[Editor’s Note: This anthology was published by Girl God Books (2022).]
“Menopause: Initiation of Sovereignty” by Leonor Murciano-Luna, Ph.D.
You are no longer raising your own family, the menstrual cycle has seized, and you are transitioning into what it means to truly be in your Sacred power and Sovereignty. In the last 5000+ years we have been severed from the Feminine Lunar era as we abruptly entered into the Masculine Solar era, and here the true wisdom of menopause is hidden and even shamed in order to keep women from their power. This is the culture we have been steeped in. And yet all women know deep in their bones, there is a mystery they are biologically and spiritually linked to.
What isn’t spoken about is that since the beginning of time, the SHAMANS were really the MEDICINE WOMEN, honored for holding that holy space between the physical and the spiritual, the seen and the unseen. Medicine Women continuously healed individuals and communities through sacred communication with the Earth, with the Divine, acting as that holy channel between the portals of life and death.
Why have women been so denigrated and devalued? Simply because this very inherent power in women that has been persecuted and horrifically condemned for the last 5000+ years, has posed a threat to the power of the domination cultures and their need to control all aspects of life, including the land. But the time has come… all that is changing now… as we awaken to the true Essence of Feminine Consciousness and the holiness that exists within us, within the land and within all of creation.
Menopause is an Initiation, a time of change and a time of Feminine Sovereignty in the life cycle of a woman. It is a time when most women begin to reach the final stages of raising their own families and begin to have more space and time in their own lives. Typically, around the age of forty-nine to fifty-one, is when the journey of peri-menopause begins and when our Initiation begins. Curiously, this time in a person’s life correlates with the astrological transit timing of Chiron, the asteroid known as the wounded healer. The themes of this transit in our natal chart represent a time of great transformational initiation that brings up our greatest wound. Chiron essentially signifies our ability to heal and find the true medicine within us, as we move through which ‘wounds’ are central to our personal life journey. It is a profoundly significant time in our lives and the correlation of the onset of peri-menopause at the same time of Chiron transit in our astrological charts suggests the deep transformation of this time in a woman’s life.
In our culture, women are taught to despise and abhor menopause as something distasteful and shameful. The conditioned psychological fear of losing our youthfulness and attractiveness, makes women believe they will lose their value completely. This is because our society values only the ‘maiden – reproductive aged women – and denies all gifts related to aging, especially women aging. However, if we take the challenge and realize that our value is not in the superficiality of our looks… the shape of our body… nor in our ability to reproduce… we begin to honor the deeper sacred power that lives in us. If we do not accept the challenge, and we buy into the cultural patriarchal ideology of our worth being tied into our age, we may find ourselves caught in endless depression as those things we identify with our worth change and transform organically. Even worse, we may try to artificially control our biology in the name of ‘health’ or even ‘happiness’, both of which are founded on a false idea of who we are and in denial of the natural progression of life, transformation, and death. We may be seduced by our misogynistic society desperately trying to sell us all the ways in which we can ‘stay young’ and be ‘valuable’, which paradoxically keeps us from the innate power and wisdom of embracing this very initiation of menopause that we may be facing.
As we enter menopause, we enter the space in which we begin our journey into the greater role of Cosmic Mother, no longer just focused on our own children or our smaller circle, but that of greater service to the whole of Earth and her creation. This is the divine role of service that we women are innately here to serve. And we can look to the MOON as our guide at this time – we have an opportunity to align ourselves, in a greater way, with her cycles and the powerful source of rhythm of the cosmos. With the absence of our own menstrual cycle, we are more intimately connected with the rhythm of the MOON. In the Feminine Lunar era, 5000+ years ago, women were said to menstruate together at the time of the dark MOON. The dark MOON is approximately the three days leading to the new MOON cycle of each month. It is a sacred time of deep inward reflection where we move away from outer focus into the deep focus of the inner realms.
Currently, women have become completely disconnected from their own bodies and their own inner sacredness and usually menstruate during the full MOON (the most yang – outer phase of the moon), due to the fact that we now live in an extremely outwardly (yang) focused culture that denies the inner sacred realities completely. However, in the last 10 years or so, I have seen women menstruating more with the dark moon, especially as they begin to honor their spiritual dimension and the mystery with them. Nonetheless, when we stop menstruating at the onset of menopause, we automatically transition into the greater cosmic cycle and are thus guided by the moon cycle, rather than our own menstrual cycle. Therefore, the dark moon represents our menstrual cycle sacred time to naturally go inward and commune with the sacred mystery within us, receive divinatory messages and align with the cosmic mystery of the Great Mother.
