Springtime birthing in community

It’s Spring Equinox time and the rebirth of nature is in the air. I feel the heat of the earth rising, the colors blooming, the light in the sky and the eyes shining. Many things are being born, growing and strengthening. Dreams launched, projects and partnerships chosen, reaffirmed and reinforced.

In Damanhur, we have recently welcomed a soul and new child into the Popolo. For me, Eros’s birth has been an expansion of the understanding and awareness about what it means to give birth to a child in Damanhur. Every full moon with my Sacred Dance group, we dance a ritual for the women of the community who are pregnant or intending to have a child, which brings thoughts to the arriving soul, even before conception and birth. I have also begun a new Apprentice role (now that I have concluded the Befana apprenticeship and fully taken on the honor), this time with Vigogna in Sacred Dance, to dance prayers that recall certain characteristics for the baby in the womb.

Every week for some months before Eros’s birth, Vigogna danced a prayer to invoke characteristics and talents for the child in a temple of Damanhur, and I did the same dance in the Hall of Water in the Temples of Humankind, the hall connected to femininity, pregnancy and birth. Feeling this ritual and subtle contact with a soul that is coming from afar has gifted me with new perspective and emotion. I can feel that this child is everyone’s child… everyone who has thought of his characteristics and personalities, and performed the rituals, prayers and preparations, those who were singing in a circle around the mother as the childbirth began.

In addition to the parents, there are relatives, godparents, friends and nucleo community residents who support. It’s a beautiful network of extended parenthood, like ancient peoples would naturally weave, while today we need more awareness and intention to dedicate time, to be present and supportive. I wish all the best to Eros and family in these precious moments of growth!

This all reminds me of the World Summit on Birth by PerLa Donna (an organization dedicated to women’s heath and childbirth), which I volunteered for in organizing and translating the Summit, as one of the first projects that presented itself on my path right after I came to live in Damanhur. It was a synchronic teaching, entering into this world of birth with many midwives, obstetricians and experts in the field. From the plethora of presentations and sessions, the impression that has stayed with me is that birth is an event that can be transcendental and even pleasurable, if not downright “orgasmic” as Debra Pascali Bonaro shared with us at the Summit. I saw a window into the power of the feminine in pregnancy and birth, the traditions of the peoples, water birth with dolphins, and I understood the value of the placenta. I began to approach pregnancy as a sacred event, not just something to cautiously avoid, as was my relationship with pregnancy up to that point.

I wish you all a beautiful springtime, with the joy of giving birth to new aspects of the self… life, vision, action and creation in every field!

Quaglia Cocco
The Befana