The Underground Blood Society... of Reverent Men by Jonathan Ehrlich

A couple years ago, in the midst of my world travels, I stopped off in England for a couple nights. I met up with two good friends I hadn’t seen in a quite a while. English and Irish. Both women. We were driving in the car with one of their fathers. My Irish friend had to stop to get tampons in the store. She said out loud that she needed to stop to get…”something.” He asked what? She hesitated and said it was “something for her health”. He probed deeper because maybe she didn’t need to stop if they had it at home. But she did…and this awkward exchange progressed further until it was silently acknowledged that she was on her moon. Bleeding. Moving through her monthly rite of passage. Nobody could even mention that word: Period. Blood.

In a parallel world, I imagine my friend reaching her hand into her pants, putting a finger on her yoni, then anointing all of us in the car. Me. Our friend. Her father. Blood on all our faces. Reminding us of the dark womb we all come from. Celebrating Life, and such a pure form of Life itself—blood. The taste and smell of it.

Each month, from my mother to the other women in my family (some who talked openly about their blood and others who pretended like it was never happening) to good friends growing up to sisters in my beloved soul tribe to strangers on the street to being alongside a woman I love so deeply…I find blood to be such a powerful, primordial reminder of what is ancient and all that we are. The sight and scent of it every month humbles me.

My relationship to blood feels old. I feel a very feminine spirit through my lineage, of this life and beyond. Perhaps it’s just the pulsing of the Earth. My love for blood is something I’ve never spoken about much. It pumps rapidly through the body, pours out of flesh on the battlefield, covers the newborn baby born into the world anew, and comes out of the womb each month. I never heard much about the womb or blood growing up. But I always felt close to them. It felt like a secret I had to keep.

As a male bodied individual, I don’t have many memories of speaking to friends (especially males) about blood, besides the occasional share of whether or not we minded making love when our girlfriend were on their moon. I had one friend and it felt like we were in an underground society together because of how much we loved moon blood. The smell. The taste. Getting covered in it. We shared a devotion neither of us really understood and, if anything, felt ashamed and embarrassed.

Sometimes I feel there still must be so many men out there in some sort of underground blood society. Secretly devoted to it. To the womb. To the mysteries of all things feminine that we were never taught about. Never taught about those birthrights inside of us. In a parallel world, maybe I had elders, grandmothers, who brought deep into the mysteries of their blood and into the Earth. No growing up would happen without these rites and initiations.

And I’m here now to stand for this. To celebrate it. To wear it on my sleeve alongside the heart, for the two are forever inseparable.

Jonathan Ehrlich, 31, New Zealand