Blood Power:

Mimetic Rivalry and Patrilineal Descent of

Sacrificial Ritual

Choreography and performance by Anne Michelle Armitage

Script and notes authored by Anne Michelle Armitage

Background Art: Pamela Nesbit, Creation of the World,

from Judy Chicago’s The Birth Project

Movement I: A tale of the Wawilak Sisters and the Rainbow Snake

Music: Kronos Quartet, Lachryme Antiqua (Early Music):

Psalom, Rachell’s Weeping, Psalom

Movement II: The Creation of Dogon as told by Ogotemmêli

Music: Mystique D’Afrique, Masters of the Forest

Movement III: Leviticus, the ritual purification of women after childbirth

Music: Dead Can Dance, Towards the Within: Sanvean

Special Thanks to Ken Cornett, Jan Avramov, Kim Robards and Donna Mejia, Katy Ann Johnson,

David Weddle and the Audio Visual Department, especially Tristan Bridges

PERFORMANCE NOTES

This piece includes three movements.  Each movement depicts a mythic or ritual relationship between women’s blood and sacrifice.  I have adapted each of these myths/rituals in some of my own words to create a narrative. 

In the first story, the sacrifice is not explicit, but has become a part of the ritual that reenacts the myth.  The bloodletting that comprises the ritual reenactment does not result in death, but functions as a rite of passage for young boys and functions as a cathartic experience for communities of men, much as a ritual sacrifice is said to bond a community. [1]   The ritual reenactment of this creation myth involves men making incisions on their arms and penises to simulate menstruation.  The synchronicity of this action is key and is depicted not only in the group aspect of the ritual but in the process of shaking their bodies to spread blood on their own and others adjoining limbs.

            The rite of passage involves adult men entering the women’s area, where many generations of women are tending the children and working, snatching the young boys from their mother’s arms and taking them to the men’s camp, where they are covered in their own blood and that of other, elder men as well as red ochre only to be returned to their mother’s gaze, but not to their custody.  This ritual takes place not only as a rite of passage, but also as a catalyst for group solidarity, before a hunt, or to bring the rains. [2]                 

Movement I : A tale of the Wawilak Sisters and the Rainbow Snake

            This Aboriginal Australian creation myth is found predominantly in the northern and western regions of the country.  There are many variations of this myth.  The version you are about to read comes from Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture, by Chris Knight [3] . 

The Wawilak Sisters and the Rainbow Snake

            At the beginning of time, two sisters were traveling across the landscape giving names to the features of a previously unnamed world.  One carried a child; the other was pregnant.  They had both committed incest in their own country, the country of the Wawilak.  One carried the child of her brother; the other carried the child of her father in her womb. Carrying spears and stones of the men of their country, they carried food and hunted game, prophesying that everything they collected would soon become set apart (sacred/taboo).

            At last, having traversed many countries, they arrived at a waterhole in which, unknown to them, dwelt the great Rainbow snake.  This snake was a kinsperson to the sisters. As the pregnant sister felt she was about to give birth, the other sister began to help her. They camped by the waterhole and lit a fire on which to cook their hunted game.

            As the sister, helped by her companion, began to give birth, afterbirth blood began flowing into the sacred pool, polluting it and arousing the Rainbow snake.  A rain cloud, lightning flashes and a rainbow appeared in the sky: the snake was emerging in anger from its hole, unleashing the season of rain, floods and storms.  The night was dark except for the thin curve of the moon.  As the woman’s genital blood flowed, the cooking fire became suddenly ineffective.  The plants and game, which the women had collected for food refused to cook, jumped up alive from the fire on which they had been placed and dove like men into the nearby blood-streaked waterhole.  The well waters began to rise.

            “Go away!  Go away!,” the sisters cried, as they became aware of the immense snake in the sky.  They did not know, that the snake was their kinsperson.  Seized with fear, they danced to make the snake go away.  But the dancing brought on the second sister’s menstrual flow, attracting the snake even more.  The waterhole began overflowing, flooding the dry land all around them.

