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They say it's Earth's moon-blood, from which we're all born.

We've been painting ourselves and our dead with it since before we were sapiens.

Red ocher.

FeO2: iron oxide. Hematite (from Greek hêma, “blood”). It's found practically everywhere, and practically everywhere our people make use of it for purposes both religious and practical.

Rubbed on the skin, it acts as sunscreen, and keeps off bugs.

Sprinkled on the dead, it hastens rebirth.

We used to joke that if we were a Wiccan tradition, it would have to be Cro-Magnon Wicca. Really, once you start using red ocher in ritual, you'll never stop. There's nothing, nothing, nothing more authentic.

Here in the Upper Midwest, we've been using it since the end of the last Ice Age. (Before that, there were no people here, only ice.) There's even an archaeological horizon known as the Red Ocher People.

Be warned: this stuff is pretty damn close to permanent. Some years ago, I was privileged to see the original Willendorf Mother at an exhibit of Ice Age art. Even at 40,000 years, you could still see the red ocher in her hair.

Long treated as a source of shame and impurity, menstruation is once again coming to be regarded as a sacred process and state of being. Rituals and celebrations for menarche and menopause aren't quite as rare as they were a generation ago, and those of us who menstruate are finding that we can talk more openly about the process.

However, although it's increasingly easy to find rituals for menarche and menopause, and although practices like ritual baths mark the end of each month's cycle, it's harder to find rituals that mark the beginning. The moment when the cervix opens and the first blood emerges is significant--for example, the first day of a pregnant person's last period is used to calculate their due date--yet most of us mark it with little more than a hurriedly placed tampon or pad.