-:- the house of the sky -:-
-:- menstrual floods -:-
home one two three four five six seven eight nine notes
Throughout this essay, we've been wandering through time, speaking to the Rainmaker (4000BC), walking along the Bridge to the Ancestors before it floods (400AD) and watching the Miller at his work (1000BC), each time witnessing an episode and uncovering buried symbolism of the end of a world. It is now time to go back to the very beginning, to a story that is probably of the most ancient providence that modern man has access to - an Aboriginal Dreaming Story. This particular story is of a menstrual flood, the oldest flood of all: despite all the male Millers and Rainmakers, heroics and tearings-down we've seen so far, the earliest myths of floods concerned the deep and all-encompassing blood-power of the female. Throughout human history, attitudes to menstruation have subtly shaped the course of events, beliefs and ritual behaviour. From the earliest rituals of female seclusion to the wearing of lipstick, menstrual power has remained an undercurrent in human life.
Rightfully, I believe did Judy Grahn say that at the very base of human experience, 'all blood is menstrual blood, and all water is menstrual in character'. Therefore it can be said that all floods, all World's Ends, are linked in some deep way in the human psyche with the deep power of menstruation. This was hinted at in the Hindu myth in which Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity is born from the Churning of Milk, but in the following story, the connection is made overt.
Here, then, is what the Murngin people of Arnhem Land, Australia have to say about the matter. This story is part of their Wawilak or Djanggawul cycle of myths, which are commonly used for, among other things, instruction during male puberty and initiation rites (*12):
'The two Wawilak Sisters were on their way on a sacred journey from their homes to the Arafura Sea. One of them was heavily pregnant with a boy, the other was still a virgin and had yet to menstruate. As they walked, they collected different animals and put them in their dilly bags, naming them as they went, until they reached the great Mirrimina waterhole, in whose depths lived the great Julunggul, a female Rainbow Serpent of considerable power.
The two sisters began working to make a shelter, but the younger one, as she worked, began to menstruate, and some of the blood found its way into the waterhole. This awoke the senses of Julunggul, who was furious at this intrusion in her sacred well. She flung aside the rock that was the door to her underwater shelter, throwing it so hard that it surfaced and flew past the sisters, who gripped each other in terror.
In its wake Julunggul rose, and the waters of the lake rose with her. The two sisters hugged closely, saying: "Something is wrong, something terrible is going to happen." The sky darkened and the waters of the lake began to flood the land, and still Julunggul rose through the waters until she surfaced.
The older sister looked around and saw the rainbow serpent, and cried out, "Julunggul! Stop the flood! Don't hurt us, don't swallow us!" And she began a sinuous dance to entice the serpent into a better mood. Meanwhile, her sister began singing her secret songs to stop the flood, keeping time with her clapping sticks as she sang. But the magic of the Wawilak Sisters was too weak to save them. Julunggul surged forward and swallowed them both, regurgitating them only when they had become rocks.The rising flood covered everything in sight'
Murngin Djanggawul Myth Cycle
There is much in this story which should already be familiar, such as the rising waters, as well as the unstoppability of the ending of the world. Ronald M. Berndt has commented that 'The Wawilak Sisters are primarily concerned with maintaining the status quo, and are not assumed to have brought into all life into being.' Thus, in this particular myth, the presence of these two sisters represents a will to hold on to the old world which is being destroyed - they begin to dance and sing magic songs to hold back the tide, but Julunggul, the agent of the change (and who lives deep, deep at the very base of the waters) is much stronger than that, and the world is flooded nonetheless.
There is also the synchronicity that a people who dwell in the Southern Hemisphere tell a story in which a dragon-serpent is master of the floods in the same way that in the far North, the World Mill (which creates the floods) can be found in the constellation of Draco the Dragon. Similarly in Peru, it is the frog (functioning here as a pseudo-serpent) who shakes the foundations of the House of the Sky, but in a number of variants, a snake or lizard does the job. It seems that across the world, serpents shake the foundations of the Earth and bring about the next world.
But it is in one esoteric interpretation of the Murngin people where we suddenly find ourselves on decidedly recognizable territory. In some Aboriginal teachings, the sacred journey that the Wawilak Sisters are making is one which takes them across the sky along the Milky Way. The waterhole Mirrimina might therefore be a dark cloud in the celestial river - in the Australian desert as in the high Andes mountains, even the dark clouds are surprisingly bright - or it might well represent the Ocean at the edge of the world itself.
This Murngin myth of the Wawilak sisters provides us with possibly the most ancient depiction yet of the flooding sky, one in which a female creative power - menstruation - is the agent of the change. With this in mind, many of the menstrual seclusion rites of traditional people across the world begin to take on some form of logic.
These seclusion rites vary in degrees of strictness from tribe to tribe, but broad similarities can be paralleled across many of the cultures. The young woman must be kept secluded, away from the rest of the tribe, there to figure out for herself what she is becoming, and to think about how she is transforming from a girl into a fertile woman. She is kept off the ground at all times, lest her extremely powerful presence contacts the earth and causes it to suddenly become violently fertile, and she is kept apart from water, lest her blood mixes with the waters of the Ocean and causes a flood.
If she should come into contact with water, Julunggul or a similar agent will rise from the depths and cover the world. And again, it becomes clear where she comes from, where her cave is located. If the World Mill is to be located high up in the World of the Gods in the far Northern Hemisphere, then Julunggul's Cave must be located at its diametric opposite - the South Precessional Pole. She is thus the Demiurge of the Underworld, the Mistress of the Ancestors. Memories of her survived in Ereshkigal and Persephone, the Akkadian and Greek Queens of the Underworld.
We have now seen examples from every era in history of the Flood Myth, from the menstrual serpent, through the Rainmaker, the Miller and the World Mill, and the Bridge to the Ancestors. We're about ready now to summarise, and using the technical language of myth, tell the history of the living and dying world.
(c) Bruce Rimell, June 2005
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