            Now, filled with foreboding and despair, the sisters fled into a menstrual hut that they had built.  Inside the hut, they were both shedding blood—they sang “Yurlunggur and menstrual blood”—the most taboo and potent of the songs known to them: the angry snake thrust its nose into the hut and swallowed the women and their children alive.

            Black clouds now blotted out the sky, and rain crashed down in a fierce storm.  As the waters enveloped the world, the women continued to bleed.  Inside the snake, the women began to undergo a transformation, moving into another realm, beyond death.  The two sisters became the snake.  In a voice of thunder, the great snake roared.  It was the spirits of the two sisters who were speaking out of the snake’s mouth.  “We are here now,” the sisters said.  “The snake has eaten us.  We are the Marraian, the sacred knowledge of Wittee (the snake).  Our spirits talk through Wittee for another world.”  The snake became erect, like a tree, its head stretching high into the clouds, and the sisters in this way continued to give names to the world. 

Myth tells of the power of my blood

Rainbow snake, so tempted, so drawn…

You say the snake was angry, but I question you, [4]

Was it angry, or did it like my sisters’ blood? 

Mimetic rivalry has made you spite me and my kind because we can bleed,

again

again

again

and not die. [5]   When you bleed, it is a sign of your mortality.  When we bleed it is a sign of our ability to create life.  We create and continue life, you are born and you die. 

You have a single life. 

We have many lives through our children. [6]

You have turned the myth into your own rite and ritual.  You say that our blood is impure, but look at you-

cutting yourself, your arms, your penis—to make yourself bleed. 

You flail your body to spread your blood on your thighs and the body of your brothers. [7]   You think this is like my blood. 

You have no idea.

 My blood is not just any blood; it is not the blood of the heart. 

It is the blood of creation. 

It is thick and rich. 

You say, when you make yourself bleed that you are menstruating with your brothers.  You want the power of synchronicity.  You create it out of falsity.  You cut yourself.

Inherent is the unity my sisters and I share—

We bleed together, with each other, together with the moon: like the tides of the ocean, we fall into the cycle of the earth. 

This is power.

 Like the Rainbow snake, vital is our blood. 

Like the Rainbow snake, we are paradoxical, we are both of this life and of the next generations,

like the Rainbow snake is of both the heavens and the depths. [8]

The myth tells the truth, of fertility.  Blood pours from the Wawilak sister’s vaginas into the life-giving waterhole.  Rains come and the land is made fertile,

fertile land depends on water;

fertile life depends on my blood. 

My blood possesses a fertility that your blood will never have, no matter how many times you cut yourself and spread your blood over your skin and that of your brothers. 

Mimetic rivalry has caused you to shun me in my times of blood.  You are jealous.  I have a power that you can never have and so you tell me that I am dirty, impure, profane.  When really, you know that I am sacred, that above all, my blood is sacred.  My blood created you, and your father and your brothers and your grandfather and your chief.

You cut your penis to create solidarity between you and your brothers.  Simultaneously, you separate yourselves from the defilement of women’s blood; you see our blood as dangerous. [9]   You are admitting the power and sacrality of our reproductive power by marking our blood dangerous.  You make our blood a sacred object of community worship by expressing its contagious nature. [10]  

The power of my blood can take away the powers of those for whom blood means death.  In my time of blood, I threaten your virility, your hunting precision. [11]   I may threaten you, but my sisters are not affected.  I am a threat to you, because I have a power that you want and can never have.

When I bleed, it means I can create life.  When you bleed, you die. No life can be built without blood. [12]

Movement II: The Creation of Dogon as told by Ogotemmêli 

            This is an excerpt from the creation story of the Dogon people of  the Mossi of the Upper Volta in Africa, as collected by Marcel Griaule in 1946 and as recorded in An Anthology of Sacred Texts  By and About Women. [13]   The myths describes the process of creation by the one god Amma, which includes some mishaps and learning curves at the expense of all women to come in the process of creation. 

