The mother, the Grail and the child

My name is Wallaby Pulsatilla and I am a midwife living in Damanhur. In almost forty years of my profession, I have worked both as a midwife at home and in a hospital, always with a goal in my heart, to recover all the physical and spiritual nobility of pregnancy and the birth process. In Damanhur I have studied the subject of the Grail as an element connected to the health/disease balance, and I would like to share my experience with you.

For many years, together with other midwives, Damanhurian health workers, and Falco Tarassaco, we have developed the topics related to conception, pregnancy and birth, from the viewpoint of both women, children and the society as a whole. In the middle of the last century, in the second post-war period the “civilized” countries were deeply affected by the emptying of meanings of these phases of life and in particular by the passivity toward which woman were forced. Fortunately, precisely because the lowest point was reached, the awareness that it was necessary to reaffirm the importance of those moments was reawakened in many parts of the world. I have been part of many groups of midwives who have worked in that direction together with brave women and men.

The disease of humanity

This was a much-debated issue with Falco, and in Damanhur. Especially in the early years, it was common for births to happen at home, with all the necessary assistance but without the coldness, so typical of hospitals at the time. Today, fortunately, many maternity wards have become a more comfortable place to be born in, give birth and work as a midwife.
When we started to reflect in Damanhur on the disease as a way to contact the Grail, my thoughts immediately went to the process of birth. A child who is born represents a soul that is embodied to participate in the project of evolution of the universe. To do this, the soul needs to be formed harmoniously, through gestation and then the moment of birth.

Instead, if we look at the transformation of these events in the course of human history, what was once a great manifestation of power became weakness. In ancient times when the woman felt that the moment had come she would disappear and then return, bringing with her a new creature. At a certain point, this was somehow transformed into a phase of weakness with the onset of manipulating woman, bringing fear of childbirth, hospitalization, and power to doctors, with the child being extracted from the body almost like a disease after having been a source of fatigue and concern for the mother for nine months. This concept, in my opinion, is a real disease of humanity, perhaps it is “the” most serious disease of all.

Reflecting on the Grail with this perspective means considering that if women, and men as a result, recover the vision of the true essence of birth, they can take a great step forward in the awareness of their true nature and their mission in the universe.

Build peace

The mother knows how to give birth and the child knows how to be born. Sometimes with ease and at other times with difficulty, but always as an event that goes without saying, precisely because it is part of the cycle of life. Understanding the mystery of birth, learning to consider the preciousness of it and not through fear, means doing the same with regard to death, which represents the image mirror of birth.
In my opinion, reflecting on the Grail means educating women to live this experience to the fullest, relying on the atavistic wisdom they have inside, being in contact with nature, with music, with the power of breathing, preparing for childbirth as we prepare ourselves for a mountain climb: challenging but a bearer of great, great satisfaction.

Ibu Robin Lim, an American midwife with whom I have often collaborated, says that

“peace is built one child at a time”

It’s true! Every child who comes from a wise pregnancy and from a harmonious birth will be a serene, peaceful, supportive individual, capable of thinking of others as well as of themselves. My mission is to assist in the process of birth for so many children like this, together with their mothers, their fathers and all the health workers who are sensitive to this view. It is my way of looking for the Grail, to make sure that more and more people are getting their turn to have a profound experience.

Wallaby Pulsatilla