stration, is
dangerous. In any case, indeed, the same ideas being transferred to women
also, coitus produces weakness, and it prevents the acquisition of
supernatural powers. Thus, among the western tribes of Canada, Boas
states: "Only a youth who has never touched a woman, or a virgin, both
being called _te 'e 'its_, can become shamans. After having had sexual
intercourse men as well as women, become _t 'k-e 'el_, i.e., weak,
incapable of gaining supernatural powers. The faculty cannot be regained
by subsequent fasting and abstinence."[365] The mysterious effects of
sexual intercourse in general are intensified in the case of intercourse
with a menstruating woman. Thus the ancient Indian legislator declares
that "the wisdom, the energy, the strength, the sight, and the vitality of
a man who approaches a woman covered with menstrual excretions utterly
perish."[366] It will be seen that these ideas are impartially spread over
the most widely separated parts of the globe. They equally affected the
Christian Church, and the Penitentials ordained forty or fifty days
penance for sexual intercourse during menstruation.

Yet the twofold influence of the menstruating woman remains clear when we
review the whole group of influences which in this state she is supposed
to exert. She by no means acts only by paralyzing social activities and
destroying the powers of life, by causing flowers to fade, fruit to fall
from the trees, grains to lose their germinative power, and grafts to die.
She is not accurately summed up in the old lines:--

"Oh! menstruating woman, thou'rt a fiend
From whom all nature should be closely screened."

Her powers are also beneficial. A woman at this time, as AElian expressed
it, is in regular communication with the starry bodies. Even at other
times a woman when led naked around the orchard protected it from
caterpillars, said Pliny, and this belief is acted upon (according to
Bastanzi) even in the Italy of to-day.[367] A garment stained with a
virgin's menstrual blood, it is said in Bavaria, is a certain safeguard
against cuts and stabs. It will also extinguish fire. It was valuable as a
love-philter; as a medicine its uses have been endless.[368] A sect of
Valentinians even attributed sacramental virtues to menstrual blood, and
partook of it as the blood of Christ. The Church soon, however, acquired a
horror of menstruating women; they were frequently not allowed to take the
sacrament or to ent