View about Menstruation

Warning: If your a man, this might be strange.

So I was thinking a lot about being clean for ritual and being presentable to the gods. Being a female, the monthly horror shows up and can really ruin your day. When I had been Kemetic one of the things that we were told was don’t approach the divine while your bleeding. I get what their talking about, but I feel that bounds the female follower a bit too much and reminds me of my former religion. So I went looking for any information to help me write about this and I was surprised that someone had already done a blog post about this.

Does this make my pov invalid? No! It just means that someone else agrees with me. So I’m going to take a bit from that so that I can help anyone that may think that bleeding makes them unclean. This is from thespiae.oddmodout.com

Long story short, it’s actually been concluded that —while unusual for the Mediterranean in ancient times— the ancient Hellenes didn’t appear to consider menstruation as a producer of miasma, in and of itself. In fact, there are very few mentions of menstruation at all, outside of medical texts —one of which even suggests sex during menstruation to aid erratic periods (and while this may have nothing to do with irregular periods, many doctors now suggest that sexual intercourse, or at least masturbation during a woman’s period may relieve cramping). In fact, some regions even had a girl’s coming-of-age rites to include sacrificing her first menstrual towels to Artemis.

Now, that said, some women have incredibly painful periods, and that painful cramping, headache, nausea, etc…. It’s a popular argument that this physical ailment, in and of itself is “miasma”, because of the idea that “our minds are not fully engaged in worship”; Dver explains quite succinctly that miasma is not about our “feels”, it’s about what is regarded as ritual and spiritual pollution to a certain god or gods. So, basically, the uterus performing its regular function? Even if it’s painful for you? Not likely miasma. And as others have noted, unwashed hands, on their own, are not miasmic, but disrespectful to approach Ta Theoi with — so I figure women who are experiencing an especially “heavy flow” day may not wish to approach the altar or shrine on account of it simply being “less than fresh”, not because of the (apparently false) notion that “menstruation = miasma”.

That aside, ancient Hellas is, as I said, rather unusual for the ancient world, especially the Mediterranean regions, in that there is virtually nothing suggesting that menstruation (and thus all fertile-bodied females, inherently speaking) as being somehow “unclean”, spiritually or otherwise — or at least no more so than any other day-to-day thing that can cause physical uncleanliness.Pretty much everything we know about women’s menstrual culture of ancient Hellas is in medical writings, bits about the cultic rites of Artemis and menarche, and the occasional interpretation of a vase-painting as depicting menstrual dress.

So, as she said in her post, if you have a cut slap a bandage on it. If you have snitches, make sure your wrappings are clean. If your on your period put a tampon on it, slap a pad, do whatever you need to contain it. The Hellenists didn’t have this blood is bad view and neither should modern Hellenists.