Since Time Immemorial

The creation drama contained within the menstrual temple rites and menstrual laws of the ancient Sumerians served as a constant reminder of the connection between man, woman, and the gods. Ianna, child of the moon, took these rites as her inheritance and fulfilled the role of Initiatrix to the budding girls of the menstrual huts. In a masculinized version of these rites, men imitated the menstrual flow by cutting their penises. Young men also had blood and sacrificial rites associated with becoming hunters (Grahn, 2005).

In ancient Egypt, one of the several meanings for the symbol of the tyet (or tiet) is the “blood of Isis.” This symbol resembles the ankh but with arms folded down, and like the ankh, its meanings center on the essences of life. The exact origins and meaning of this symbol are uncertain, but it was frequently seen in the form of a funerary amulet made of red stone or glass and it is speculated that it may represent the menstrual flow from Isis’ womb. The 156th spell in the Egyptian Book of the Dead reads, "You possess your blood Isis, you possess your power, Isis, you possess your magic Isis. The amulet is a protection for this Great One, which will drive off anyone who would perform a criminal act against him.” Amulets representing the girdle of Isis were also used to stem the blood flow after miscarriage.

Despite these connections between a woman’s blood and Isis, it was Sekhmet who was the goddess of menstruation. This is very possibly due to her bloodlust in avenging wrongs and lending protection to the Pharaohs on the battlefield. Her wrathful connection with blood earned her honorifics such as The Scarlet Lady, The One Before Whom Evil Trembles, and the Lady of the Slaughter. Her priests dressed her statuses in the color of blood and feared her displeasure. In the end, it was the color of blood that was her downfall, when Ra tricked her into becoming drunk by coloring beer with red ochre and thus transformed her into the gentler Hathoor. This signifies that not only did Sekhmet have a lust for blood, she also carried a thirst for it.

Blood continues to come into focus as mankind, and religion, moves forward through time. From the near sacrifice of Abraham’s first-born child to the death of Christ on the Cross, from the use of blood as nourishment by Huns to the Holy Eucharist, from the fertility dances of menstruating women in Medieval times to the precious royal bloodlines of autocracy, and from the gruesome sacrifices atop the Aztec pyramids to the piercing and scarification rituals of “modern primitives,” blood has never been far from the human consciousness. Blood has meant life to some and death to others, in many cases it has meant both simultaneously. It is impossible to even scratch the surface of mankind’s connection and fascination with blood throughout history, but I want to briefly touch on three important aspects of that connection: The Quest, The Sacrifice, and The Continuity. To represent these aspects, I have selected only a handful of examples out of countless instances.

The Quest

The greatest quest, that of the Holy Grail, is firmly rooted in blood. The alternate term for the Grail, Sangreal, may be the oldest surviving pun – sang rial meaning royal blood and san grial meaning Holy Grail in Old French. There are practically infinite theories regarding exactly what the Holy Grail is, including: a stone, usually an emerald but sometimes a blood stone (from the translation of “sang”), which had been sanctuary for the neutral angels during the war in heaven but fell from heaven when God cast out Lucifer; the dish or cup used by Christ at the Last Supper, which was also used to catch his blood as he died on the Cross; the family blood line of Christ’s descendants; and the uterus, vagina, or collective female reproductive system, just to name a few. Legend has attributed many magical powers to the Grail, including immortality. The Grail has been seen as a symbol of male potency, female fertility, hope, life, death, and resurrection. It was searched for by King Arthur’s knights and rumored to be the hidden treasure of the Knights Templar. Regardless of which theory concerning what the Holy Grail is on the physical plane you choose to believe or what powers you might attribute to it, the stories maintain two vital elements: It represents the ultimate desire of man’s heart and it is inseparable from the human fascination with blood.

