MY BLOOD, MY MEDICINE
Reconstructing Menstruation Taboos
and Gender Relations through Ritual and Spirituality in South Brazil
Masters Cultural and Social Anthropology, Visual Pilot 2018 Froukje van der Velde, 10110089 froukjevandervelde@hotmail.com
Supervisor: Mattijs van de Port Second reader: Kristine Krause
Third reader: Julie McBrien Date of submission: 24-01-2019
Table of Content
1. First Research set-up .………..1-4 pp.
1.1
The original plan
1-2 pp.
1.2
Why Visual Methods?
2 pp.
1.3 Broader debates in anthropology
3-5 pp.
2. Reflection and Research results ……….……5-13 pp.
2.1 What became of the original research set-up?
5-6 pp.
2.2 Development of relationships with informants
6-7 pp.
2.3 Influence of the camera in relations with informants
7-8 pp.
2.4 Findings in the Field - Research Results
8-15 pp.
3. Evaluation of the research.………15-19 pp.
3.1 Ways of filming and the resulting footage
15-16 pp.
3.2 Decisions in editing and the editing process 16-17 pp.
3.3 About ‘layeredness’,
intersubjectivity, media-awareness; experimentation.
17-19 pp.
4. Reflection on the research……….……19 -21 pp.
4.1 Results
19 pp.
4.2 Ongoing debates
19-20 pp.
4.3 Debates about Visual Anthropology
20-21 pp.
5. Self-assessment & Lessons for future projects……….…….… 22 pp.
6. Literature & Declaration of Plagiarism ……….………23 pp.
Introduction
Eight years ago my father married a Brazilian woman. This was the opening for me to a whole different world. In periods of time I submerged in a world of ritual, magic, medicine, peyote, ayahuasca, tobacco, fire, ceremony, nature, praying, spirit possession, full belly laughing, feeling divine bliss, enduring and overcoming hardship. It was also a time where my understanding of religion and spirituality expanded, for instance the many forms of Christianity, through the Santo Daime, a Catholic Afro-Brazilian religion which consecrates the highly psychedelic Ayahuasca in its ceremonies. I was dazzled, a bit scared, but overall enormously curious.
A few years later my stepmother started a community sprouting from her own desire to pray and develop her spiritual connection, to share it with others and guide them in their healings and spiritual development. This grew out to be the group now called Camino da Raiz, on a mountain in Southern Brazil, in Florianopolis. I’ve visited them in the beginning of this process five years ago, when everything was just getting started. Now I return, to study one of their rituals the Tenda Vermelha da Raiz, the Red Tent of the Root.
1. Research set-up
1.1. The original plan
The Red Tent is a neo-shamanistic ritual for women and is most popularly known under the name of Moon Tent or Red Tent. Both moon and red stand for menstruation, whereas it is seen that the
moon is connected to women through its cycle, both have a cycle of 28 day and red signifies the
colour of blood. The ritual of the Red Tent is with some exceptions exclusively open to women, and is talked about as a safe haven for women to explore their spirituality, sexuality and womanhood. How this ritualistic form is interpreted and practiced is dependent on the specific place and people who are carrying it out. The Red Tent is a space that honours womanhood and where women gather to share stories about their lives, their wishes and desires and where healing and renewal occurs (Leidenfrost 2012:18).
This ritual is practised worldwide, and is most reported in North America, Europe and Australia , making it a globalised practice. Thomas Csordas identifies two aspects of a given religion that 1
make them suitable for travel across the world; those are ‘portable practice’ and ‘transposable message’. (Csordas 2009:4) ‘By portable practice, I mean rites that can be easily learned, require relatively little
esoteric knowledge or paraphernalia, are not held as proprietary or necessarily linked to a specific cultural
http://www.redtentmovie.com/red_tents_near_you.html 1
context, and can be performed without commitment to an elaborate ideological or institutional apparatus’ (Ibid.:4).
The site of my research was the mountain of Pico do Beija Flor on the Island Florianopolis in Southern Brazil. The group is called Camino da Raiz (Way of the Root) and the people who make up the group vary greatly in background. There are locals from the Island, from a white upper/middle class background that are mostly attracted to the shamanistic side of the rituals, but also people from the Santo Daime church that are more attracted to the Catholic sphere. There are people from all over Brazil and a few from Argentina and Ecuador, from who some of them found their home on the mountain itself. Most of the people in the group are working in the alternative healing sphere as well, like Reiki practitioners, massage therapists, and shamanistic healers. Then there are the visitors from Europe, mainly from Italy for whom a ‘retreat’ is organised. They usually come in groups twice a year.
The rituals are rooted in the Santo Daime, The Red Tent or Tenda Vermelha ritual that is practiced here is also strongly influenced by the Santo Daime, with catholic opening prayers and the drinking of ayahuasca. This ritual is held once a month, the rest of the time the space is always open for women as a place for reflection and many women visit the tent when menstruating and in some cases even when delivering children. I heard that this space is known to be a transformative place and people report intense spiritual and healing experiences. I understood that the main reason why people join in these rituals if for healing, self-discovery and spiritual quests.
From former research attempts, like essays in my bachelors cultural anthropology, but also my own attempts of filming while participating in the rituals, I learned how hard it is to transmit spiritual experience and that words aren’t always an adequate manner of communicating (about) the divine, the spiritual and mystical. I came home with psychedelic and esoteric footage, that not at all reflected the experience. But how do religious messages and experiences become real for people? Birgit Meyer states; ‘… in order to achieve this and be experienced as real, imaginations are required to become tangible outside the realm of the mind, by creating a social environment that materialises through the structuring of space, architecture, ritual performance, and by inducing bodily sensations’ (Meyer 2010: 5).That is why I wanted to focus on the aesthetic materiality in the Tenda Vermelha as described by Meyer. Looking at the altar that is set up in ritual and in homes, the objects people carry with them when they go into ritual, the meaning that is put in gemstones, instruments, pipes, statues of deities, paintings and other objects. But also looking at bodies, jewellery that signifies a certain spiritual value, or the long skirts that women wear and the overall way they attire themselves in speech and movement. I wondered what this materiality does for people and how it communicates messages to oneself and others?
Main Research Question and Sub-Questions
Based on my readings on material religion and the red tent, I began to see that I ought to research
The role of aesthetic materiality in women their spiritual lives and in what ways the relationship with the divine is expressed. I decided that the questions about materiality and spiritual religious
experience would be my main focus in the research. But where to observe it? For this I wanted to look at the ways women prepare the ritual space before the Red Tent ritual. But also consider in what ways they prepare their bodies, minds, and spirits. I was curious to see what forms of aesthetic materiality are used and by whom? I knew beforehand that there is a lot of emphasise on the dress style, but also jewels, gems and that the altar and its relics are treated as holy. Secondly, I was curious to find out how female sexuality and the menstrual cycle is connected to the ritual and how this manifests itself. Thirdly, I wanted to know if there is a discourse in talking about spiritual experiences and how these are communicated and shared with others. Or that perhaps these women express their mystical and spiritual experiences in other non-verbal manners?
