Metaformia Articles


  • The Emergence of Metaformic Consciousness
  • by Judy Grahn, Ph.D
  • The theory of origins I am espousing is epistemological, in that it asks the question "How do we know what we know, and has that made us human beings, and different from other animals?" In postulating "the particularities of menstruation" as the source of our human uniqueness, the first quality we can notice is that ancestral humans have understood, quite reasonably, that the jelling up of menses within the womb produces a new being.

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  • Shedding Old Skin: A Search For New Origin Stories
  • by Luisah Teish
  • So there I was meticulously dressed in my can-can slips, hot starched and ironed under a spotless dress. I was the kind of little Black girl who loved to dress up and also enjoyed craw fishing, hanging from the willow tree and shooting marbles with the boys. On this day I was just about to win another cat-eye marble when my mother called out, "Heifer, come on in here!"

    I couldn't imagine what I'd done to be called "heifer." I raked my mind for the source of her irritation. I hadn't stolen anything, the dishes were washed and my homework done. I got up from my squatting position and walked into the house.

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  • Women, Orangutans and the Moon
  • by Tina Proctor, M.A.
  • These questions became the basis for this paper, which discusses human women, their menstrual synchrony with each other and with the moon, and looks at orangutans, a primate relative with the same average menstrual cycle. The paper reflects on the physical and cultural connection between human menstruation and the moon and questions what effect the moon might have on orangutan biology and cultural development.

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  • Are Wars Metaformic?
  • by Judy Grahn, Ph.D.
  • War is addictive and attractive because it appears to be about meaning, but it is actually about sensation and loyalty, grotesquely out of balance emotions of the people who endure it, and grotesquely out of balance power urges of the men who decree it to happen. Yet, the bloodshed of war is glorified above all other bloodshed.

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  • Blood Relics: Menstrual Roots of Miraculous Black Madonnas in Italy
  • by Mary Beth Moser, Ph.D.
  • While the striking imagery and living traditions are rich in ancient symbolism, in this article I will focus on the miracle stories, which are a clear manifestation of the power attributed to Black Madonnas.  The miracles, in their elements of both creation and destruction, seem to hold relics of a more ancient and primordial power - the power of menstrual blood.  In the following discussion, I will investigate some of the miracles and explore their details for markings of older, menstrual power.

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  • Connecting With Deity Through a Feminist Metaformic Thealogy
  • by Deborah J. Grenn, Ph.D.
  • As I moved through my research, it turned out the theory had thealogical applications in my life. It inspired much language for new conversations with deity, satisfying many of my evolving theological questions as I was redefining terms, God, and my place in the universe. The thealogy, in turn, gave me a way to understand metaformic theory as both relevant and necessary in the context of my own relationship with Goddess and God.

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  • Goddess of the Blood of Life, Part One
  • by Judy Grahn, Ph.D.
  • In a series of articles for Metaformia I want to explore what seems to me a pressing question in Women's Spirituality circles, with implications for women and gender relations overall. That is the two part question of what the relation is between the goddess and menstruation, and why the goddess was or is considered "bloodthirsty."  By "goddess" I mean various female deities in a number of traditions, both historic and contemporary.  And by "bloodthirsty" I mean the innumerable accounts from both antiquity and contemporary practices of goddesses in particular needing to be propitiated with blood sacrifice.

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  • The Swallowed Mother: C - Sections, Metaforms and Male Cuts
  • by Nané Ariadne Jordan, Ph.D.
  • I want to reconsider and destabilize the meaning of this act of cutting beyond its current medically hypnotic grasp. The use of cesarean section is increasing worldwide beyond its statistical medical necessity. I posit the need for social and cultural perspectives from which to understand forces at play within this procedure - perspectives related to feminist readings of gender and practices of subjectification.

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  • Menstruating Women/Menstruating Goddesses: Sites of Sacred Power in Kerala, South India, Sangam Era (100-500 CE) to the Present
  • by Dianne E. Jenett, Ph.D.
  • Poetry written two millennia ago in the geographical areas now known as Tamil Nadu and Kerala, South India described women as filled with ananku, a sacred power associated with their sexuality that was considered particularly potent during menarche and menstruation. The Sangam era description of ananku is a precursor of the later concept of shakti (divine vivifying female power). The connection, between divinity and menstruation, is shown both in fieldwork and through an ethnographic analysis of literature in Kerala, India; where the pan-Kerala goddess Bhagavati’s rituals appear patterned on those of menstrual maidens. Indeed in some communities during menarche rituals, the menstruant is understood to be the goddess.