The Sacrifice

Human history is riddled with stories of blood sacrifice. There was Isaac/Ishmael’s narrow escape and the sacrificial bull of Roman times, the blood libel leveled against the Jews and the multiple incarnations of the Dying God, but possibly the most complex and intense example of blood sacrifice is seen in the development of Mesoamerican cultures. Evidence shows that during the Classic (220-900 c.e.) and Post-Classic (900-1500 c.e.) periods of Mesoamerican culture, bloodletting was practiced both privately and publicly, in both the temples and in homes. Priests drew blood from tongues, earlobes, thighs and sexual organs using implements such as obsidian blades, fish spines, and, as in the case of Mayan lords, knotted strands of thorns (Carrasco, 1990, p. 140). In both Mayan and Aztec times, even the central form of recreation led to sacrifice. Ballgames, that vaguely resemble modern basketball, were played regularly and often resulted in the sacrifice of the losing team or a representative thereof. During Aztec times, the I-shaped ball court came to represent the narrow passage that the sun took as it journeyed through the underworld and the sacrifice of blood and life by the losing players offered up the energy needed to give birth to a new sun (Carrasco, 1990).

In the cosmovision of the Aztecs, the human body was considered a center of “vital forces and change” and “the earthly container of divine energy.” The two primary forces recognized in the human body were tonalli and teyolia. Tonalli refers to vigor, warmth, solar heat, summertime, and soul. The Aztecs believed that tonalli resided in the head. The sun was believed to be the central, most vital, visible source of tonalli but, in war, warriors would decapitate or grab the hair of an enemy, because by taking this from the enemy’s would increase one’s own tonalli. In public sacrifices, enemies were decapitated to release the tonalli and thus increase the tonalli of the people, as a whole, through the ceremony (Carrasco, 1990, p. 171).

Teyolia resided in the human heart. This force animated the human body and shaped the person’s sensibilities and thinking patterns. This was the “divine fire” in the heart and was in every person but it was thought to be particularly strong in priests, artists, hombre-dioses, and those who impersonated gods in festivals. This energy, teyolia, is also the energy that fuel the sun. In the Aztec heart sacrifice, the priest slashed open a warrior’s chest, took out his heart, and threw it into the fire. This released the warrior’s teyolia and allowed in to rise up to heaven, as in the cremation of Toplitzin Quetzalcoatl. In the open chest cavity, the priest would light a new fire that would then be used as the source to rekindle all of the home fires in the surrounding region (Carrasco, 1990, p. 172).

As in many other cultures throughout time, these rituals were a means of worldcentering and worldrenewing for the Aztecs. They were a people who truly lived and died according to the forces within the blood.

Possibly more familiar to modern readers is the Roman Catholic Eucharist. Many would shutter at comparing this ritual with the often gruesome and violent sacrifices of Mesoamerica; however, regardless of its refinements, the Eucharist is still very much a blood ritual based in sacrifice.

Sharing of the Eucharist was, at the conclusion of the fourth century, an initiatory rite, and still is the primary communal experience of the Catholic Church. Throughout the Christian community, it is still the ultimate mode of sharing in the life and experience of Jesus Christ (Cooke, 1983). It has alternately been viewed as a sacrifice, a means of giving thanks, a moment in the true and actual presence of the Lord, a sacred meal in the tradition of the apostles, and a remembrance of the Last Supper.

The communal meals shared by the apostles were consistent with earlier Jewish tradition. At the Last Supper, the sacred meal shared between Jesus and the apostles just prior to his death, Jesus gave instructions on how to continue the communal meal once he was gone. The translations and interpretations of those words, “This is my body [. . .] this is my blood,” led to many of the later theological debates. Nonetheless, Jesus had instructed the apostles to eat and drink in remembrance of him. More than seventeen centuries of theological debate has still not settled the question for all Christians concerning the physical versus symbolic presence of Christ in the host. Paschase Radbert determined that the literal blood and body of Christ must be present on the altar during the mass and this began the trend away from congregants partaking in the communion and toward the visual and distant worship of the host (Martos, 2001).