1.2. Why Visual Methods?
I chose for visual methods because I want to make use of the broad spectrum of sensorial
experience they offer. To explore the experiences that images, colours, rhythms, sounds and silences can create for a viewer. I believe audio-visual to transmit knowledge on a more ‘feeling’ and ‘gut’ level in comparison to written text can transmit information. ‘Movies touch us and we feel and
touch (and sometimes even taste and smell) them back - and this not merely metaphorically. That is, they make sense to and for us not only textually but also texturally. They affect our proprioception and body rhythms, arouse or sicken us, make us flinch, gasp, cry, laugh, hold our breath
(Shobchack 2015:196). In Embodying transcendence on the literal the material and the cinematic
sublime (2015) Vivian Shobchack focusses on “spiritual” or “religious” themed films and explores
phenomenological relation between immanence and transcendence. She presents us different
strategies to represent “spiritual experience” but also how to invoke them in the viewers senses. She argues that moments of ex-stasis are not only presented to but also on the viewers lived-body (Shobchack 2015:195). She reminds us that we are not creating for a passive abstract ‘audience’, but that the viewer also has a lived experience, grounded in radical materialism of bodily
immanence while viewing a film. This makes the ecstatic experience of film possible, transporting us to another place or mindset (Ibid.”197).
In religious and spiritual themed films she extracts different strategies that, apart from their subject matter, portray the ‘transcendent experience’ in different styles. In the strategy that she calls
‘Transcendence in immanence’ the transcendent or ecstatic experience is based in the affective materiality of existence (Shobchack 2015:199). ‘These tent to avoid metaphor and allegory to
construct not a literal but a metaphysical figural economy- but this at the level of material
reference. Here, the transcendent is not reduced to literal content, material forms, and visibility but, rather, expansively emerges from them in an amplified sense of something “else” rather than
something “other” (Ibid.:199). It is this strategy ascribed above I wanted to explore, not to portray
and induce spiritual experience in the viewer through a special effect of some kind, but to zoom in into the materiality, of the thing that already is and find the spiritual herein. ‘Thus these films do not
resort to a figural framing with halos, sudden changes in the weather or choral music. Instead, they isolate and constrain the immanent and material in close-ups and through precise and amplified “natural” sound - and they then allow duration and presence to illuminate, clarify and
underdetermine their quotidian overdetermination to create an expansive and transcendent opening… they solicit our sensuality to make sense of transcendence ‘in’ immanence.’ (Ibid.:201).
This coincides with my approach on aesthetic materiality, seeing the ‘spiritual’ as something that lies in the creation, the act, in the doing and the materiality, not as something foreign that is accessed but actively constructed.
In doing research there are so many ways we receive information, not only through books, reading and analysing on a mental level, but also through our senses, through sounds, rhythms, movement, colours and images. ‘… the encounter with visual images demands more of us than the
mental facility that language has given us. Images reflect thought, and they may lead to thought, but they are much more than thought. We are accustomed to regarding thought as something resembling language - the mind speaking to itself, or as dictionaries put it, a process of reasoning. But our conscious experience involves much more than this kind of thought’ (MacDougall 2006:2). Using
visual methods is a chance to experiment with the different ways the world speaks to us and mimic that play. MacDougall writes about how looking is a premise to filming. Before we film, we have to look, chose on what we aim our camera and what we film. One has the impression that many
filmmakers are afraid of looking. What is it in ordinary things that they fear to see? Is it a fear of their own feelings, that they should dare to engage so directly with the world? Is it the delicacy, fragility, and beauty of things that they fear-or the skull beneath the skin, the horror? (Macdougal
2006:8). In the Red Tent women come to connect with their bodies, their menstrual cycle, pouring their blood on the earth. What do we gain when we really look at our own menstrual blood or that of another? Menstrual blood is something that most women are so close too, flowing out of the body every month, but in general don’t pay attention to. What are the meanings we ascribe to it, if any? And if we look closely, smell, feel can we find different meanings? Macdougal writes; ‘There
end perception can refigure meaning, so that at the next stage this may alter perception once again’ (Ibid.:2). Perhaps, through perception, looking, our meaning, our understanding can
transform as well. My question then is, if the bodily experience is of such intrinsic importance in the production of meaning and knowledge, is film enough of a sensorial experience to evoke change?
In film the viewer also becomes aware of the position of the one making the film, and her or his relations to the world (Ibid.:3). ‘In making films, we are constantly advancing our own ideas
about a world whose existence owes nothing to us. ‘In this sense film, if any anthropological
research, is a subjective understanding and creation. ‘We fashion them into webs of signification, but
within these webs are caught glimpses of being more unexpected and powerful than anything we could create’ (Ibid.: 4).
ACCES TO OTHERS
Using a visual method is also interesting because it can tell us something about the access of this place and in ritual. ‘Working with a camera in the field one’s presence, actions and whole endeavour
are highlighted to a much higher degree than when one simply takes notes (Møhl 2011:230). Will a
camera disrupt the subtle and mystic sphere and will people feel comfortable to open up and let go? Am I allowed without a camera in the rituals, but record audio? Am I even allowed to write about what happens, or will the rule be; what happens in the ritual, stays in the ritual? For this I felt my camera was very important, because with it comes the awareness of the outside world to whom I will be showing my work, in film, audio and writing. ‘…the camera has the quality of constantly
making explicit what constitutes its object - and thereby also the fact that is has an object’ (Ibid.).
This also gives the potential collaborators the opportunity to engage and relate to it in how and if they want to be represented and makes consent more easy and transparent (Ibid.). I wanted to ask the women to consciously and explicitly tell me when and what I could and could not film. To test the boundaries of inclusivity and exclusivity, where spaces are open and where they are closed, what parts people want to show of themselves and how. ‘This fraction of space obviously
corresponds to a front-stage, in the Goffmanesque sense, and all the rest to a back-stage where actions are not framed or reproduced, at least not visually (Ibid.: Goffman 1959).
Activistic taboo breaking
If something is hidden, we withdraw it from sight for ourselves and/or others. Taboos are often hidden, not seen, heard, acknowledged in a specific environment, or at least that's what peoples behaviour aspires. I was inspired by American Emily Culpepper's groundbreaking film Period Piece in the 1970s showing the taboo subjected, the blood of menstruation, the colour, the vulva and
vagina to really liberate it from the taboo, shameful, and hidden sphere. 'I became deeply convinced
that to move ahead about menstrual meanings, we would simply need to see it. Look at it. See it RED. See it BLOOD. See it FLOWING from our VULVAS. Therefore, I had to make a
film’ (Culpepper 2006:132).
