The Concept of Blood

[tree]

I thought this would be the most appropriate place to discuss any
blood rituals with which members are familiar.

This would include the childhood ritual of becoming a Blood Brother;
Passover, Holy Communion...etc.

 

[ezcare]

I thought this would be the most appropriate place to discuss any
blood rituals with which members are familiar.

This would include the childhood ritual of becoming a Blood Brother;
Passover, Holy Communion...etc.

Not only an appropriate place but a good time of the year since Easter and Passover fall in this month. I have a lot of knowledge about these from the Judaeo-Christian perspective, but would appreciate hearing about other blood rituals, especially any from Native Americans (blood brothers?)

 

[tree]

One Blood Ritual that used to kind of freak me out when I was
a child was Holy Communion. Having to walk up to the front of
the church was bad enough...with no breakfast. The pressure of
the concept was pretty heavy, taking the wine.

Then, to be told I shouldn't talk about it.
Blessed wine was wine, as far as I could tell.
But my father said it was "the blood of our Lord" and
that I shouldn't talk about it.

None of this made sense to me.

 

[ezcare]

One Blood Ritual that used to kind of freak me out when I was
a child was Holy Communion. Having to walk up to the front of
the church was bad enough...with no breakfast. The pressure of
the concept was pretty heavy, taking the wine.

Then, to be told I shouldn't talk about it.
Blessed wine was wine, as far as I could tell.
But my father said it was "the blood of our Lord" and
that I shouldn't talk about it.

None of this made sense to me.

Thanks to Pope John 23rd a lot of that nonsense was cleaned up. I remember one of my parochial school classmates saying that he had no problem with calling blessed bread "the body of Christ" but was not convinced those little white waffers were actually bread. And pre John23rd, wine was never part of the Holy Communion ritual. Only Church dignataries and clergy received wine as part of the Eucharistic celebration.

 

[tree]

This was High Church Episcopalian. [Church of England]
Everybody drank from the same chalice.

And the 'bread' always seemed to me to be
goldfish food in a wafer shape, instead of flakes.

I am very pleased later to go to an Apostolic Church
that used real bread that the pastor's wife baked.
I donated whole wheat flour from white berries for
her to do that.

They used individual thimble-sized glasses for the
wine and no one mentioned transubstantiation.

I really don't know where my father was coming
from with that in the first place because when there
was left over blessed wine, the vicar and a member
of the altar guild 'had to' drink the remainder.

Couldn't leave blessed wine---nobody was calling it
blood----around.

 

[tree]

First blood.
Are there any hunters around here?

Who gets the deer where you live?
The one who draw blood/injures the animal?
Or the one who ends its life?
----
I think I have seen on local news that happy old "First Blood"
tradition of wiping the animal's blood on the face of the lucky
novice hunter. Kids deer hunting. Not the English custom of
rubbing the fox's blood, since fox hunting is not as big here
as in England.

 

[ezcare]

First blood.
Are there any hunters around here?

Who gets the deer where you live?
The one who draw blood/injures the animal?
Or the one who ends its life?
----
I think I have seen on local news that happy old "First Blood"
tradition of wiping the animal's blood on the face of the lucky
novice hunter. Kids deer hunting. Not the English custom of
rubbing the fox's blood, since fox hunting is not as big here
as in England.

I am a native of Pennsylvania where deer hunting was always big and still is a right of passage for many teenage boys. However, I do not recall any hunters there wiping the animal's blood on the face of the lucky novice hunter.
I now live in Alabama and just recently heard a father describe this ritual. Since many of the Southern States have a larger proportion of people with English ancestors, it would seem that the fox blood custom was continued here by substituting deer for the fox.

 

[tree]

Some kids I knew tried to do a blood brother ritual.
It was less than impressive.
They picked off scabs from mosquito bites to mingle blood.

How is it that I can take a topic as seemingly charged with drama
as 'blood rituals' and take it to ludicrously mundane levels?

 

[ezcare]

Some kids I knew tried to do a blood brother ritual.
It was less than impressive.
They picked off scabs from mosquito bites to mingle blood.