Scholars have since examined and reexamined the reality and the metaphysical action of the mass. Theories and terminology have gone through transmutation, transfiguration, transelementation, transformation, consubstantiation, and transubstantiation. Transubstantiation, the idea that the substances’ presence truly change into the blood and body of Christ though their appearances remain as that of bread and wine, is the currently accepted theology within the Roman Catholic Church. This term was first used by Hildebert of Tours and its use by the Fourth Lateran Council was later perceived as an ecclesiastical endorsement (Martos, 2001).

Actual body and blood of Christ on the altar? Here, there is first and foremost the blood (and body), which is consumed. Secondly there is the presence of God, which in a sense is also consumed. The psychological and ritual significance behind these ritualized acts strongly reflect the Mesoamerican rituals, as well as the many, many other blood rituals that mirror this innate need for life and the consumption of life seen in places all around the globe from the beginning of civilization all the way through last Sunday’s sermon.

The Continuity

The most remarkable quality of the human fascination with blood is its continuity, even in its transformations. From ancient Sumer to the vampire and occult communities of the 21st century, blood has held a place of reverence and power. It has been used to heal the sick, protect the weak, honor the gods, and nourish both the body and the spirit. In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a particular ritual tool of note: the skull cap (kapala in Sanskrit). (This vessel finds its parallel in the much older clay pot of Vedic sacrifices.) The kapala is held by wrathful but protective deities, usually seen in artistic renderings as being held at chest (heart) level, and is filled with warm human blood, blood and brains, blood and intestines, human flesh and fat, the heart and lungs of an enemy, or the heart of Mara and the blood of Rudra. Given this list of contents, the connection between this ritual implement and blood is obvious, but it is the source of the kapala itself that I want to examine here. Nitin Kumar details the preferences for obtaining this tool in “Ritual Implements in Tibetan Buddhism: A Symbolic Appraisal.”

    […] the selection of the right skull is of immense importance for the success of the ritual. The skull of a murder or execution victim is believed to possess the greatest tantric power; the skull of one who has died from a violent or accidental death, or from a virulent illness, possesses a medium magical power; the skull of a person who died peacefully in old age has virtually no occult power. The skull of a child who died during the onset of puberty also has great potency, as do the skulls of miscegenated or misbegotten child of unknown paternity, born from the forbidden union of castes, out of wedlock, from sexual misdemeanor, or particularly from incest. The 'misbegotten skull' of a seven or eight-year-old child born from an incestuous union is considered to possess the greatest power in certain tantric rituals. Here the vital force or potential of the skull's 'previous owner' is embodied within the bone as a spirit, rendering it as an effective power object for the performance of tantric rituals (Kumar, 2001).

This hierarchy of the dead in their ability to provide both protective and wrathful energies has leap-frogged through various cultures and times, showing up in Medieval folklore, Appalachian folk remedies, old wives’ tales, and 1930s Chicago, taking on various forms ranging from the burning Hand of Glory to handkerchiefs dipped in the blood of notorious gangster, John Dillinger, as he lay dead in the street. The image of the blood-filled, skull chalice echoes in the poetry of Aleister Crowley where he describes Babalon’s blood filled “Cup of Abominations” with lustful and degusting imagery. We see here the practice of harnessing vital life energy from the dead, through blood and bone, extending from the oldest Vedic and Tantric traditions to the stylized imagery of the occult revival, and even to the memorabilia of 20th century superstition. I know a Haitian mambo, a vodou priestess, who has asked, only half joking, that her house initiates leave her in the ground for a year before they dig her up. These few examples show how blood themes both travel from culture to culture but also spontaneously arise in multiple cultures simultaneously with seemingly no connection.

This abbreviated trip through the history of blood is not even comprehensive enough to be considered a “crash course,” but it does, I hope, give an idea of the set and setting behind blood rites, religious and otherwise, in many of their varying permutations. Possibly more important than the historic details of blood usage, is the development and reasoning behind the many meanings humans have applied to blood.