She notes that during the time of her research in the 70's women became aware and were resisting prescribed notions that were laid upon them. 'One tool for clearing new space was to resist and to break basic taboos used to define and circumscribe women and girls. We examined these taboos, their sources, justifications, and how they functioned. So many were about our bodies’ (Culpepper 127). Perhaps
this is also how taboos and definitions are bend and remoulded, through the body, through doing something different, taking another route, by experimenting, like Culpepper did. If film can tap into a sensuous
experience level at its viewer, it can also be used as an activist and political tool. Through the direct portrayal of an image, of blood and women who value their cycle, this may lead to a shift in feeling, perception or a movement within a viewer, at least that is my hope. On why her film was such a success Culpepper writes; ‘Period Piece had tapped a deep desire, an unmet need for women (and men) to explore menstruation on our
own terms, from feminist perspective’ (Culpepper 139).
1. 3 How was the research situated in broader debates in anthropology?
The research was situated in broader debates in anthropology in the fields of religion and materiality, but also in women’s movements spirituality and feminism. An interesting feature of the Tenda Vemelha is that it is a widespread phenomena across the globe, books are written and television shows are made that depict the ‘mysteries of womanhood’ and the Moon-or Red Tent. In all the connection on the female body through the menstrual cycle is inevitable. Culpepper also writes about debates in this arena. ‘How to interpret menstrual
separation? Was such separation oppressive, created by patriarchal men to control women, whom they feared? Was separate space for menstruating women, and for girls at menarche, originally positive, created by women? Was it a sign of awe and sacredness, now reversed under conditions of male
domination?’(Culpepper 2006:131).
From the 1970s onwards there has been a lot of research published and articles written about women, sexuality and spirituality, mainly from feminist perspectives. Unfortunately a lot of sources are often not based in scholarly research, the bulk of the academic writings are critically about woman’s spirituality, like Sally Binford, Joan Hamburger, Sherry Ortner, Nany Chodorow, Gayle Rubin, Micaela di Leonardo, and Michelle Rosaldo. Claiming that Goddess movements like Red Tent are re-envoking the essentialist woman-nature classification, like Ortner’s ‘Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?’ (1974). ‘Women involved in
feminist spirituality have been accused of dreaming up a Utopian past where communities were matriarchal and worshipped a great Mother Goddess and/or a number of fertility goddesses. In this mythic ideal world the worship of a fertile Mother Goddess went hand in hand with universal reverence for women's natural procreative and nurturing qualities’ (Ibid.:147).
Others feminist theorists were more in favour, such as Luce Irigaray, Elizabeth Grosz, Marilyn Frye, Vicky Kirby, Naomi Schor. Often what was argued is that the mind/body split is a false and overemphasised separation (Ibid.:153). ‘The link between woman, nature and the body is problematic for Goddess feminists
not because they want to shun nature or the body, but because the link is made within a binary symbolic frame of reference which designates such connections as inferior and opposite to man/culture/mind, and because it excludes potentially innumerable other equally important connections’(Ibid.). In this line a more
holistic view is adhered, but at the same time the different experiences men and women have acknowledged.
‘Embracing and assigning positive meanings and value to the female body, female sexuality in whatever form it takes, and female biological functions (for example menstruation) is an important preoccupation of Goddess feminists, again, not simply to reverse the patriarchal devaluation, but because they are important to women, give women pleasure and pain, preoccupy women from time to time, and are essential (yes, essential) to women's being’ (Roundtree 1999:154).
My main pursuit with this research is not intermingle in these still relevant discussions, if it is utopian dreaming, fantasising or core feminist, but rather I wanted to look at how women construct this bodily connection with the divine, how transcendence is accessed and worked through materiality, their acts and being. However, I do think it is fruitful to consider how this ritual might change women's lives and position. One of the few recent publications about the Red Tent in the US is by Isadora Leidenfrost (‘Things we don’t talk about, 2012). Her dissertation consisted of a text based source and a film. In thinking about gendered separated spaces she sees the Red Tent as an activistic space. ‘The Red Tent is a gendered space not
only because it is a woman-only space, but also because it has a feminist agenda to promote cooperation and to encourage rest and reflection. The Red Tent exerts its influence in a loving and gentle way by inspiring the women who attend and by showing them that there can be a different way to live.’ (Leidenfrost 2012:68).
That being said, I was curious to see the reverberation of this ritual in women their lives.
For the main theoretical framework I wanted to make use of Birgit Meyer’s concepts of
aesthetic formations, sensational forms and aesthetic materiality. In Aesthetic Formations, Media Religion and the Senses (2009), Meyer talks about the material dimension of religion and media in
the construction of communities. Going against a dualistic view which promotes meaning over form, spirituality over materiality, Meyer explores how material dimensions of religious modes form subjects and communities (Meyer 2009). ‘Such distinctions, Talal Asad has argued, echo the
modern dualism of outward forms and inner self, according to which form is inferior to substance and meaning (1993; see also Mahmoo 2001; Engelke and Tomlinson 2006).
What I found very useful for thinking about my own research is her theory on aesthetic
formations where the importance of materialising the imagined or as I like to call it; the mystical is
mind, by creating a social environment that materialises through the structuring of space,
architecture, ritual performance, and by inducing bodily sensations’ (Meyer 2009: 5). It is this view
I wanted to take with me into the field, as to explore the possibilities that aesthetics materiality offer and how the non-material aspects of spirituality is expressed by, in and through material forms.
The term aesthetic materiality is understood not only as the beautiful, and in the sphere of the arts, it is ‘… our total sensory experience of the world and our sensitive knowledge of it’ (Meyer and Verrips 2008 in Meyer 2009:6). This understanding calls for a more inclusive and embodied understanding of aesthetics and takes into account the influence and power of images, texts and sounds (Ibid.). In this sense the material also includes the bodily, sensations, feelings and
expressions. ‘It is important to note that this perspective extends the notion of media, which implies
modern devices such as film, radio photography, television or computers - the usual focus of scholars studying media-towards the inclusion of substances such as incense or herbs, sacrificial animals, icons, sacred books, holy stones and rivers, and finally the human body, which lends itself to being possessed by a spirit' (Meyer 2009:11). She calls these sensational forms (Meyer 2006),
which command, not only a cognitive but also a bodily and sensory engagements of humans with the divine and each other. ‘These forms are transmitted and shared; they involve religious
practitioners in particular practices of worship, and play a central role in modulating them as religious moral subjects’ (Meyer 2009:13). By consequence the sharing of these sensational forms
creates a group feeling and sense of community (Ibid.).
Meyer opts to look at religion as a practice of mediation in which religion and media are seen as co-constitutive, instead of the belief that the spiritual is something that is always there, prior to the form, invocation or practitioner. She argues it is through materialising in spaces, objects and by being embodied in subjects, imaginations and transcendence become tangible and real. (Meyer 2009).
Secondly I was inspired by the work of Mattijs van de Port, especially by his attitude in the field and towards the worlds that we encounter and study. In Ecstatic Encounters, Bahian
Candomble and the Quest for the Really Real we are reminded that next to the people we study, we
ourselves as anthropologist should also be aware of the balancing act we uphold constantly between knowing and not-knowing (Van de Port 2011:22). He thus poses the-not-knowing as a starting point from which we should depart, a willingness to the meeting of confusing and alternative world-views we can encounter in our fieldwork.
