5 Sacred First Moon Ceremonies

Though our current high-tech world barely notices a girl’s first period, many cultures around the world, in the past and present, marked this milestone with sacred ceremonies that celebrated a girl's newly acquired powers. These rites of passage transformed a girl’s view of herself and shifted her status in the community to a powerful woman.

In this article, we explore the 5 Sacred First Moon ceremonies of a few women-honoring cultures that help girls walk through the passageway to adulthood.

Yoruba, West Africa

Within the Yoruba religion of West Africa, menstruation is viewed as a time of a woman's heightened feminine power and her strongest connection with spirit. A girl's first period marks a sacred, spiritual alignment with nature's cycles and a potential power to give life.  

Yoruba culture reveres nature, and often a girl’s rite of passage is performed outdoors and under a full moon. Community women and female family members attend the ceremony, many of them wear maroon-colored clothing to symbolize blood.

Yoruba ceremonies are jubilant, with singing, drumming, dancing and laughter. The women pray to their Orishas, or goddesses, including Oya, a warrior goddess and protector of women, and Yemoja, goddess of motherhood and fertility. Women and elders explain to the young initiates the significance of menstruation in her life and share their wisdom to help the girls prepare for their new role as women.

Dancing to the rhythmic heartbeat of the drums, the girls and women generate a sacred field of divine energy and commune with the Orishas to receive their blessings and guidance. Often participants, including the girls, are so entranced by the drumming and group energy they are open to receiving direct guidance from their goddesses.

Joyful and blessed, the girls emerge from the ceremony with a new idea of who she is. She reenters the community in a higher status as a woman, and the community rejoices for her new powers.      

Lakota Native American

In the rolling hills of North and South Dakota, the Lakota and Sioux Native Americans live close to the land and practice their earth-loving traditions. In Lakota culture, a girl's first menstrual cycle, or "coming of age," is honored as a potent step into womanhood. She’s ready to learn the Lakota ways of womanhood.

100 Horses Society and Brave Heart Society are preserving this rite of passage. In their 4-day ceremonies, girls spend time away from home in a menstrual lodge, which may be a tipi formed with poles and covered with cloth and animal hides. During the days, they commune with the land and learn about herbs and their medicinal uses. They receive teachings from tribal elder women, who share the roles and responsibilities of a Lakota woman, including living in integrity and supporting the community at large.  

Girls sew a traditional ribbon skirt made of various colors of fabric in indigenous designs. The colors represent the earth, sky, and water. The skirt symbolizes strength and womanhood.

On the fourth day, the girls leave the lodge and return to their tribal community. Proudly wearing their ribbon skirt, signifying their new status as adult women, they beam with greater strength, knowledge of their traditions, and self-love. Family and friends sing and celebrate their transition into womanhood. The girls are ready to participate in their community as adult women and perpetuate Lakota and Sioux traditions.

Shakta Tantra, India and Nepal

Throughout parts of India and Nepal, Shakta Tantra religion, or Shaktism, continues to thrive. This is a Hindu path that Goddesses are the Supreme Universal deities. Menstruation is honored, and in fact, is considered sacred and a representation of the goddess’ feminine, creative force. This energetic force is called Shakti. Shaktism believes a woman's most divinely, feminine and powerful time is during her menstruation.

Girls who enter menarche are celebrated in a traditional coming-of-age ceremony called Ritu Kala Samskara to welcome her to womanhood. At the first occurrence of menstruation, a girl is given her own room in which to meditate and contemplate. Friends and family come to her with gifts and wisdom.

On the last day of her period, she takes a ritual bath infused with turmeric, a deep, gold-orange spice, noted for its purifying, protective and blessing powers. Her mother and other women bathe her as they pray for her bright future.

Afterward, the girl will receive her first half or whole saree, or traditional garment of long, colorful cloth that is wrapped around the body that symbolizes her new status as a woman. Dressed in her sari, she joins her community and celebrates with family and friends with food and gifts.  

