FEMININE CYCLE & THE MAHAVIDYAS

Your menstrual cycle moves whether you “work with it” or not.

Hormones shift perception, energy, libido, cognition, boundaries. When we link different archetypes or goddesses to these different periods of the cycle it dignifies what is already present.

We want to move from:
“something is wrong with me” to “this archetypal energy is moving through me”.

“This is my personal issue” to
“This is a pattern women have lived inside for millennia”.

From that shift alone reduces shame and self-pathologizing and even allows you to see the beauty and power behind all those shifts. That sense of continuity is stabilizing and strengthening.

We don’t use the goddesses to pray to something outside of us, but much rather as a key to remember the sacredness and fullness of the energy of the goddess within ourselves.

Let us dive into it!

Spring - Tripura Sundari

Phase: renewal · blooming · rising of energy

Spring is the return of beauty, symmetry, attraction, and relational desire.

Tripura Sundari governs harmony after death, not naïve sweetness. She is the beauty that comes after truth, not before it.

Harmony after rupture, Eros without hunger.

Characteristics of this phase:

Rising libido and magnetism
Desire for connection
Creativity without force
Aesthetic sensitivity
Soft joy

Important: this is after Kali and Dhumavati.
So the rising desire here is pure, not out of lack.

Ritual Spring

Soft Desire as an offering (5–10 minutes)

Put some candles on and use rose essential oil.

Set a timer for 5–10 minutes.

Sit in front of the mirror and caress yourself.

Your breasts, your yoni, the area of your womb and heart.

Try to breathe slowly and keep your chest open through any uncomfortable feeling.

Stay fully present with yourself.

Feel your own soft touch without seeking climax.

Offer it inwardly as devotion.

This is about beauty, not intensity.

After the ritual sit still and close your eyes for a few minutes and let the experience sink in.

Then make a little bow in front of yourself and blow out the candle to close the ritual.

Summer - Bhairavi

Phase: fullness · heat · outward power

Summer is contained fire — growth, action, assertion and maximum energy. This time is not about pleasure — it’s about holding your power. If spring is eros awakening, summer is eros being held and used. It is your ability to carry sustained intensity without burning out or acting it out. Bhairavi governs discipline, willpower without domination and authority without violence.

This is why she is perfect to work with in order to face: irritability, power struggles, sexual reactivity, aggression or over-giving

Characteristics of this phase: High energy and heat, Strong will and direction, Capacity for leadership, Less tolerance for inefficiency

She turns: “I feel a lot” into “I can hold a lot.”

Ritual Summer

Fire Containment Practice (4 minutes)

Use only when energy is high.

Stand with feet slightly wider than hips, knees softly bent, spine upright, arms relaxed at sides, eyes open, gaze steady.

This should feel like a warrior pose, not meditative.

2 Minutes: Inhale through the nose, exhale sharply through the mouth. Let the belly and solar plexus work. You should feel heat building and intensity rising — do not slow it down. After 2 minutes abruptly stop the breath technique. Close the mouth and return to natural breathing.

The heat should remain.

2 Minutes: Hold the fire. Do not move. Do not regulate. Feel your heat, your power, maybe even sexual or aggressive charge. Say once internally: “I hold this.” And do not discharge it.

To end: Feel the floor under your feet, take one deep breath and close the container by a small bowing down gesture. Do something physical afterwards (eg: walk / clean).

Autumn - Kali

Phase: Severance · bleeding · descent

Autumn is when life withdraws. Sap descends. Leaves fall. Kali is the goddess of destruction, cutting, endings, and truth without comfort. A lot of times she also names what has been suppressed in the spring and summer phase, when we were not as sensitive as in this time.

Characteristics of this phase
Bleeding/letting go, irritability, sharp clarity, no tolerance for falseness, strong boundaries become clear, low social patience, strong discernment, cutting away what no longer serves, truth wants to be spoken.

Ritual Autumn

Ritual of Cutting (5 minutes)

Stand with feet slightly wStand barefoot.
Feel your feet on the ground.

Only when you feel connected start long, deep breaths. Name out loud one thing that needs to be cut away.

As soon as you have spoken it out do one big exahle and cut it - no processing, no fixing, just a strong exhalation to let it go.

Continue this process for 5 minutes. If nothing else comes to your mind, continue the long deep breathing.

When you are finished bring your hands together in front of your heart and bow down to close the ritual.

Winter - Dhumavati

Phase: Withdrawal · emptiness · void

Question: Who am I without this?
Action: release, emptiness, stillness
Energetically: no fixing, no sorting, no narrative, energy drops inward This is receptive.

Winter is not death — it is the void. Nothing is growing, and we don’t yet know what is growing after the void with 100 % certainty. Dhumavati governs absence, loss of narrative, and the sacred nothingness. She asks of you: Who are you without this? This time is receptive as the energy drops inwards. This is not a time to fix or sort things out, it is a time of stillness and sitting with emptiness.

Characteristics of this phase:
Low libido, low motivation, emptiness without sadness, desire to be alone, sense of “nothing to say”

This is where most women panic. Tantra says: stay & dive in

Ritual Winter

Void Sitting (5 minutes)

Light a candle. No mantra. No visualization. Sit with spine upright.

Keep your eyes open and look into the room.
Try to see the empty space your room is in and stare at it. Feel the emptiness of the space in

between you and all the interior of your room.
At some point, without forcing, see if naturally you can feel the same emptiness

being reflected inside you. Sit there without doing anything else.

Rule: do nothing to improve the state, survive without meaning in this meditation. After 5 minutes, move your body a little bit and blow out the candle to close the ritual

OVERVIEW

Kali (autumn) clears the field
Dhumavati (winter) empties identity
Śodashi (spring) restores harmony
Bhairavi (summer) stabilizes power

(withdrawal → bleeding → renewal → power)

Important to note:

The cycle of us women is shared in structure, but lived uniquely in every woman. Instead of asking: “Which goddess should I be in right now?” you could ask: “What is actually happening in me — and which Mahavidya understands this state?”

The cycle of us women is shared in structure, but lived uniquely in every woman. Instead of asking: “Which goddess should I be in right now?” you could ask: “What is actually happening in me — and which Mahavidya understands this state?”

I wish you a masterful cycling!