Especially in cases of spirituality, religious experience, spirit incorporation I feel that we do not have a conceptual framework that can ‘make sense' of these things in Western thinking and I affiliate with van de Port when he writes; ’Candomble… has a powerful repertoire of performances
to a secular worldview-that the world is not, and will never be, transparent to us’ (Ibid.:16). There
is a ‘deep knowledge’ that goes ‘beyond words’ accordingly to Candomble philosophy, something that is hard to accept sometimes as researchers (Ibid.:14). Expecting this in my fieldwork as well, I wanted to focus on the aesthetic materiality as explained above. But not as to hover towards a functionalist symbolist explanation of the ‘ungraspable’ or ‘mystic’ but moreover to witness it, ‘The
challenge before us is not to answer to the unanswerable, it is to understand its presence and its effects in all world-making (Ibid.:23).
He calls this field of the not-knowing, the awareness of something more, the ungraspable, ‘the-rest-of-what-is’. ‘This body that is a portal to the-rest-of-what-is might well be what the priests
from Candomblé sought to bring home to me when insisting that ‘deep knowledge’ bypasses the signifying capacities of the word. Or in the Lacanian vocabulary, we might say that this body that cannot be fully known is a constant reminder of the Real. As it craves, suf- fers, exhilarates, hurts, sleeps, makes love, develops illnesses and ultimate- ly dies, the body keeps invoking experiential domains that, to a greater or lesser extent, resist our discursive practices.’( Ibid.:28) In Van de Port
his work the bodily experience is also an important focal point in Candomble for acquiring what he calls ‘deep knowledge’. 'The centrality of time and performative bodily action in Candomblé
conceptions of religious learning makes ‘inarticulability’ the very essence of Candomblé’s deep knowledge’ (Ibid.:14).
The acknowledgement that there is so much more then we as researchers can observe and put into words, ‘the-rest-of-what-is', is a critique against the constructionist view that can slip into ‘reducing the narrative’ of people while unraveling their world or experiences (Ibid.) So even though I will be looking at how ‘spiritual experiences are constructed by and through materiality’ I am aware that this is a way of viewing and that there is so much more to it then what I am capable to observe.
2. Reflection and Research results
2.1. What became of the research set-up in the field?
I was lucky that the old structure of the Red Tent was just being replaced by a new bigger structure of the Red Tent when I arrived. This gave me the opportunity to focus on the way the Red Tent comes into being, literally from the ground up! My focus shifted from the preparations and aesthetic materiality towards a broader focus; the overall construction of the ritual.
The old tent was just torn down when I arrived and with the disappearance of Red Tent all the women also seemed to be vanished. There were only men present at the mountain, building the
Tent and occasionally one woman came along for an hour or two. This was quite unfortunate, because my focus was on the women and how they construct the Red Tent. But as it turned out to be men not only had a central role in the physical construction of the tent, but also within the ritual itself and it led me to include men and gender relations in my research as well.
Another shift of focus in my research was on the offering of menstrual blood. This turned out to be a very important in the ritual of the Red Tent. As stated above in my research proposal, the space is always open for women to pray and offer their menstrual blood, this resulted in a constant flow of women and it seemed like this offering just kept on going. Also on an aesthetic material level the materiality of the blood had a great significance. Through the literal handling of the blood, instead of throwing a tampon in the garbage, wrapped in toilet paper so the blood is not seen by the next one who opens the garbage bin on the toilet, the blood is now put into a jar of a vase, saved and collected for the whole duration of the menstruation and then put on an altar to be ritualistically offered to the earth. By this almost opposite handling of menstrual blood, the blood is revalued, and attributed with spiritual meaning and worth.
New research question
So through what I encountered in the field my focus shifted from the preparations and aesthetic materiality towards a broader focus; the overall construction of the physical Tent, one key aspect of the Tenda Vermelha; the offering of menstrual blood and the gender relations herein. This led me to redefine my main research question; How do women and men construct the ritual of Tenda Vermelha da Raiz and what effects has the offering of menstrual blood on women and gender relations?
I will look at how the ritual itself constructed and practiced. Firstly, by the building of the tent, the physical construction and the people involved. Secondly, the preparations of the ritual itself and the people involved. Within this I will be looking out for how ‘aesthetic materiality’ constitutes itself in the construction and execution of the ritual. Within the ritual my main focus will be on the offering of menstrual blood to explore how women practice this ritual and how it is understood by both women and men. Upon my arrival I noticed a devision of spaces and tasks based on gender, in and outside of the ritual and I was curious to see wether these weather there is a possibility for fluidity in these gendered devisions. Lastly, because the highly consciousness expanding drink
ayahuasca is drank in the rituals of the Red Tent, I feel that I must explain something about the
content and workings of it as well.
2.2. Development of relationships with informants
In the first two weeks of the fieldwork I got most close with the men who were working on the construction of the Tent. I was there every morning with them and although I was silent and observing with the camera we bonded by just being present. I would spent the whole day with the men, mornings, lunch and afternoon until they would go home or stop working. I didn’t feel like I could film the women because we had no bond yet established and they were not active in the ritual or anything of the Tenda, when they would come up to the Tenda during the construction I would film them but other then that I did not.
First Offering
When my first menstruation arrived I had a good reason to talk to the women, because I could offer my menstrual blood like I heard they did, and I asked them for instructions. This was an opening in the contact with women. The main guardian of the Tenda, Danubia came the next day to help offer my menstrual blood. This was the first profound contact I had with the women and the chance to film as well. My gender and the fact that I have an active menstrual cycle (because not all women have for various of reasons) gave me the chance to engage with them in such a direct manner and to personally participate in this rite, physically, emotionally and spiritually. Through actively
participating I was able to really share this rite with them and through my own offerings co-create, instead of just being at the observing end. When you partake in an offering, it is a special time, just for you, it is your time, your moment and the other women 'hold space' and assist you in your needs and wishes during the offering. ‘Holding space’ can be seen as being present to someone else’s process, drawing yourself back while simultaneously being attentive, open and attendant to the other person's needs.
I had never seen someone else’s offering, so my own was the first and as I listened to the instructions of Danubia I could observe through my own actions how this ritual comes into being. I was observing from the inside out, I felt uncomfortable that these women took time for me, surely I was there to report on their experiences, at the same time I felt special for the same reasons. In the lunch break of the men, still constructing the Tenda we we’re offering my blood. Everything was swept clean, the altar was arranged, then we sat down to pray and all of it took a long time. In the middle of the construction site I could feel the worth these women found in this ritual, everything was done with attention, care and love. The precisely arranging of the altar, the cleaning of the place where the blood is offered ‘the portal’, and also in the handeling of the blood, my blood in this case. Menstruation blood is seen as something valuable, like one of my informants Kalyana said: ‘This
blood contains the best of me, because it is there to receive a child, to create. It is so special, so holy.’ This translated itself onto my whole being, that they also value me, through this handling of
this ritual, the specialness and the effect it could have when you and others take that time, attention and space to offer something that is seen as so precious and derives from your own body. It made me wonder, what would the effects be on things like self-love and value, body acceptance and overall appreciation?
