a women's space in your community?
Ruby Moon Red Tents and Moon Lodges are women's sacred spaces to honor women's cycles and life changes, her body, fertility and eggs, pregnancy and blood of birth and menstruation from the first to the last one, beyond the blood and before her arrival. All of it framed in Red.

To build the tent we need:

Next to the entrance a Program Schedule of Activities depending on
the tent's specific purpose and a Privacy Notice.

Purpose:
The tent can have several purposes within its sacred space framework.

1. It can be Open Time set up and left available for women to use
anytime.

2.- it can be Event Times requiring a posted schedule, for example
Circles: mother lines, womb stories, cycle celebration
Healing: one to one or group focused activity
Quiet time: for just feeling the space, meditate, write, draw

3.-A combination of open time and event time work well, facilitates
coordination and enhances experiential learning

Time:
it is best to block time in 3 hour intervals.....

Tent entrance:
Entrance red rug and veils for at least 2 sides with extra rug area
for shoes

Floor:
Red rugs and mats to cover a 10x10 floor space.
Plenty of red cushions, including a larger one for laying down, and pillows.
At least one small table, table cover, lamp (if we have electricity)
About ten chairs available, it is best to use all the floor space and not to wear shoes inside the space, however some women need chairs.

Sides:
Clean red material to cover a 10x10 wall space, sheets, sarongs are good
Large diaper pins to hang the materials with, ribbons and rope

Structure:
We use a ten by ten art tent or we can construct a beehive like structure out of willows, bamboo or other flexible natural materials.
The space can also be set up in a private room or building.

Roof:
It is nice to cover the ceiling in red too

Light:
Natural light is best at night candles are great but a mellow electric light can be also used.

Other supplies:
Registry book for interested participants wanting more info or follow up.
Tissue, at least one box, small trash can.
A diary for women to write notes on and color markers.
Sacred objects, healing oils, a rattle.... etc.... from the healer/ women community

Extra colors:
To build the women's peace cycle mandala inside the space we need long and narrow strips of materials in every color of the rainbow.

Tending the tent space:
A woman (we call her Ruby) has to be responsible for going inside the space every few hours to check on healing clarity and to restore/refresh the space.

Please let us know what kind of red energy is available in your community, and if you would like us to help you set up your first one if so we need a community contact person's name and phone number। We have over 20 years of sharing with women about their bodies and facilitating how to connect spiritually, emotionally and mentally to the cycles of female lives. Together we have developed sacred spaces for women to heal and share with each other women's medicine ways and wisdom. We volunteer our time and expertise in creating Ruby Moon Tents at many events however we do need the mutual collaboration of the women's community who wants the experience to provide support for supplies like draping, pillows and other items and energy to set up the space. In addition the women community involved then keeps the supplies on hand and becomes ready to set up their own RUBY space any time.

Send please any questions you have, with a little imagination your community can do this even without our help, just gather your supplies, get together to build it, share your wisdom and your kindness towards each other and have fun.

Marina Alzugaray MS, CNM
Director Comadres Institute, MyMoonCards cycle education,
Ella@mymooncards.com
305 744-3370

I for one did not know how mother's day was started and I am so moved by Julia's proclamation on peace and motherhood, if you have not read this once at least in your life and have celebrated mother's day well it is your own best gift to learn how and why it was started in the USA, May Mothers unite in Peace and may our blood be not of war but that of life,
Marina

Mothers' Day Proclamation: Julia Ward Howe, Boston, 1870, .... after the Civil War
......................................

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.
Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another
country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war,
let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby
the great human family can live in peace,
each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity,
I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality
may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient
and at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
to promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
the amicable settlement of international questions,
the great and general interests of
peace.

Julia Ward Howe
Boston
1870

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