The God Amma took a lump of clay, squeezed it in his hand and flung it from him, as he had done with the stars.  The clay spread and fell on each of the directions in a horizontal movement.  The earth lies flat, but the north is at the top.  It extends east and west with separate members like a fetus in the womb.  It is a body, a thing with members branching out from a central mass.  This body, lying flat, face upwards, in a line from north to south, is feminine.  Its sexual organ is an anthill, and its clitoris is a termite hill.  Amma, being lonely and desirous of intercourse with this creature, approached it.  That was the occasion of the first breach of the order of the universe.   

            At God’s approach the termite hill rose up.  It was as strong an organ as the organ of God and intercourse could not take place.  But God is all-powerful.  He cut down the termite hill and had sex with the excised earth.  This incident was destined to change the course of history forever; from this defective union there was born, instead of the intended twins, a single being; the thos aureaus or jackal.  This creature was a symbol of the difficulties of God.

            God had further intercourse with is earth-wife and this time, without mishaps of any kind, the excision of the former offending member having removed the cause of the former disorder.  Water, the divine seed, thus entered the womb of the earth and a normal reproductive cycle resulted in the desired birth of twins.  The beings that were born were half human and half serpent. Their red eyes were wide open like human eyes, and their tongues were forked like the tongues of reptiles: their arms flexible and without joints.  Their bodies were green and sleek all over, shining like the surface of water, and covered with short green hairs, a presage of vegetation and germination.   

            These two spirits, called Nummo, were thus two homogenous products of God, of divine essence like himself, conceived without untoward incidents.  The pair was born perfect and complete.  They were made of God’s seed, which is at once the ground, the form, the substance of the life force or the world, from which derives the motion and the persistence of created being.  This force is water, and the pair is present in all water: seas, torrents, storms, and the spoonfuls we drink.  Nummo, the twins, represents the ideal unit, as one.  The twins’ destiny took them to heaven, to receive the instruction of their Father. 

            The Nummo, looking down from Heaven, saw their mother, the earth, naked and speechless, as a consequence of the original incident in her relations with the God Amma.  It was necessary to put an end to this state of disorder.  The Nummo thus came down to earth bringing with them fibers of plants pulled from the heavenly regions.  These fibers fell in coils, symbolizing the nature of the earth in spirals, seasons, the nature of water and infinity and covered their mother’s genitalia. 

The jackal that had been born out of the first defective union of Amma and the earth came and laid his hands on the fibres that covered his mother’s body.  His Mother, resisted this incestuous action and buried herself in her own womb, the anthill, disguised as an ant. But the jackal followed her.  The hole, which the anthill made, was never deep enough and in the end she had to admit defeat.  This incestuous rape caused the first menstrual flow, which stained the fibers that Nummo had brought from the heavens.  This defilement of the earth was incompatible with the reign of God. God rejected the earth as his wife and decided to create living beings directly, without the woman figure.

Termite hill-

So strong, like your penis, we could not become one.

With all of your power, you fixed that.

You took a blade to my sexual pleasure and cut me down to size,

You made me disfigured and so we bore a child of difficulty.

For this, you have banished me from creation. 

Don’t you see,

 it is your mimetic rivalry of my sexual power and reproductive capacity that has driven your exclusion.

The blood that flows from childbirth and menstruation carries genetic inheritance. [14]   Carries connection

Which is born from pleasure

No longer

No pleasure from my power act, because of your blade.  Because you have reduced my clitoris to a lump of scar tissue, because now, in the ritual of practice, you take me as a girl, before I had even ever felt clitoral pleasure and you take it away.  Why?

The power of pleasure,

the power of blood,

the power of reproduction. 

You need to control it.

The viscosity of my vaginal secretions intimidate-

The borderline state of fluid, yet not running down hill [15]

You create order where ambiguity resides.

You make profane, that which was once sacred.

The myth justifies making my young sisters sacrificial victims. And they don’t even get credit, for procreation.

You say, Amma created without woman.

You are mistaken. 