First Official Ritual
When the Tent was finished and the rituals started taking place I had already bonded with the whole group without knowing. In the prayers my presence in the construction was named and also
thanked. Because in the process of construction I was the feminine power that was present and thus also helped to construct this place by just being there. Being present turned out to be a thing of great importance, because the more I was present, during the building, the cleaning, the preparation, the more people got used to me and contact got easier. This also included all the rituals that were not specifically of the Tenda Vermelha, like the Santo Daime or Afro-Brazilian Umbanda rituals. There were 2 or 3 formal rituals per week and the more I was present in them, the better I could make contact with my informants and the better I could understand their process and actions in the Tenda Vermelha.
Moreover, there was a big chance that one of the women participating in the non-Tenda Vermalha rituals was menstruating and planning to offer her blood together with other women after the ritual in the Tenda Vermelha. The result of this was that I participated in almost all of the rituals so that I was ready if women went up to the Tenda Vermelha. Although it was strenuous, my presence in all of the rituals had a positive effect on the relationships I had with the people of Camino da Raiz and I believe translated itself in the openness in filming them in the rituals and talking with them in interviews.
2.3. Influence of the camera in relations with informants
The camera brought with it the awareness of the outside world. This I believe is something positive because people could tell me when to stop filming, or to delete something they didn’t feel like sharing with the outside world. If I would have not filmed but traditionally wrote field notes this boundary would not have been so strong and I feel like it’s very important to respect my informants their boundaries and make them aware of the fact that we are sharing their lifeworlds with an outside world.
The few times that somebody asked me to stop filming, or to delete something, I could always stay. So there was a strict separation made between ‘Froukje’ and ‘The camera’. Although it was me filming and I believe my identity, being the stepdaughter of the leader of this group, and
former acquaintance with the rites and some of the people, gave me permission to do so, there was still a difference in what I could see and what the camera could see.
In the rituals I filmed little, only when I saw an opportunity or was asked if I wanted to film. Beforehand my informants told me roughly what I could, and could not film. The formal structure of the ritual; opening, serving of ayahuasca, the singing and the endings I was free to film. The personal processes and healing of people where off limits. But the in between, the prayers were a grey area and my informants told me to feel in on this myself.
A few times I asked a woman just before or during the ritual to film a bit. I liked this a lot and I will experiment with this more for a next project, because it gave a sense of cooperation, of working together to construct an image of the Tenda Vermelha and it’s visitors. This I think also aligns with the sisterhood and the community that is present in the rituals and on the mountain. Some people were photographers themselves and this also bonded, because they were also filming and photographing on the mountain and parts of the ritual. Perhaps because the camera in rituals wasn’t something new, people felt more comfortable and open to be filmed. What made it quite different however, is that they would pull out their camera during particular moments that were more about certain events, like receiving an initiation or a baptising. Or groups, especially women, would pose before and at the end of rituals in front of the altar. Anyhow, I do believe because people we’re used to being photographed during the rituals the presence of my camera was less disturbing.
2.4. Findings in the Field - Research Results
The basics
One evening when there was no ritual or anything to do, I sat down with Benjamin the six year old son of Kalyana. He was drawing and I joined him eagerly. I decided to stick to my topic and draw the Tenda, I drew the forest, the structure and then I asked him what else was there in the Tenda. He dictated what I had to draw, he began with the altar, the icons on it, the candles, a red candle for the portal where the menstrual blood was offered. I was amazed by his knowledge, he was present in the rituals, often sleeping through it all, but he knew all the details! Then he named the people, his grandmother, mother, Danubia were there, his father was in the guardian tent, because he was a man. Then there was Jose, an Italian man who visited and he was laying on the ground. ‘What is he doing there?’ I asked him. ‘He is being healed by grandmother’ Benjamin replied.
These are the basics of the ritual. There are two spaces in the ritual, the women sit in the main Tent while the men stay in the Guardian Tent. There is a separation on the basis of gender and gender identity is based upon sex, the body. This reflects the general way Brazilian society identifies
gender, in two separate categories, where a person with a vagina is a girl, and a person with a penis, a boy. Then there are some key figures, Danubia the leader of the Tenda, Suindara the leader of the group and her daughter Kalyana, Helena the guardian of the fire, and some other women who play a central role in the healings and assisting where needed. Like Benjamin pointed out, there is always a healing taking place. I found that healing is one of the most important reasons why the rituals take place, it is the main intention, to heal self, others and also the earth.
What I found in the field was that the Tenda Vermelha ritual officially happens once a month. The ritual itself lasts around 16 hours. The people that come there are moreover women, around 30-40 women and 10-15 men. Apart from the official ritual, the Tenda is always open for women to pray and to offer their blood. With the offering of blood a guardian - a woman who is initiated and has a key role in the rituals - must be present and usually more women join them. A lot of unofficial and spontaneous gathering happens there. This makes that it is a place with a lot of movement, at least 1 or 2 times a week someone is offering her blood, sometimes a fire is made and the space is opened to pray and share stories.
Building of the Tent + Preparations - Aesthetic Materiality - divisions of labour based on gender
But let us go back to the beginning, the building of the Tent. As stated above, the physical construction was made and designed by men. During the entire time of the construction period I was with some
exceptions, the only woman present. Sometimes one woman would come to smoke a pipe and pray. The other time women would come up to the construction site was when they had to offer their menstrual blood, which is done next to the altar in a precisely designed place called the blood portal.
I think this says a lot about the division of labour and spheres. The men would do heavy work and women seemed to have other more non-physical tasks, that leaned more to the spiritual, like praying and making the altar, offering of menstrual blood. Outside of the sphere of the Tenda
Vermelha da Raiz I also noticed a more traditional division of tasks among women and men. In
general women would cook and clean and men do the heavy lifting and were put to taking out the trash or carrying suitcases for the women.
When it comes to preparations however, the women do most of the work. Before the actual ritual would start the whole space was neatly organised and prepared. Everyone was asked to bring along decorations, fresh flowers and herbs. Before the altar is constructed all the images of deities and precious stones were washed with herbs in front of a fire, to properly clean them. At the day of the ritual itself the preparations could take up to four hours and mostly consisted of cleaning, sweeping the ground, arranging the altar and putting flowers and decorations around the altars, fireplace and blood portal. Aesthetic Materiality as used by Birgit Meyer still proved a relevant
theory to understand this immersive concentration on the decorative side of the ritual. Through the materiality people were preparing to make a smooth connection with the divine and enter
‘mysteries’. So that they would have all the tools at hand when necessary. For instance; some gemstones and crystals like obsidian were always on the altar because it is used for it’s specific healing character, the same with herbs and flowers. Herbs would call upon some deities and spirits and were in this way used to evoke them and to let the spirits work ‘through’ people by
incorporations.