As we enter our initiation, we are being called by the Great Mother and guided by Her representative, the MOON. This is true MOON medicine. The moon moves through the varying frequencies of astrological signs through our sky, as we too are receiving those influx of frequencies and energies on a daily basis – transforming, creating, releasing and regenerating as a service to the Great Mother. We are stars made manifest on the Earth. We are here, embodied beings, playing on this level of physicality and we get to bring heaven on earth, if we so choose… the more that we are able to honor and acknowledge who we truly are.
This is the wisdom and sacred power of menopause.
The first part of menopause initiation is the peri-menopause, which begins usually between forty-nine to fifty-one years of age, and can continue till about fifty-six to fifty-eight, landing fully in menopause, determined by the absence of the menstrual cycle for at least a year. Every woman is different, and these ages can vary, but these are the typical ages we see in general. True crone wisdom doesn’t really set in until we are well-established in menopause and have had a few years completing and anchoring ourselves as wisdom keeper, somewhere between the ages of sixty-five to sixty-nine. But of course, this is a very powerful journey, an initiation into greater service to the Great Mother, anchoring the wisdom here on Earth. This can happen at any age along the way, depending on who we are, and our level of consciousness and service. It is not necessarily a linear process.
Astrologically speaking, we usually have stopped bleeding altogether at the time of our 2nd Saturn return, between ages fifty-eight to sixty, which marks another power stage of our Initiation, woven into this menopause journey. In our 2nd Saturn return, we are truly leaving behind the last thirty years of our life which began between ages twenty-eight to thirty, the previous Saturn return. Between ages thirty to fifty-eight, we have lived mostly in the outer world, involved in child rearing, careers, and outer focus of giving to those loved ones around us. The 2nd Saturn return is a return inward, it is an evaluation and a dismantling of everything we no longer need as we approach the last third of our life. It is a rebirth that is aligned with the deeper true self and with our higher purpose in this lifetime. It is also an opportunity to finally pay attention to our needs fully and give birth to our deepest desires, hopes, and meaningful purpose in life. It is a time of stepping into greater responsibility and sovereignty, and of course power that is anchored in our divine dimension.
Physically, the indoctrination of fear and shame of our menopausal stage, in many ways contributes to how we experience the stage of menopause itself, in our bodies and our attitudes.
Most women fear menopause so much that they jump on the bandwagon of taking hormones and other artificial synthetic ways to keep their bodies from displaying their age – maintaining an artificially produced ‘younger stage of life’ because they fear not having value. Unfortunately, many physicians follow the patriarchal narrative of not honoring the organic process of menopause and fail to see its truer meaning. They are indoctrinated into believing that women’s bodies need to be supplemented with artificial hormones in order to maintain health at these ages, which is absolutely not true. Just like in the birthing process, women’s bodies are innately designed to move through each stage of life, naturally, and do not necessarily need outside interference in order to survive. Having said that, we may need support at any time in our lives to maintain harmony and create health, but that is very different from believing that the artificial invasive hormonal therapies maintain health in any way. On the contrary, these hormonal interferences stall your body’s transitional processes, produce artificially induced periods, dysregulate the delicate organic harmony of hormones, and have been linked with serious health risks, like cancer.
Menopause does not have to have severe symptoms, and the symptoms that you do have are directly related to the state of our bodies and how much we have abused or nourished our self, up to that point. In other words, once we get to peri-menopause, in this time of transition, how we have nurtured or abused our body will be reflected in the quality of transition we have. Greater stress, greater abuse and lack of self-care will present with greater symptoms and dysregulation. Your symptoms also mirror your consciousness, your daily habits, and the overall balance or lack of, that you have kept till that moment. The trauma you have suffered will also reflect on this time of transition. The more abuse on all those levels you have had, and are still having, the more severe your symptoms can be.
Nonetheless, you must understand that your body is in a transition, trying to shift from one stage of your life into another. There are physiological, emotional, mental, and spiritual processes that are taking place in your body. It is a deep initiation and if you have used up a lot of your reserves, then the transition might be a bit rockier.
For example, the hot flashes we see in many women – think of these as cosmic fires clearing out the mental constructs, narratives and unconscious patterns that are still very active in your psyche, conscious or unconscious, possibly created by trauma in your past. While heat flashes can be purifying, they can also stem from deficiency conditions in your body.
