Blood
BLOOD. Among the religions of the world one finds many ambivalent or contradictory attitudes toward blood. Blood is perceived as being simultaneously pure and impure, attractive and repulsive, sacred and profane; it is at once a life-giving substance and a symbol of death. Handling blood is sometimes forbidden, sometimes mandatory, but usually dangerous. Rites involving blood require the intervention of individual specialists (warriors, sacrificers, circumcisers, butchers, or executioners) and always the participation of the group or community.
In many primitive societies, blood is identified as a soul substance: of men, of animals, and even of plants. The Romans said that in it is the sedes animae ("seat of life"). In pre-Islamic times, Arabs considered it the vegetative, liquid soul that remains in the body after death, feeding on libations. For the Hebrews, "the life of the flesh is in the blood" (Lv. 17:4).
The spilling of blood is often forbidden. This ban applies to certain categories of humans and animals: sacrificial victims, royalty, game, and so on. The Iroquois, the Scythians (Herodotus, 4.60–61), and the old Turco-Mongols, as well as the rulers of the Ottoman empire, forbade shedding the blood of persons of royal lineage. There is reason to believe that the Indian Hindu religions that have abolished sacrifices, and the feasting that goes with sacrifice, have done so more to avoid the shedding of blood than to comply with the dogmas of nonviolence and reincarnation.
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