How is it that I can take a topic as seemingly charged with drama
as 'blood rituals' and take it to ludicrously mundane levels?

Blood rituals have a lot more curbside appeal than blood baths ;-)

 

[tree]

Last week I read some articles about blood baths.
Not massacres. Bathing in blood.
I am not posting the link to the one about the vegetarian model
who is less than 25 years old and believes she must bath in
pig blood to insure her beauty. That was pretty stupid looking
to me.

This has some information about bathing in blood.
Would you take a blood bath to boost potency, restore beauty or hold back ageing?

Apparently one of those Kardashian females underwent a so-called
'blood bath' procedure for her looks. Something about separating her
blood/platelets and injecting her with the results. Fortunately, I seem
to be unable to find that item today.

 

[tree]

Making bricks from blood seems Egyptian, somehow.
It's animal blood in this article.

If it were human blood, then I'd think it seemed Nazi.
Bricks Made With the Blood of Slaughtered Cattle

 

[tree]

 

[dragonwolf]

Animal sacrifice is a part of my religion. It's really not as exciting as outsiders think. It's pretty much just the harvest of an animal done in a ritualistic manner. The animal is then processed, and the meat is cooked and most of the rest is allocated for use in some way. The parts that we can't really use (skull, brain, eyes, spine, etc) are given to the land spirits. We eat the meat and freeze leftovers for the next holy day feast.

Regarding hunting, I haven't heard of the first blood thing, though my husband and I plan to offer the field strippings of our first kill of each season/set/area to the land spirits (the subsequent strippings we'll save for our dogs).

Blood bonding rituals aren't unheard of in my religion, though they're not particularly common. They have huge long-term ramifications, since they're essentially unbreakable vows, and with a hell of a precedent (Odin and Loki are blood brothers, despite Loki having been excommunicated, and that oath remains upheld, even while they're actively fighting one another).

The details of the procedure vary depending on the historical source. The method I recall involves drawing blood and mixing it on the ground. I know, mundane...

 

[tree]

@dragonwolf

How does that work?
Sacrificing an animal....
What is it supposed to do for you?
What is it supposed to do for the animal?

 

[Mia]

First blood.
Are there any hunters around here?

Who gets the deer where you live?
The one who draw blood/injures the animal?
Or the one who ends its life?

The native village I live in has a large group of indigenous hunters of all ages. Hunters are from the bear and turtle clans. There is a lottery to see who hunts from year to year for each clan. So many moose and deer per year, per clan.
Hunters who win the lotteries have access to one deer and moose per hunter, you can win a lottery but not find an animal that year. The venison is divided up among the members of the band, the hunter who kills the animal will have more venison than the people who do not hunt. More is given to families with children and the elderly. The blood rituals are sacred to the people who perform them. It's been suggested that I don't divulge them. And although I'm a clan member I must abide by their decisions related to this.

 

[dragonwolf]

@dragonwolf

How does that work?
Sacrificing an animal....
What is it supposed to do for you?
What is it supposed to do for the animal?

Heh... That's a complex topic, because everything in heathenry is complex and nuanced.

Here's a pretty good primer on it:
Why Animal Sacrifice?

In short, sacrificing is a gift to the gods and the community, which is hugely important to heathen culture.

 

[tree]

I was really asking for your
point of view on it, but thanks
for the reading material.

 

[Joshua the Writer]

I am pretty sure that I think about the symbolism of blood more than any sane person would. Or just imagining the red stuff either in a jar or used as a paint or something. For me, I like how it symbolizes both positive and negative things.

The positive: health, life, love, and passion.

The negative: war, violence, death, and trauma.

I think there's just something so beautiful about this sanguine duality, as somebody who has lost a bit of blood due to self harm.

 

[Jumpinbare]

I lost (gave) several gallons of my AB- blood over the years

 

[Rodafina]

It makes sense to me that some of us would have a fascination with such an integral component of Life. We are not alone in considering it:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3065807/