Traditional Rituals Around the World connected to the placenta and birth.
This is just a tiny few examples , I personally love reading these stories and hope it will inspire you as we go through our final live call where we will heal your own journey with the loss of your placenta and undergo an initiation process to bring all of the work of the last 3 months together.
The Gambia
Most of Africa including the Mandinka in The Gambia ( My husband's tribe) bury the placenta after birth. Home is important to them. This anchors the soul to the land and home. When we go away my husband will sometimes bring a small amount of dirt from home with him and return it when we return. He has prayer rituals for leaving and arriving home. We have lost so much of this honouring in our society.
Seri in Morocco- When something is enshrined in every day language you know it is important! The Seri have a standard greeting whose precise translation means "Where is your placenta buried ( miixoni quib zo hanta no tiij?" The resting place for their placenta is marked with a ring of stones and everyone knows where their placenta was lovingly buried.
Igarot people of the Cordilleria mountains in the Philippine Islands hang the placenta high in the trees so the child will be a free soaring spirit.
Your Ritual Initiation Process
Our lives are punctuated with important events, the most significant of which are generally celebrated with our whole community. The most significant are those that mark a shift of some kind, a rite of passage such as from puberty to adulthood for example. The most marked rites of passage are:1. Conception, 2. Birth 3. puberty/menarche3pubertyto adulthood, 4 becoming a mother/father 5 adulthood to elder 6 death.
If you grew up in the West there are likely to be gaps in your experience of moving through these rites of passage. It is not that you have not gone through each of the stages, it is more that you have slipped through unnoticed, unacknowledged and without the full initiation into the next stage of life.
This gap can lead to a kind of hunger or inner void resulting from the unmet need for the transformation and acknowledgment that the initiation would have provided. You move through your life journey sensing something missing or unfulfilled or a lack of meaning to your journey leaving you disoriented and perpetually seeking. You are in a sense between worlds or stages and may lack a solid stability, confidence or belonging.
In this course we have been examining the first two transitions you experience as a human- conception and birth. The magical and sacred nature of birth does not get enough air time or be considered at all in the modern birth approach.Birth is many things, it is sexual, sacred and a shamanic experience where shamanic means entering an altered state of consciousness to interact with the spirit world. You have healed and resolved many traumatic experiences that you were holding inyour fields as a consequence of this mismatch and gap in energetic reality and the modern approach.
It is now time to initiate ourselves beyond the time of being conceived and born and fully become our adult selves.
It has been a long time in most of Western Modern society that we have honoured conception and birth in a way that met the true depth of the transformation that occurs. Sharing your pregnancy test online, buying baby clothes, having a gender reveal party or baby shower, those are the types of events that are substituting for a solid sacred honouring ritual. You may experience a form of naming ceremony but there is usually a push for the mother to return to ordinary life as soon as possible without both the mother and baby receiving the energetic support to process this life transition. There is an invitation for you to complete your own personal sacred ritual of initiation through these stages and integrate this shift into your current stage of life (adulthood and for some elder)
What is ritual?
Ritual adds meaning to an activity with specific symbolic actions undertaken with deep reverence and intention. Rituals help to formally process and acknowledge the change that is taking place. They support you to reinforce values and learnings and to embed what you have learnt into your system going forwards. They can include a sense of connecting with the Divine and a sense of sacredness that is truly powerful. Examples of ritual ceremonies that are performed in the context of the journey of birth as an initiation are the burying of the placenta and naming of the child.
What is the initiation rite you are going through in this course?
Initiation rites are those rituals that typically mark an irreversible transition from one life stage to another – in our case from conception and birth to adulthood.(I know we are technically skipping a few stages but as you are all adults and in some cases elders, the intention is to rebirth and honour your rite of passage and integrate that to the present day you. )Traditionally initiations would involve the whole community publicly celebrating your transition to your next stage of life equipped with the knowledge, identity and guidance you need to shine and welcoming you back into the fold.
Here are the key stages of initiation that you have been passing through in this course.(noting that I am drawing on aspects of traditional initiation rites such as puberty to adulthood still practiced today in many traditions and the 7 stages of shamanic initiation.)
1. The call- This is the pull your Soul feels to incarnate in the first place. It may also be the moment when labour starts, the call from your body it is time for the next stage. It needs to be answered! As you are here, you answered this call. Completing this call is also answering a call to rebirth in a stronger way at this time on the planet.
2. Separation or awakening and crisis – The next phase is a separation from your previous known life and identity. In pregnancy the mothers body changes rapidly and the baby is also growing a new body in a totally new environment. In birth the mother will often be excused from her usual duties from a certain point in pregnancy. She may also isolate herself during the birth or go to a special location separate from the rest of the community.
3 Crossing the Threshold - This is the core phase. A liminal space in which the change happens. It usually involves a challenge to be overcome either innate or created. You are not who you were but are not yet who you are becoming. You may be filled with uncertainty as things continue to change. You may be supported and mentored through this stage but it is still up to you to walk through the threshold and undergo the death and rebirth in the next stage
4. Symbolic death and rebirth – In crossing the threshold you are living a symbolic death and rebirth. A literal birth in the case of being born! In both conception and birth you are leaving behind your previous state and identity and will never again be this previous version of you. You may reconnect to the sacred in a new way and activate new qualities in yourbeing or receive new spiritual knowledge. This also aligns with ‘Sacrifice’ which is an integral part of most created initiation rites. In this context you are losing the old version of you who needs to ‘die’ so you can become the new you who is suited to this next phase of life.
5 Transformation and Reintegration – The initiate often experiences a profound inner change, a mastery of sorts with new knowledge gained that equips you for your next phase of life. You are welcomed back into your community who publicly celebrates the new you and acknowledges the transformation that has taken place.
Finally in many created initiation rites there are oaths and commitments that are undertaken. I know we spend some time undoing unconscious or unhealthy vows from the past but in this context this may be some kind of commitment to yourself that arises naturally in an honouring space of acknowledging who you are now. This is optional and to do if it feels aligned.
Reflection questions.
In preparation for the part of the call tomorrow where you will let go of the identity of 'wounded baby' and transition to 'healed adult' take some time to reflect on your journey so far.
1. What did you want to achieve from this course- revisit your first notes and desires and the work book
2 Where did you start this journey? Who were you and what patterns did you notice that you would revert to under stress?
3. What has shifted? How are you different?
4 What do you wish to leave behind at the end of the course? - identity and patterns of behaviour
5 What do you wish to welcome in?- You may like to review the npa's you have done and other insights from your notes as well as intuitively tune in now.
That's it. See you on Thursday