What I found is that people evoke divinity and transcendence through materiality, in ritual but also in daily life. This is most obvious seen in the smoking of the pipe. The tobacco is a seen as a medicine which calls people to be aqui e agora, in the here and now. It is used to evoke attention and this focus can be used for their prayers but also to prepare for a certain task, like is seen on the building site of the Tenda Vermelha where the men often smoked the pipe to arrive at the site and prepare for work. The smoke of the tobacco is believed to lift the prayers to the sky, towards the direction the prayers need to go and is used in the same way to heal a person. Smoke is blown towards a person or place on the body where there is a pain or ‘ energetic blockage’ to help the healing process. Here we see that the physicality, the materiality of the smoke is also believed to transmit intention and can release physical and emotional relieve. This can be described as what Meyer calls sensational forms. ‘… such forms are part and parcel of a particular religious
aesthetics, which governs a sensory engagement of humans with the divine and each other and generates particular sensibilities that “are not something purely cognitive but are rooted in the experience of the body in its entirety, as a complex of culturally and historically honed sensory modalities” (Hirschkind 2006:101 in Meyer 2009:13). It is through these forms that people engage
actively, releasing their intentions and feelings through the material act of doing, helping others and at the same time making the Divine through it.
On an individual level the style of dress and jewellery have spiritual and religious meaning and putting them on transmits a message to oneself and the group of a spiritual connection and identity. Like the case of guias, these are necklaces made of coloured beads which signifies a certain connection to an Orixa. For this example I will use an oversimplified explanation of the Orixas as African descent deities that represent the forces of nature. For example, Yemanja is the goddess of the sea, representing the great mother energy, with sensuous and flowing characteristics. The colour of the guia corresponding to Yemanja is blue and when this blue guia is put on in front of the altar the person is now open to receive the energy of Yemanja, to work with her and when he or she is lucky, even be incorporated by her. This not only transmits to the group that a person has a
connection with Yemanja, but also enables the connection through the act of opening for Yemanja her energy, and when the necklace is put off, closing again. This opening and closing is done
through ritualistic acts and material objects and is of great importance in the ritual to also maintain some control in this open field full of spirits and ecstatic experiences and to ensure a safe return to one’s own identity.
There is also a big emphasise on cleanliness, properness and order. The way the flowers are arranged, the exact way wood is build up for the fire, everything must we swept clean although we are on the bare earth all leaves and little rocks are swept away. From my interviews I understood that this orderliness is crucial for the ceremony itself because when people go in the expansion, when drinking ayahuasca, everything can happen. There is a risk, an Un-knowing that comes with this ritual. As the emphasise of the ritual lays on healing, it is common that traumas come up, people get sick, scream, cry and what not in order to release and heal. In this opening of the un-known, the fire in the centre, the altars and portal, and power instruments like the pipe, make up the ritual structure and function as the anchor-points in this journey of expansion.
This also counts for individual bodies, they also function as anchor-points, for oneself and the group. People prepare mentally by praying and thinking about their intention for the work, the reason they are participating and what they want to get out of the ritual. Physically people often take baths with specific herbs, eat little and light, and do not consume alcohol, drugs or have sex at least three days before and after the ritual. The style of dress is especially for women very telling, they are advised to wear long skirts to evoke and attract feminine powers and spirits and depending on the ritual in a specific colour, usually for a healing work white or light colours are advised.
The Ritual
As the preparations come to an end, slowly everyone finds their place within the circle. There is a firm structure of the ritual itself in terms of objects, fixed power places of two altars, portal, and the fire. But also peoples places are fixed in a sense, there are four people designated to represent the four directions and these are seen as very important to maintain the energy and power field within the ritual. They are told to stay strong, sit straight and smoke their pipe, especially when there is an intense process or healing occurring. The other people are also urged to sit up straight, stay present and smoke their pipe, they are reminded by the leader of the ritual Danubia and Suindara throughout the whole ritual.
But although this firmness and structure is constantly emphasised, the knowledge and acceptance is also there that anything can and is allowed to happen. People, dance, stand up, shake and incorporate spirits. Songs are sang and prayers and requests are made and acted out. The actual ritual is created inside and during the ritual itself. In this sense the ritual is very malleable, open and fluid. The form is and structure is fixed, but the content is created throughout the ritual.
This also applies to the fixed places men and women hold. There is a structure that hold the men in the guardian tent and the women in the main tent, there is a coming together at the opening
of the ritual, every time ayahuasca is drank and when the ritual is closed. This is the structure and throughout the whole ritual the crossing over of these boundaries are possible and happening. In interviews I was told by the leader of the group Suindara that the reproducing of these gendered separate spheres was done to unify and cross these spheres within the ritual itself. She argued that in peoples minds these spheres do feel as separate, especially when it comes to sexuality and the cycles of women. This becomes clear in the many healings I’ve witnessed that have to do with the womb, for instance from an abortion and more general in the ritual of offering the menstrual blood to the earth. The ritual is focused on healing and awaking the feminine powers, in women and men. Healing is not done individually but in a group, in and through relationships. The actions of one of the group members can have a significant part to play in the healing of another, and individual processes can coincide with the processes of another person or evoking this.
In this whole ritual and all the processes described above the role of ayahuasca and other medicines are of great importance. Due to the high popularity of ayahuasca the last decade there is a lot of research being done about the working and effects of ayahuasca and multiple studies have linked healing of depression and drug abuse to ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is a brew consisting of the leaves of the Psychotria viridis plant boiled together with the Banisteriopsis caapi vine. The ayahuasca brew contains DMT, a psychedelic chemical structurally similar to serotonin, and which is naturally found in the human brain. Ayahuasca is highly psychedelic, activating neuro pathways, highlighting parts of the brain we normally cannot acces and use. Medical researcher Antonio Inserra found the following results; ‘ The deep changes in perception and cognition elicited by
Ayahuasca ingestion are underlined by a profound activation of limbic, paralimbic and neocortical brain areas, which are involved in trauma, memory formation, memory retrieval and emotional regulation, as well as a region-specific shift of electrical activity. These changes lead to an altered state of awareness underlined by introspection, retrieval of traumatic memories, and visions (Inserra 2018 : 2).
Without going fully into the chemical compounds and studies about ayahuasca my informants, and my own observations and experiences confirmed the above on the basis of an experienced level. The role of ayahuasca in this ritual is of great importance as a gateway to enter
mysteries, and provides the possibility for healing and ecstatic experience.
Furthermore it is not seen as a recreational drug or a trip, but utmost respected as a medicine and many of the members of Camino da Raiz participated in the strenuous process of brewing ayahuasca and the planting of the Psychotria viridis plant. The respect also comes from the risk that the drinking of ayahuasca entails, because of the life altering experiences, the reliving of traumas and fears you might not even remembered. The reward is also that this opens the opportunity to heal and form new ways of relating to past trauma and in relationship to others. Moreover it is used to
access the divine and many informants described there experiences as religious, coming closer to God, Goddess or the higher self.