What Blood Means to Us

Blood, from the very beginning, has represented human life. This is seen in the correlation between the menstrual cycle and the creation of the universe in Sumerian rites. It is, after all, necessary for human life. Menstrual blood in particular is a key element in the creation of life. Newborns emerge through blood. Generation after generation, we make ourselves immortal by passing our blood on through our children and their children. Blood transfusions allowed medical science to lend new life to patients who would have died. The heart is a symbol of love and life and was once thought to be the driving force of the body and seat of human thought and emotion. Blood flows through our veins, fills our bodies, fuels our hearts, and sustains our existence, but should we lose a sufficient amount of it we shall die – and thus blood is also death.

Slain enemies lie in bloody pools on the battlefield and miscarriages (the reversal of conceived life) are announced by the accompanying gush of blood. “Disease of the blood” was once the medical term for mysterious illnesses that would almost surely lead to death. The medical practices of bloodletting and leaching killed as many, if not more, than it saved. This life/death duality of blood is fully realized in the images of Kali, mother and also goddess of death and destruction, who dances on the back of her lover while wearing a necklace of skulls and a belt of severed arms.

Beyond the obvious physically-related connotations of blood, is the seemingly endless list of attributes connected to blood through human spirituality and expression. In an attempt to transcend both life and death, we attribute powers of resurrection, eternal life, and immortality to blood as well. It is by the Blood of Christ that Christians shall enter the Kingdom of heaven and realize their reward of eternal life in the presence of God. Blood is what allowed Count Dracula, and many other fictional vampires, to grow young and live for centuries. The blood spilled on Aztec altars assured the rebirth of the Sun, and thus the continuation of the entire species. We use terms like “blue–blooded” to indicate royalty while saying that the blood is mingled or thinned means a degeneration of royal purity. Thin-blooded also means old and easily chilled. Hot-blooded indicates a volatile temper, while cold-blooded indicates that one is calculating and without feeling. Warm-blooded means vigorous, or at least full of life, as does red-blooded. Red-blooded has also taken on some connotations of patriotism in the U.S. (e.g. Red-Blooded American). Bad blood refers to a grudge or problem between persons. Blood kin and bloodlines refer to one’s biological relatives, while blood brothers/sisters refers to a ritualized bond created between two people.

There are also certain values applied to blood. Some cultures believe that deities reside in the blood, thus making it holy and binding mortals with immortals. Other cultures prohibit contact with blood, especially the blood of the dead, as it is impure and holds the power to contaminate. “Blood on your hands” infers guilt. The Blood of Christ “purifies” the sinner. Royal blood is meant to be pure, not mingled with outsiders or commoners.

Blood is the most sincere form of sacrifice. Blood sacrifice, as that described among the Aztecs, Romans, Jews, and early Christians, is the most precious offering that one can make to the gods. Literal blood sacrifice is still practiced in many religions, including Vodou and Santeria. Symbolic forms of blood sacrifice, often in the form of incense or wine, are still practiced in a number of rituals by various modern groups from Christians to occultists. The blood sacrifice symbolizes an offering up of ourselves, a giving of our own life’s essence to the heavens – even in the case of animal sacrifice or symbolic blood sacrifices, it is an offering of one’s own life.

People throughout time have consumed blood to sustain life, both physically and symbolically (or spiritually). Warriors joining the Mongol armies were expected to bring with them three horses – one to ride, two to drink blood from for nourishment in the harsh desert climates. Some Masai of Tanzania still practice blood drinking for nourishment. Many vampires, both fictional and actual, look to blood for sustenance. Many eucharistic rites, including that of the Catholic Church, represent the consumption of blood and flesh as a form of spiritual nourishment. Warriors, in various cultures, have consumed the blood or flesh of slain enemies for a variety of reasons ranging from absorption of their power to honoring of the fallen but brave opponent. Gods tend to be particularly blood-thirsty, most likely due to the human projection of their own unrealized bloodlust. Deities like Kali, Sekhmet, Aries, and the Christian God (at least in older times), to name only a few, demanded blood sacrifices to satisfy their hunger and need for worship.

What does blood mean to you? Is its meaning personal, spiritual, or cultural?

