By referring to menstrual blood as a vital essence Dana evoked an important issue in women’s spirituality. To counteract the idea of menstrual blood as something dirty that brings pain and loss of control into women’s lives and must be hidden, feminist spiritual literature and workshops teach women to discover menstruation as a sacred process. Referring to the four phases of the moon, they connect menstruation to the dark phase of the moon. The period is thought to foster interiorization and creativity, making women highly sensitive and therefore able to receive insights about what they need to change in their lives.

After her divorce she lost her and Alberto’s common friends and in their place made new ones, who could “resonate with her” and share her interests and her quest. One of these friends, Gloria, accompanied her on her first trip to the Sainte-Baume in November 2002. Encarna and Gloria enjoyed the pilgrimage and shared their spiritual adventures with friends who had similar interests.

Sangraal theory

she had learned to be growing up in a conservative Catalan family in a rural area during the Franco regime.

Le Puy is a good example. You remember in the cathedral that extraordinary “pierre de fievres” [fever stone], this black stone, what the hell is that? It was obviously there before they built the cathedral … The cathedral is built on the side of one of these pinnacles … these volcanic places, which must have been a place of power. And it’s a healing stone and they call it the fever stone. It was almost certainly Celtic, very ancient, and that probably was an old druid shrine … long before the Christians came. And so the Christians came. The local people, they were using this stone because it worked, they got healing from it, so they [the Christians] had to sort of build it in the cathedral somehow … So they know it’s a power place, they’ve got to have a cathedral there. And at some point, someone turns up from the crusades with a statue of the mother, which is probably an Isis, maybe an Isis. Of course, this belongs in the cathedral. It’s part of it. So another layer is added to the experience of the place. It’s all about the place. (November 6, 2006)

What I liked about it was that … he almost always found that there was a cult: a Roman cult, a Celtic cult, long before the Christians … Christianity is relatively recent in Europe and these places had been taken … Roman cults, Greek cults had been spreading all over Europe for a long, long time. But Christianity later covered all of them up, christianized the saints or changed the legends to assert themselves …

Even if in their discourse Christian religion was almost symmetrically opposed to true spirituality, close examination reveals continuity and ongoing negotiation rather than rupture with their Christian backgrounds.