Blood offering
In the final scene of the film we see two women walking up the mountain in the morning, sharing an orange. Earlier the group finished a Santo Daime ceremony, now it’s eight in the morning and the women ascend the mountain to offer Bianca her blood. This case is examplificatory for the never ending rituals, ceremonies and personal work and processes people were engaging in at the mountain. But also it shows the willingness and care of people to share and help each other. This was an informal ritual of the Tenda Vermelha, these can happen whenever women are available to do so and generally consists of the offering of menstrual blood. In the formal rituals of the Tenda Vermalha that happen once a month the offering of menstrual blood also takes in a central role, they consist of the same actions. However, the offerings within the formal ritual can be much more deeper, extensive in time and can induce healings and open mysteries.
Throughout the ritual female deities are constantly being called upon from all sort of traditions, Christian, Afro-Brazilian, Hindu, Native American, Celtic, Greek, and so on. In my literature research I found this coincides with other women spirituality and goddess movements when Rountree writes about ‘Their unapologetic borrowing from the past and plundering the world’s
mythology and rituals for their own purposes (Luhrmann 1989:244) without concern for the fact that they are lifting beliefs and practices out of their cultural contexts (Rountree 1999:144). However, although all the
fragmented elements my participants expressed a firm believe in a holistic worldview, underlining the connectedness in all of these traditions, because how otherwise can it be that a Brazilian woman gets incorporated by a Celtic priestess? This points to a belief that does not square off or separate spiritual lines and religions but sees them as open and interchangeable. 'This emphasis on holism is a determination to see,
instead of endless constructions of binary opposites, constructions which embrace diversity and perceive cyclicity, complementarity and interdependence. The pairs light and dark, birth and death, passivity and activity, for example, are not oppositions; each nominates recurring points in an ongoing cycle’ (Ibid.).
The emphasis on the cyclical and interconnectedness instead of binary and linear understandings of the world and the cosmos, also transform the polarisation of images. For instance by claiming that the witch was once part of the Goddess. ‘One of the most important dualistic constructions which women in the
movement want to collapse is the witch/goddess dichotomy. In the mythology of Western societies the witch and the goddess constitute polarized images of independent female power — one hideous and dangerous, the other glorious — both outside the range of images acceptable for and accessible to "normal" women. By self-identifying both as "witch" and as "goddess", women in the movement are symbolically laying claim to the power which the two symbols represent' (Rountree 1999:145). We see this also in the last part of the film
who know the cycles and the laws of the earth, because they know these cycles within themselves.’
Furthermore, she explained to me how the womb is in a sense a micro version of the earth, the cycles of women are compared to the cycles of nature, like the seasons, where there is winter, everything dies,
hibernates, then spring comes and is awakened, fertilised, summer arrives, fruits are ripened and at the end of summer harvested, we go into autumn, to let go again and make space for new life. Both this connection to the earth, and the reclaiming of images like the witch gives women a sense of wholeness and power.
This doesn’t stop when they leave the Tenda Vermelha, they incorporate this power. They take it with them into their lives, careers and relationships. The spiritual also becomes political, women rights and feminism, in the public realm of work and career — where does religion and spirituality begin and stop? ‘Indeed, the theoretical and political implications of the spread of religious forms and
elements into the public sphere, which was long held to be a secular realm, and yet obviously entails a quite messy mix of religion, entertainment and politics, thus questioning the possibility of drawing boundaries between religious and secular, are just beginning to be addressed from a global (rather than merely Western) perspective and need our attention' (Salvatore 2007; Schulz 2006b;
Willford and George 2004 in Meyer 2009:21/22).
This is not only seen in how the women, dress and carry themselves gracefully and confident, but also reflects itself in the choices they make, what products to buy, or start making themselves, what to eat, how to live, vote or engage with their surroundings socially and
environmentally. In this context, the striking importance of aesthetics and the body that is
emphasised not only in the practice of religion, but also in the sphere of politics, entertainment and the public realm at large, raises critical questions' (Ibid.) Yes, how does our body, actions and all of
the small messages we send out influence the world? Goddess movements have been shunned for escaping into fantasy, an idealised materiachical past or a spiritual illusion, but who knows what the effects are when a woman begins to love her blood, her body, the earth, and her ‘divine expression’ deeply? In her research in American Red Tents Leidenberg states; 'With our body we can change our social status and by associating our body with products, clothing, organisations, associations, etc. we can express what we value…I would argue that women who associate with the Red Tent are exhibiting social trends of the importance of women’s community, life reflection, and self- care.’ (Leidenfrost 2012:80). I believe this is especially valuable in a world where we are told that menstrual blood is something dirty, or at least a practical disadvantage, that woman are somehow inferior to men, because they bleed. What would happen when women and men begin to respect these cycles and see them as something a part of life itself and acknowledged. This brings me to the part when a man is invited to the Tenda Vermelha, to a blood offering.
One of the most prominent things in Florionapolis was the strong presence of men, which as stated before is not common within these Red Tent movements. Leidenfrosts talks about how the Red Tent practice promotes a different way of life in relating to womanhood (2012). But here I would take it further that in my research men were also pushed to see womanhood different and the relationships with women and vice versa. So the feministic agenda is not only promoted to and for women, but also men.
The Red Tent can be seen as a safe space for women, where they make up their own norms and values, that often do not coincide with the patriarchal society these women live in. This is seen with the menstrual offering, through the ritual they are ascribing value and spiritual meaning to their blood. I was told in interviews by different women that this view is not supported by their family, and they don’t even talk about it to others. Within the Red Tent a safe space is created, where women can express the things that are important to them. I argue that within these safe spaces, it is easier for them to share this intimate rite with men. By inviting men, the ones from whom
menstruation is normally hidden, women and men are stepping out of their comfort zone, make a huge step towards each other and are crossing gender segregated spaces.
Most women are used to blood flowing out of their vaginas, and for my informants it is a natural, normal and sacred part of life. This is different for most men associating blood coming out of the body with wounds, hurt and accidents. These separate bodily experiences create different understandings of blood for women and men. Menstruation can be seen as a marker of gender differences and by sharing it with men it becomes something they also have to relate too. In the ritual of Tenda Vermelha
da Raiz the experience of the woman is highlighted with the intention to evoke understanding, union and
peace between men and women. But for peace and equality to arrive there has to be some re-arranging in gender relations, and this is not without risk ‘The danger that is risked by boundary transgression is power.
Those vulnerable margins and those attacking forces which threaten to destroy good order represent the power inhering in the cosmos (Douglas 1966: 161). To alter the ways in which the world is structured
(menstruation blood is holy, not dirty), there is also a rebalancing of power in which the women take their stand and position of power. This is clearly seen in the rituals where the women are in control and although they do not force their power in any way to men, their power is acknowledgement and respected.
