#50: How Your Period Blood Can Tell if You Were Burned at the Stake in a Past Life

SATIRE

To be a modern woman is to have been a witch in a past life. My womanly ancestors were back there thinking and doing arithmetic and tricking the townsmen into more empathetic leadership. It’s a tale as old as time. Don’t tell Goody Proctor, but it was actually me with the devil that night. I kept telling her to stop “borrowing” my bonnets, and the bitch wouldn’t listen. I’m not saying she had it coming. I’m just saying, karma’s a real one. The point is, there’s no way I managed to avoid sparking ablaze in every single one of my past lives. Odds are I was reduced to ash in at least one, and I’d like to find out for sure.

Cue the magic of womanhood: menstruation. The uterus is a cauldron in and of itself. Each bleed holds the secrets of its source. The following are period-related signs you met a fiery death in a witchy past life.

1. The first time you took out your Diva Cup it announced you’re a Slytherin but you’re pretty sure you’re a Gryffindor and how did your Diva Cup get its Sorting Hat Certification anyway?

2. You had to have help putting in your first tampon (likely by a fellow witch) and it was humiliating yet bonding and meant that you still got to swim instead of awkwardly dangling your feet and fibbing that you “just didn’t feel like getting wet.”

3. Your period blood is, or ever has been, red. This is a surefire sign you were burned at the stake. Red like the fire and fury of your past self.

4. Your menstrual blood begins dark and grows lighter throughout your bleed. This is the shedding of your enflamed past and the embrace of your future magic.

5. Clumps and clots punctuate your bleed. I don’t know the details of this one but something about a gooey glob is very witchy, no?

6. You feel the urge to cackle while you’re on the rag. (You should be cackling. Every time you feel like it, just let one rip. It’s your witch-given right.)

7. Your blood has an odor only you and Edward Cullen can detect. (We can’t smell you, babe. Don’t worry.)

8. Your tampon comes out flayed at the end like a broom practically begging you to fly away on it.

9. By the first drop of your bleed your FYP is entirely WitchTok.

10. Every time you get your monthlies you start having these vivid dreams of your long-lost mother in a faraway land called Coventry. When you wake you feel compelled to sketch her over and over again until you inevitably find your long lost twin sister, with whom you’ve been separated since birth. But guess what! Your periods have been synced since 7th grade.

11. You’re pretty sure that time you bled through your white jean shorts at your sister’s little league game and a couple boys snickered at you while you ran to the bathrooms with your hands clasped over your butt, your seething hatred of the boys transformed into some sort of blood magic spell because all of a sudden they were playing dizzy bat and literally couldn’t stop until their parents had to call in the authorities and an emergency psychological evaluation to determine if incessant dizzy-batting was a disease.

12. The stains on your period undies bloom in beautiful patterns and intricate maps of the cosmos that will never, ever wash out.

13. When you free-bleed into the toilet before wiping, the blood bubbles up in the bowl like a true witch’s brew. Bubble bubble toilet trouble!

If even one of the above is true, you are a witch. Congratulations! Don’t forget to feed your moon juice to your house plants for nourishment after each bleed. Happy spell-casting! See you in Salem for the annual retreat.

🧙‍♀️🔮🧹💫

Ariana