean” and dangerous, especially threatening to “social manhood” and its co-opted assumptions of “sacred wounds” and “higher powers” gained through the second ritual birth via an elder male body. The female body, which actually does these things, becomes an embarrassing threat to the males’ metaphorical assumption of the blood-powers of menstruation and childbirth. No male priest can compete with a woman in these areas! –Monica Sjoo & Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother
“This is why, in the Bible, Jehovah’s covenant with Abraham was ritually sealed with the lifeblood of Abraham, and this covenant is kept by circumcising the foreskin of every Hebraic male infant. The Hebrews, like everyone else, were originally Goddess-worshipers, and it was her magic blood that symbolically sealed covenants. As the patriarchy solidified its power, however, many of the blood ritual imitations of women’s functions were turned into taboos against women’s functions—taboos of avoidance and “hygiene.” As the biblical Old Testament illustrates, patriarchal society places heavy taboos and penalties of shame on menstruation and on women during and after childbirth. Such taboos were originally restrictions made by women themselves—menstrual-hut customs—to protect their bodies and guarantee their sacred solitude during the moon functions, their separateness from men and children. But as male power structures and religious reactions against the Goddess rise, seeing the Great Mother more and more as the castrating other, the terrible devourer, these moon-blood taboos are given negative connotations: Women during their menstrual periods and childbirth are defined as “unclean” and dangerous, especially threatening to “social manhood” and its co-opted assumptions of “sacred wounds” and “higher powers” gained through the second ritual birth via an elder male body. The female body, which actually does these things, becomes an embarrassing threat to the males’ metaphorical assumption of the blood-powers of menstruation and childbirth. No male priest can compete with a woman in these areas! –Monica Sjoo & Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother
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