This is also a time of balancing our Feminine and our Masculine energy, psychically and physiologically in our body. So that we can come out into the world… (masculine-yang) rooted in the deep mystery of our soul (feminine-yin). So, our physical body will display wherever our feminine and masculine energies are off balance and needing support, as we transition into menopause.
One of the best herbs to use during this transition is called MUGWORT, artemisia vulgaris. This herb traditionally called ‘black sage’ can be used on the lower abdomen, sacral chakra area to cultivate and harmonize the yin and yang aspects of your body. It also increases blood circulation and relieves symptoms of menopause, like hot flashes, reported by a study by Pacific College of Health, in 2002. The herb, which can be purchased in a long-rolled cigar-looking stick, can be used to heat various points on the body, being held about 1 inch from the skin (not touching the skin) in the areas of the lower abdomen (CV6, CV4, ST30), ending with the soles of the feet, at the KD 1 point. This method of working and harmonizing women’s bodies, called moxibustion, has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for at least 4000 years.
Ultimately, the journey of menopause, beginning with peri-menopause, is a time of great initiation that is marked by several stages of this Initiation, which is always marked by the underlying three stages of all of life: Death-Transition, Transformation and Rebirth.
Death-Transition stage: This is the Chiron initiation at forty-nine, where we start to see the irregularity of the period (peri-menopause). This is where we begin to realize that we are completing a stage in our lives and moving into another stage.
Things begin to change, and we may process the loss or death of one stage (children growing up), as we feel the possibilities and new freedom of a new stage on the horizon. Often, fear accompanies this stage, as we are confronted with the redefinition of ‘ourselves’ through our roles, values, worth, purpose, aging and even our death.
Transformation stage: This is the stage where we are moving forward on the menopausal journey, experiencing our peri-menopause, releasing, letting go and adapting to the creation of our lives. We may experience symptoms that reflect what is happening in our body and psyche as we transition from one stage to another. Within this stage of transformation, we become a bit more comfortable facing our aging, and the new definitions of our self that we have discovered. We are still in a letting go of the transformational process, but as we release the old, we make space for new strengths, new dreams, new hopes and possibilities to take place. As we prepare ourselves for the new birth, recognizing that it is mostly an initiation of stepping into our power, we will be transforming the places of powerless, unworthiness, inadequacy, doubt, and disconnection from the true Essence of our Feminine power. We release and heal from the past wounds of our life and re-establish a new foundation for the rebirth.
Rebirth stage: This is the final stage, and it correlates with our 2nd Saturn Return, which launches us into the last third of our life. As we begin to move into the rebirth, we have a final two years to release the past and move into a new foundation of expression – one that is anchored in our Soul. This rebirth is about birthing our true Essence in greater alignment with our Soul’s purpose, in an inner marriage of our spiritual nature and our humanity. This is a rebirth of the inner marriage of Feminine and Masculine qualities within ourselves… where our previous identity is being dismantled and we simultaneously create a new identity that is anchored in the feminine dimension of our being, our soul dimension. As we move out into the world (masculine aspect), we come into greater sovereignty within ourselves, secured in the wholeness of the Universe. This is us living as true human beings, our sacred nature in union with our humanity.
Menopause is a powerful Initiation of Sovereignty for women, where we have an opportunity to grow into our fullness, our wisdom and deep intimacy with source within. This initiation is one of the most powerful initiations a woman has during her lifetime and is truly an accumulation of all the wisdom gathered in her lifetime – and in the collective lifetime of the mothers that have come before her. Whatever transformational work we have done in our lifetime, especially with the clearing of past feminine trauma in the lineage, will start to be evident at this time. And even if we have begun our awakening later in life, we still have the opportunity to transform the wounds that have veiled the women of our lineage, and transform the darkness into light, in this last stage of our lives. Then as we grow into crone age, we pass on the wisdom we have consciously cultivated to the future generations.
At menopause… women become the Mothers of the Universe… the Mothers of the Earth, a physical representation of embodied spirit in human form, transmitting the true power of being anchored in the source of Great Mother, and acting from the core essence of Love. We have the opportunity to manifest the embodiment of sacredness and holiness in our physical incarnation, in our humanity. This is the gift of menopause, and if we say yes fully to the gift of this stage of our lives, we transform the generational patterns of pain and suffering in the generations that have come before us and that will come after us. We become the living embodiment of the Great Mother herself!
(To be continued)