Creation is a woman’s gift

Something out of nothing-

Form out of formlessness- [16] [17]

Amma created humans initially with a hermaphroditic nature

Fear of the power of women’s’ sexuality demanded that you exert power over the all mighty clitoris

It may be fatal-if you touch it

I am not a vampire

I am a woman. [18]

Mimetic rivalry has caused many names to be given to the pain you inflict.

Sunna, removal of the tip

Clitoridectomy, removal of the entire clitoris

Infibulation, clitoris and labia, all gone, to be sewn together with thorns [19]

Mimetic rivalry has caused many pains to be felt in the history of my reproductive power.

I am more like you than not,

created from Amma,

human,

I feel pleasure and pain

Do not make me an alien

Do not alienate me from myself, before I even know what my body is for.

You have done it already

It is too late

The damage has been done

The blood has been spilt.

 Movement III: Leviticus, the ritual purification of women after childbirth

            In this final section, ritual demands as articulated in Leviticus, chapter 12, have been incorporated into a story of pure fiction. [20]   The corresponding movement does not tell the story told below, it explores the importance of a communion sacrifice to purify women after the spilling of after-birth blood.  Is communion with Yahweh the only applicable purification because it is the only communion higher than her own bond with fellow women around the event of childbirth?  The ritual of sacrifice as called for in Leviticus, “reminds” us that the true source of all life is God and not woman. 

            In the hot desert of the ancient land of the Jews, Naomi, a young, beautiful wife, was full with child.  She had already had one child, a beautiful son, Joshua.  Her husband and family were proud with the fecundity of the young bride.  She kept good care of her husband and never complained.  She was proud to be healthy and with child so soon after her first birth.  Joshua was barely one year old when the first pains came. 

            It was dawn and she had just risen, she continued about her work, until she knew that the baby would be born into the world very soon.  The birth, revealed a girl, healthy, strong—a girl.  Naomi knew that she would be impure for much longer this time, than she had been with the birth of Joshua. 

After Joshua’s birth, she was unclean for seven days, just as she had been when she had her monthly periods, before becoming pregnant a year ago.  On the eighth day, Joshua’s foreskin was circumcised and she waited again, another thirty-three days for her own blood to be purified.  She did not touch anything consecrated or go to the sanctuary until her time of purification was over, as instructed by Yahweh.  After her thirty-three days, she went to the priest at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting with a lamb, one year old, for the sacrifice of holocaust and young pigeon as a sacrifice for sin.  The priest offered these animals before Yahweh and performed the rite of atonement over her, and she became purified from her flow of blood.

She knew from her family that the birth of a girl meant status as unclean for two weeks, and that she could not offer sacrifice for the purification of her blood for sixty-six days.  And so she waited and tended her children and stayed clear of the sanctuary, living in her unclean state.  On the sixty-seventh day, she went to the Tent of Meeting and met the priest on the entrance; she offered a robust, young lamb and a turtledove for sacrifice to Yahweh.  She knew, that childbirth, like menstruation and sexual discharge was a loss of vitality that could only be restored by ritual means that would help her reach union with God, the source of all life.            

Bibliography

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Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Routledge and Kegan Paul Publishers, London, 1966.

Girard, Rene. The Scapegoat. The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1986.

Grosz, Elizabeth.  Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism.  Indiana University Press, Indianapolis, 1994.

Hall, Nor.  The Moon and the Virgin: Refelctions on the Archetypal Feminine.  Harper and Row Publishers, New York, 1980.

Hubert, Henri and Mauss, Marcel. Sacrifice: Its Nature and Functions.  University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1964.

Jay, Nancy.  Throughout Your Generations Forever: Sacrifice, Religion and Paternity. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992.

Jones, Alexander, ed. et al. The Old Testament of The Jerusalem Bible. Doubelday & Company, Inc., New York, 1966.

Knight, Chris. Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture.  Yale University Press, New Haven, 1991.

Morgan, Robin. The Word of A Woman: Feminist Dispatches. W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1991.

Young, Serinity, ed. An Anthology of Sacred Texts By and About Women. Crossroad Publishing Company, New York, 1995.

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