Gender Identity
Although they are crossing gendered segregated spaces, by inviting the men in the Red Tent and are also recreating gender relations, by openly questioning the ways we relate towards each other, they aren’t questioning gender identity itself. Generally the view I found was that your sex assigned your gender, reflecting dominant society. The leader told me that it is separated in the rituals, because it already is separated. ‘First women and men have to understand their own configurations,
spiritaully, emotionally and physically, how they manifested’. This confirms the notion that rule in
many spiritual women’s movements that previous research brought forth ‘In womancircle… there
was a tendency to consider femininity and masculinity as innate characteristics rather than as social constructs.’(Griffin 1995:38). What I found in the Tenda Vermelha da Raiz that biological
functions of the body are used to describe one’s role and characteristics. ’What is perhaps most
striking is the fact that cultural notions of the female often gravitate around natural or biological characteristics: fertility, maternity, sex, and menstrual blood.’ (Rosaldo 1974:31). This is done to
both men and women, for instance; ‘Men have a force of activation, we can see it through his erect
penis.’ , one of my key informants told me.
Next to the cisgender view, I also found that sex and relationships are talked about in a heteronormative manner. In the rituals sexuality and sex would often be a topic that was talked about, may I say lectured about by the main leaders and sex was always addressed as a thing between a woman and a man. This was puzzling because the same people were so open and welcoming about homosexuality and transgenders, in talk and action. So, it might be a normative way of talking or coming from their own experience as heterosexual and cisgender women.
Reconstructing Gender Relations
Within the formal rituals of the Tenda Vermelha, there was a lot of attention for the transforming and healing of the masculine and the feminine. ‘In rituals and in d-i-y (do-it-yourself) spirituality
manuals women are invited to "go within" to seek knowledge rather than to trust implicitly received knowledges (often glossed as "men's knowing"); they are encouraged to seek individual spiritual experience and to construct systems of beliefs and values which personally "feel right" (Rountree
1999:155). In the case of my research this was extended to both women and men. This was done on three levels and I will give an example of each one.
First of all seen this is seen on an individual micro level. Within the ideology of Camino da Raiz every individual, independent of their gender has both a feminine and a masculine side, similar to yin and yang, two that make one whole. These two sides preferably need to be in balance so they can peacefully co-exist and work together. These two sides, also have certain characteristics. The feminine side is nurturing, embracing, warm, soft, emotional, intuitive and sensual. Whereas the masculine side is active, analytical, strong and decisive. Although my inner horse prances uncomfortable and distressed by hearing such explanations, this might have to do with my own limited, binary view. Like Roundtree explains with the example of the term “goddess"; “Goddess"
is a political and psychological tool for women seeking liberation and empowerment, but she is a great deal more. "Goddess" is a metaphor for the entire web of life, incorporating masculine and feminine and all apparent dualisms, contra dictions and paradoxes’ (Rountree 1999:156). However
it might by, it was hard for me to come to terms with this style of appointing your characteristics to a gender and during the ritual I was arguing fiercely inside of my head. The interesting thing is, that when I was tired of own critique and started 'giving it a chance’, embracing it, something opened up for me. A space, a feeling of letting it be, of relaxation in my body where I could actually feel and see what it means to me, instead of observe and analyse. Had I without knowing balanced my masculine and feminine side? With all my over-analysing, critiquing and strong-headedness I had withheld myself of the experience itself. In the line of this ideology; my masculine side was a dictator! But once I opened myself for the experience, for feeling I could actually see what it means to me, I allowed my ‘feminine side’ to be. That doesn’t mean that I now agree with the naming, but its does mean that I learned to make room for both experiences.
Secondly, on the healing the masculine and the feminine took place on a relational level between the people present in the rituals, and outside of the ritual as well. For instance, one woman told me that since she was practicing this rite, she has a better relationship with other women. She was no longer jealous or comparing herself, but understood them better and saw them as sisters. Also between genders, like when a man, Bruno asked for help. He asked to heal something that bothered him greatly; when he looked at women, he always saw them as objects of lust, of his desire. He was then invited in the Tent and he prayed, talked about this in front of over 30 women, all listening to him. He was then invited to witness the offering of menstrual blood of one of the women. He sat close by her side and they prayed together to change and expand his view of women.
Thirdly, it is believed that the rituals done here have a global effect, influencing places they have no direct connection to. When praying for peace, union and the balancing of the masculine and feminine energies this is also actively done for the earth, social-political problems like wars and environmental problems which is believed to come forth from an imbalance between the masculine and feminine on an individual and relational level. The prayers and the offering of menstrual blood are seen as a step towards this rebalancing, where womanhood is in a sense worshiped and seen as divine. The menstruation blood is lifted from dirty to sacred. ‘Holiness and unholiness after all
need not always be absolute opposites. They can be relative categories. What is clean in relation to one thing may be unclean too another, and vice versa.’ (Douglas 1966:8). But also the masculine
and men are seen as divine, and it is this equality that they strive for. I believe this is why the men are invited to the blood offering, so they can relate to menstruation too. Instead of forming their opinions from reproduced ideas from socialisation they go back to the source, the experience itself to establish a direct line where their understandings can be based upon.
In From the Goddess to Queer Theology Marcella Althaus-Reid explores Queer theology in relation to Goddess movements. 'If we wished to claim that women from the Goddess movement and
alternative system of justice, peace and solidarity, based on a radical understanding of how sexual ideologies function in Christianity and especially in systematic theology' (Althaus-Reid 270). And
this my informants do, they are searching for a system and understanding seeing the body and sexuality as something inherently basic and powerful that has the potential to change the system. ‘The Goddess movement and Feminist Theology have a particular path to travel, and a valid one,
but it is a path made of boundary work and experiences. In that sense, it is a Queer path.’(Ibid.:
272).
‘
3. Cinematographic Choices
3.1. Ways of filming and the resulting footage
The first few weeks during the building of the Tent I had an observing filming style, almost a ‘fly on the wall’ method. This resulted in steady shots of the building process and a good overview. This was made possible because of my passive role in the building process, and also reflects the
expectations of me as a woman, I was never asked to help out. This gave me the chance to focus on filming, close-ups, look for beautiful shots. I believe it resulted in more thought through choices and images with a sense of overview.
After the Tent was built and more rituals took place my style of filming changed, from observing to participant with a handheld camera. This also reflects my role in the field, because as a woman I was expected to engage in the cleaning up and preparing of the rituals and participating in the blood offerings myself. This gave me a double work task and I think also reflects itself in the filming. There was less time to think about frames, angles, sound, and filming in general because I felt my presence and attention was also needed there. The result was that I was often filming from my place in the circle, or sitting next to a woman and filming her up closely when I had a chance.
This handheld style really gives a sense of participating in the ritual and also the closeness that is there. It also makes the viewer aware of the documentation and the maker. Because of its spontaneous nature the images are often wobbly and my own presence is felt and heard through them. Like Macdougall argues, the camera being an extension of the body making the images a reflection of our bodies (Macdougall 2006:3). ‘They are, in a sense, mirrors of our bodies, replicating the whole of the body’s activity, with its physical movements, its shifting attention, and its conflicting impulses toward order and disorder’(Ibid.).With this I also hope that the awareness of subjectivity comes along, because we see it is made by one person, a woman, and that this given colours the images, the focus and the way of portraying. ‘Corporeal images are not just the images of other bodies; they are also images of the body be- hind the camera and its relations with the world’ (Ibid.).
