Did you know that women's makeup and fashion are derived from menstruation traditions? Have you ever wondered why humans are one of the few species where the female is more beautiful than the male?
Ancient society was structured around the needs of bleeding women, in direct opposition to what we experience today. And yet women are bleeding with more frequency and longer duration than ever, due to our better diets and less time spent pregnant and breastfeeding.
This is incredibly potent - as our cycles of creation and shedding come with greater frequency.
We long for ritualised menstruation because it is a huge part of our collective consciousness. When women give themselves permission to just be with the shedding, their spiritual, physical and emotional wellbeing significantly improves.
We used to understand that how a woman was treated during her bleed had impact on the whole culture. For primitive societies they thought interrupting, looking at or touching the woman would bring a natural disaster. This is a natural step in the process of understanding the devastating impacts of women's physiology not being respected.
For a woman emerging from her bleeding time, elaborate makeup and clothes would be used in celebration to signal her completion of the ritual and that she was now considered "safe". Like the new moon emerging from the period of three days darkness, which was also celebrated.
This is where the feminine desire for adornment comes from, from this seclusion and emergence ritual that naturally echoes the moon cycle.