blood drinking

• seal of friendship, acceptance into clan

66:5.22These guard­i­ans of health also sought to in­tro­duce hand­shak­ing in sub­sti­tu­tion for saliva ex­change or blood drink­ing as a seal of per­sonal friend­ship and as a to­ken of group loy­alty. But when out from un­der the com­pelling pres­sure of the teach­ings of their su­pe­rior lead­ers, these prim­i­tive peo­ples were not slow in re­vert­ing to their for­mer health-de­stroy­ing and dis­ease-breed­ing prac­tices of ig­no­rance and su­per­sti­tion.

• seal of friendship, acceptance into clan

70:3.7The cer­e­mony of adop­tion con­sisted in drink­ing each other’s blood. In some groups saliva was ex­changed in the place of blood drink­ing, this be­ing the an­cient ori­gin of the prac­tice of so­cial kiss­ing. And all cer­e­monies of as­so­ci­a­tion, whether mar­riage or adop­tion, were al­ways ter­mi­nated by feast­ing.

• first peace treaties were blood bonds

70:3.10The first treaties of peace were the “blood bonds.” The peace am­bas­sadors of two war­ring tribes would meet, pay their re­spects, and then pro­ceed to prick the skin un­til it bled; where­upon they would suck each other’s blood and de­clare peace.

• decline of

71:1.23The em­bry­onic state was made pos­si­ble by the de­cline of the blood bond in fa­vor of the ter­ri­to­rial, and such tribal fed­er­a­tions were usu­ally firmly ce­mented by con­quest. While a sov­er­eignty that tran­scends all mi­nor strug­gles and group dif­fer­ences is the char­ac­ter­is­tic of the true state, still, many classes and castes per­sist in the later state or­ga­ni­za­tions as rem­nants of the clans and tribes of for­mer days. The later and larger ter­ri­to­rial states had a long and bit­ter strug­gle with these smaller con­san­guineous clan groups, the tribal gov­ern­ment prov­ing a valu­able tran­si­tion from fam­ily to state au­thor­ity. Dur­ing later times many clans grew out of trades and other in­dus­trial as­so­ci­a­tions.

• belief blood was seat of soul gave origin to

84:2.1The woman’s pe­ri­odic hem­or­rhage and her fur­ther loss of blood at child­birth early sug­gested blood as the cre­ator of the child (even as the seat of the soul) and gave ori­gin to the blood-bond con­cept of hu­man re­la­tion­ships. In early times all de­scent was reck­oned in the fe­male line, that be­ing the only part of in­her­i­tance which was at all cer­tain.

• once common cannibalistic practice

89:5.113. Even­tu­ally it pro­gressed to the point where only cer­tain parts or or­gans of the body were eaten, those parts sup­posed to con­tain the soul or por­tions of the spirit. Blood drink­ing be­came com­mon, and it was cus­tom­ary to mix the “ed­i­ble” parts of the body with medicines.

• ancient social brotherhoods based on rite of

89:9.3The an­cient so­cial broth­er­hoods were based on the rite of blood drink­ing; the early Jew­ish fra­ter­nity was a sac­ri­fi­cial blood af­fair. Paul started out to build a new Chris­tian cult on “the blood of the ev­er­last­ing covenant.” And while he may have un­nec­es­sar­ily en­cum­bered Chris­tian­ity with teach­ings about blood and sac­ri­fice, he did once and for all make an end of the doc­trines of re­demp­tion through hu­man or an­i­mal sac­ri­fices. His the­o­logic com­pro­mises in­di­cate that even rev­e­la­tion must sub­mit to the grad­u­ated con­trol of evo­lu­tion. Ac­cord­ing to Paul, Christ be­came the last and all-suf­fi­cient hu­man sac­ri­fice; the di­vine Judge is now fully and for­ever sat­is­fied.

• of sacrificial animals by Mithraics

98:5.4The ad­her­ents of this cult wor­shiped in caves and other se­cret places, chant­ing hymns, mum­bling magic, eat­ing the flesh of the sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals, and drink­ing the blood. Three times a day they wor­shiped, with spe­cial weekly cer­e­mo­ni­als on the day of the sun-god and with the most elab­o­rate ob­ser­vance of all on the an­nual fes­ti­val of Mithras, De­cem­ber twenty-fifth. It was be­lieved that the par­tak­ing of the sacra­ment en­sured eter­nal life, the im­me­di­ate pass­ing, af­ter death, to the bo­som of Mithras, there to tarry in bliss un­til the judg­ment day. On the judg­ment day the Mith­raic keys of heaven would un­lock the gates of Par­a­dise for the re­cep­tion of the faith­ful; where­upon all the un­bap­tized of the liv­ing and the dead would be an­ni­hi­lated upon the re­turn of Mithras to earth. It was taught that, when a man died, he went be­fore Mithras for judg­ment, and that at the end of the world Mithras would sum­mon all the dead from their graves to face the last judg­ment. The wicked would be de­stroyed by fire, and the righ­teous would reign with Mithras for­ever.