Often, a puja, or ritual, is performed to honor the girl and their goddesses. The deities most associated with menstruation, are Kamakhya, believed to be the most powerful of all goddesses; Kali, the goddess of transformation; and Matangi, goddess of pollution and outcasts. The women chant mantras, or sacred words, to ask for the goddesses' divine blessings and guidance. In some more esoteric traditions, menstrual blood and bloodied cloth are offered to the goddess Matangi and placed on an altar of sacred items. In some rituals, menstrual blood is poured into the earth. 

Purified, blessed, and wearing a beautiful saree, the girl's Shakti energy is activated, and she is no longer a girl, but a woman ready to enter the world anew.

Maori, pre-colonial New Zealand

The Maori are the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand, known as “the people of the land,” because they possess a deep spiritual and ancestral connection to it. In fact, their reverence for the land is so strong that the Māori word for land, whenua, means “placenta,” symbolizing a spiritual bond to their homeland. Many Māori people wore elaborate tattoos that were more than decorative, and display their heritage, spiritual power, and social standing.

In pre-colonial Māori culture, menstruation was viewed as a sacred gift that connected a woman to the divine realms and ancestors. Menstrual blood represented life, death and the power of regeneration and renewal. The blood was used for psychic and spiritual protection.

To the Māori, a girl’s first menstruation or “ikura” was a sign of her increased power and prestige. Sometimes a girl would sit alone to commune with the deities and her ancestors. Often, the community celebrated with a ceremony that included singing, chanting, feasting and gift-giving. Wise women passed along their wisdom and teachings to help them navigate their more prestigious role in the community.  

For the ceremony, girls received a haircut and ear piercing. Often, her chin was tattooed with a traditional Maori design, which represents her connection to family and spirit. It was believed the design of the tattoo existed within her before it was created in her tattoo.

To the Maori, the first blood carried the spirit of her ancestors. A significant practice was for the girl to give her first blood to Mother earth as a gift. Sometimes a tree was planted where the girl bled. An initiation such as this transported girls to a new way of being within themselves, their ancestors, the land and their community.  

Red Tent, USA and International

Today, women are seeking ways to renew ancient female-honoring traditions, and the Red Tent Movement is a source that is supporting it.  

The Red Tent Movement began the late 1990s, inspired by the novel The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, a story that takes place in the early biblical era (though, the story is not a religious one). The female characters gather in a menstrual hut, or red tent, to rest, share stories and support each other. The book awakened in contemporary women a thirst for sisterhood that honors all phases of woman’s life. Red Tent was born, and First Moon gatherings are special offerings.  

Red Tent gatherings usually occur on the new moon, when feminine power is most potent. Living rooms, backyards, forests, beaches, or any location become a Red Tent sanctuary, adorned with red fabric, flowers, candles and sacred items.

A First Moon gathering is the creation of its community leader, and rituals may be drawn from ancient traditions and created from imagination. They may or may not evoke goddesses, but they always worship feminine spirit. Lighting candles and anointing with essential oils can set a tone of sacredness. Activities like dancing, drumming, and music-making generate joy and connection. Art or craft projects, like decorating a candle or menstrual pad with red flowers and red decorations, offers creative expression and a gift to always remind girls of their blood power.

Soulful sisterhood community is established with deep sharing, stories, listening, laughing and supporting. Mothers impart their wisdom and experiences with menstruation. Girls express their fears and excitement about their new phase. In this safe, sacred space, girls are transformed.

Away from their ‘normal’ world, and in a time of timelessness and expansion, mothers and daughters gain a deeper understanding of each other and themselves.  After the ceremony, the girls and mothers move into the world wiser, more loving toward themselves and to all women around them.  

Conclusion

As our world becomes more complex and artificial, let's these 5 Sacred First Moon Ceremonies remind us that our connection with the spirit of the Divine, the land, our ancestors, and each other, will help us feel empowered and elevated by our menstrual blood. We can create a new generation of powerful, connected, and joyful women who love their bodies and all phases of their lives.