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  • Soaked in Semen and Blood: Gay Men and the Queering of Metaformic Conscisouness
  • by Gregory Gajus, M.F.A.
  • Our position in culture may go unacknowledged, even within Queer communities, but our persistent mannerisms, language, occupations, and sexual desires are a kind of map leading to our past and future. As I will explain, the axiom of a new theology, Metaformic Consciousness, distilled through the lessons of Queer Theory provides, finally, a way out of the dark, a legend to decode the great critical geography of Gay Men’s semen, blood and shakti.

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  • Metaforms of a Monotheistic Religion: The Menstrual Roots of Three Jewish and African Rites of Passage: Khomba, Bat Mitzvah and the Mikvah
  • by Deborah J. Grenn, Ph.D.
  • I look at three rituals: the mikvah and the bat mitzvah, women's rituals in my own European-American Jewish tradition, and khomba, a puberty ritual practiced by the Lemba, a Southern African people practicing Judaic customs since ancient times . . . All three are transformative transitional rituals that include a period of sitting in the unknown, in psychological if not physical darkness - and emerging with new consciousness and greater knowledge than one had before the rite.

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  • MOOSE, FOOSE and FAMOSE
  • by Judy Grahn, Ph.D.
  • Note that in my story version 'aggression' is not accepted as a fundamental biological innate human trait leading to culture either formative or barbaric. Rather, my metaformic story implies that what we now understand as male aggression and blood lust has its roots in imitations of female r'tu, and therefore is a construct of our peculiar human formation. Both aggression and the woman-killing relations that sometimes exist between the genders are explained in terms of a cultural dialectic rather than as biology or innateness.

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  • Cultural Obversity
  • by Judy Grahn, Ph.D.
  • My idea of cultural obversity differs from the idea of cultural relativity, in that the individual observer/participant is not asked to surrender judgment about any particular practice. He/she is asked to recognize, mentally and emotionally, the parameters of his/her own cosmetikos and then to step outside of it -- figuratively speaking -- long enough to recognize the cosmetikos practice (and therefore the good intentions) of another. What is temporarily set aside is the moral social judgment, usually expressed non-cognitively as strongly felt emotion.

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  • Metaformic Economics
  • by Polly Wood, M.F.A., M.A.
  • We are in a reciprocal relationship with the Earth, and menstrual-lunar synchrony teaches us through the opportunity to give back each month in exchange for what the Earth gives to us. To look at economics in a lunar way means having faith, an incredible amount might I add, in the ebb and flow of life, in the ability to meet one's needs even in the face of financial adversity. Our modern economy is about growth and gain at all costs. It favors what I consider the "full moon of economic cycles," and refuses to acknowledge the dark of the moon.

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  • Thug Life: Call of the Ancestors
  • by Toya Groves, M.A.
  • So in the new millennium, where is our rebellion? Where is the mustakine and the spirited insurrection? Where is our flow? I say it must be where we have hastily refused to look. It must be where the government has its tanks pointed. It must be in our Black Ghettos. It must be in the ongoing controversy of gang wars.

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  • Menstruation Tales From the Land of the Rainbow Serpent
  • by Sharon Moloney
  • With its physiological foundations in the female body, menstruation seemed to me incapable of male colonisation. Its female status was beyond contestation -- or so I thought. This article tells the story of how my assumptions about menstruation as an exclusively female experience were challenged, precipitating a spiritual crisis that culminated in my vocational acceptance of metaformic consciousness.

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  • Bleeding in Kerala: An Embodied Research
  • by Anya de Marie, M.A.
  • Metaformic Consciousness is embodied as well, meaning the foundational research is centrally grounded in embodied knowledge – that what we experience with our bodies, our bodies’ needs, desires, and quirks is acknowledged as an accurate source of information. And so when I am bleeding and all of my instincts insist that I must not talk, I must lie quietly, avoid the public – I can utilize this as gathered data for my research – embodied research. My body becomes a research tool then, and its processes valued – even menstruation, that most loathed and devalued of humans’ processes.

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