Metaformic Theory states that modern-day material culture is rooted in ancient menstruation rituals, called "metaforms". Metaforms are rituals, rites, myths, ideas, or stories created to contain emerging knowledge relating to menstruation. Metaformic Theory is founded upon anthropological data and artifacts used in menstruation rites or rituals recorded over the last 400 years. The most common of these are menstrual seclusion rites. Menstrual seclusion rites incorporated three basic restrictions for menstruating women: they must not see light, touch water, or touch the earth. Metaformic theorist, Judy Grahn uses the theory to examine how these restrictions "constructed our minds externally, not abstractly, but through using physical metaphors—metaforms—that embody a comparison to a menstrually based idea." Grahn is referred to as the founder of Metaformic Consciousness. Metaforms themselves have roots in early human culture, but the theory truly emerged when Grahn outlined the Metaformic Theory in her book Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World. She continues to write and edit the online journal, Metaformia: A Journal of Menstruation and Culture, which includes many other authors' works on Metaformic Theory and related menstrual topics. Metaformic Theory has been linked to the creation of a "post-queer" theory. Key Concepts Metaformic Consciousness Metaformic consciousness developed in a period of Chaos, which in this context is a pre-language consciousness "when our pre-human ancestors could not perceive shape, color, light, depth, distance, as we do, and had no names for them and no fixed sense of their qualities." For menstruating women the process of menstrual seclusion became a process of learning. The evolution of women's consciousness was due specifically to separation of light and dark. Menstruants were not allowed to look at light in fear of destroying it and sending everyone back into Chaos, creating a way to retain the knowledge gained through these rites as they had not yet discovered language. When women emerged from seclusion into the light, generally at dawn, they began to see the difference between light and dark, between day and night. Many menstrual seclusion rights required that the emerging woman be led through nature by other women of the village as though it were the first time she was seeing it. Separation from above and below was another common feature of seclusion rites. When in seclusion, the menstruant often was made to lay down or stay up in a tree for the remainder of her cycle, creating a physical