Blood, Psychology, and the Vampire

The image of the vampire, both fictional and actual, embodies the entire range of human thought on blood. For the vampire, blood is life. For the victim, blood is the life being drained and is thus also death. In many cases of vampire lore, Dracula being one example, blood keeps the vampire young or even reverses aging and is thus a source of his immortality. In some cultural lore, and in some modern clans, vampires are related to, or are themselves, gods and thus blood, their sustenance, is holy ambrosia. There also appears, in both literature and modern houses, the willing victim, who represents the blood sacrifice. The idea of evil is attributed to his draining of the victim’s life, while good is seen in the ecstasy and transformation delivered through this same process.

In the present vampire community, there is a debate between psi and sang vampires regarding the consumption of blood. Some psi vampires (those who feed on psychic energy rather than blood) view sanguinary practices as dangerous and crude. While the present dangers of blood consumption are more than valid concerns, I disagree with the idea that blood consumption is a crude practice engaged in by those who lack the ability or finesse to manipulate the more subtle energies.

The consumption of blood does offer a more tangible source for feeding, which lends itself to those with less experience in psychic energy work. However, there are certain aspects of blood consumption that play into the psychology behind intense energy workings to heighten the experience. I am no biochemist; however, many of the psychobiological responses to sanguinary practices are clear even to the layperson.

In order to obtain the blood there must be some sort of physical damage done to the body. This might come in the form of a bite, a laceration, or intravenous extraction. The anticipation of such damage is sufficient, even in the experienced practitioner, to excite the adrenal glands thus intensifying sensation with the increased presence of adrenaline. The pain incurred during the actual extraction of the blood then causes the body to release endorphins – pain-thwarting hormones akin to morphine. Katherine Ramsland, Ph.D, author of The Science of Vampires, even goes so far as to speculate that the vampire’s bite (and she bases this almost entirely on the details of fictional accounts) might increase the body’s production of DMT, a chemical that, when increased in the brain, can cause floating sensations, spiritual experiences, and sensory hallucinations. On a primal level, self-mutilation is counterintuitive to the human brain. Going against this instinct produces a psychological conflict that can trigger a wide range of emotion along with the increased chemicals in the brain that were just discussed. In addition, first aid courses will teach that any accident or damage to the body, regardless of how small, places the body in a low-level state of shock. These biological and psychological processes occur naturally in response to the sanguinary practices even in the willing and experienced.

Combining these responses with the multiple meanings and views of blood that may already be in the mind and emotional history the sanguine vampire or the donor, one can see why the act of blood consumption is to be considered an experience unto itself, beyond (or at least in addition to) the rush experienced from the metaphysical reaction to the intake of the subtle energies. Granted this experience is not to everyone’s liking and, given that the natural biological and psychological responses stem from innate defenses, this is understandable.

My personal experience with blood rituals is more from the perspective of a magician and a student than that of a vampire, but my study of the meanings and history of blood comes from an intense interest in the human fascination with blood and blood rites. This article is barely a sketch of the topic and I highly recommend independent reading on the subject.

References List

Carrasco, D. (1990). Religions of mesoamerica: Cosmovision and ceremonial centers. In B. H. Earhart (Ed.), Religious traditions of the world: A journey through Africa, North America, Mesoamerica, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, China, and Japan (pp. 107-254). New York: HarperCollins.

Cooke, B. (1983). Sacraments and sacramentality. Connecticut: Twenty-Third Publications.

Grahn, J. (2005). Chapter 13: Narratives: Descent myth and the great flood. Blood, bread, and roses: how menstruation created the world. Retrieved 9/11/06, from http://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/wstudies/grahn/chapt13.htm.

Kumar, N. (2001, June). Ritual implements in Tibetan Buddhism: A symbolic appraisal. Retrieved 9/11/06, from http://www.exoticindiaart.com/article/ritual.

Martos, J. (2001). Doors to the sacred: A historical introduction to sacraments in the Catholic Church (Revised and updated edition). Missouri: Liguori/Triumph.

Ramsland, K. (2002). The science of vampires. New York: Berkley Boulevard.