First blood: Menarche as the foundation for women's self-realisation

Goddess-based civilisations worshipped the divine as a parthenogentic primordial creative force. Parthenogensis a Greek word that derives from parthenos “virgin” and genesis “from the beginning” was the path of liberation or rebirth into one’s divine nature. Thus, the supreme deity was worshipped as the Virgin Goddess who alone, without male intervention created the Universe by entering liminal states or otherwise altered states of consciousness. Ontologically these states in goddess worshipping cultures were entered during rites of passage through dance, repetitive action, song and descending into underground grottoes. It is the intention of this thesis to explore two rites of passage, pre-menarche and menarche to establish if spiritualising these two events in our lives can lead to women having a vision of the divine, which is the intention of parthenogenesis – our own self-realisation. Using the kaleidoscope theory as the primary methodology - a method which incorporates a consideration of linguistics, mythology, history, and folklore as well as archaeology - this thesis follows several lines of approach. First, by reviewing the belief systems around parthenogenesis through a matriarchal cosmogony myth and other ancient religious interpretations, it shows that in the pre-patriarchal western world a Virgin Mother Goddess was worshipped due to her parthenogenesis. Second, it argues that the prepubescent initiation for Artemis of Brauron known as the arkteia, where young girls up to the age of 10 would play the She bear for Artemis was pre-menarchial rite of passage that set the stage for the divine experience during menarche, by retaining our instincts and intuition through our wild nature. To illustrate this, archaeological data as well as historical and mythological clues provide substantive evidence for this. Thirdly, it argues that the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary could have actually been her own menarche or first blood, whereby her spiritual conception of Christ-consciousness is announced by Gabriel and begins her journey to liberation through parthenogenesis. This will be illustrated through early century iconography and theological interpretations of Mary as she weaves the red thread to create the veil of the temple of Jerusalem. Additionally, through the Gospel of Mary Magdalene who was the first Apostle to see a vision of the resurrected Christ and is today considered the keeper of women’s blood mysteries, I argue that the spiritualising of menarche can also lead women to eventually have a vision of the divine, which culminates the path and intention of parthenogenesis – our own self-realisation. Lastly it explores through existential health how these two rites of passage are reclaimed in the modern world and how they provide an embodied relationship for women with the divine. This study pulls together fragmented elements of pre-history to make a compelling case for menarche as being the foundation for self-realisation and contemporary understanding of mythological and biblical narratives, rites of passage and their liminal spaces. The lost matriarchal path of parthenogenesis is determined to be applicable ontologically in the modern world