I have a friend who is a trans woman and a Thelemite, who has a particular personal practice that I’ve asked if I could share. With permission, I wanted to tell you a little bit about that practice and about a bit of craft embroidery I did for her to use in that practice.
Although she does not physically menstruate as a MtF transgender person, she still keeps track of a monthly three day cycle, which is centered on the full moon, and the days before and after. She also tracks it in a cycle app, and has been developing a personal ritual practice for that period of time around, essentially, the idea of “out with the old, in with the new”; letting go of what is not needed, and letting in what is; a kind of regular personal sabbat or retreat.
One of the main parts of this practice for her is to ritually wear cloth menstrual pads for those three days. Like any other devotional clothing, this becomes a present reminder for her throughout the day of the ongoing three days each month. When she told me about that, I had the idea to do some symbolic embroidery for her. If course, I asked first, but when she agreed with the idea, we talked about what symbolism to use. At first, I thought about embroidering a realistic shape of menstrual blood, or something like that. But, the closer I got to the project, I kept getting the idea of instead doing a Star of Babalon. And, we both thought that idea was great, so …
Whilst I’ve not been very crafty lately, I do have lots of supplies. So, my friend sent me one of her cloth pads for me to embroider.
This all came together quickly, and I had to complete it in a day and get it back to her for this weekend, so I’m not going to say I did a great job on this one. I basically freestyled it, and it didn’t turn out quite as good as I’d hoped; but, the focused intentionality was there whilst I worked.
I’m clearly not sharing this as an example of craftmanship, but I am sharing it as an example of craft done as part of personal ritual work. For a first amateur-at-embroidery try, it came out okay. And, most importantly, I got it done in time, sent it back, and I’ve been told that she’s already using it for her three-day ritual this month, which started today. I hope to do another better one, for which I’ll see about being a little more serious about getting the shape better; but this one, it’s done, and being used!
There are a couple of other aspects of my friend’s three day ritual she wanted me to share. First, she also saw some videos about simulating period pain using a TENS machine, so she got one and uses it for 30 minutes each of the ritual days; keeping in mind her personal level of stress, she varies the intensity of the experience. Second, prior to each 30 minute session she reads a quote she selected (for example, reading the Priestess section of the Gnostic Mass reciting Liber Legis or Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem Persephone) and then she meditates for the length of the session on manifesting “out with the old, in with the new” for that month, in whatever particular way that needs to happen that time around.
In addition to the three day ritual around the full moon, she epilates on the new moon, and I suggested that in future she could also add a full series of other lunar salutations. Lots of Thelemites know and practice the Solar Adorations of Liber Resh, but few also include Lunar Adorations, as also suggested by Crowley. There are not any provided by Crowley that I recall, but if you’re interested also T Polyphilus wrote some which you can consider, or perhaps modify Jeanne Robert Foster’s Living in the Sunlight to have a Lunar character; or, you do you, and come up with something else of your own!
Do you have a ritual practice around menstruation? Are you also a trans woman who does something to incorporate a menstrual cycle in your life? Or, if you’ve got some crafty work you’ve done, around menstruation or so ever, for your own practice and are willing to share? Get in touch!
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