Why Blood?

What has caused such a deep-seated affinity between worship, the things we worship and blood?

A deeper, more historical explanation may be the most primitive of realizations:

• Humans are born of women and the birth has obvious connections with the blood and fluids of birth
• The cessation of menses during pregnancy could be interpreted as the creation of life from blood
• Loss of blood often equaled loss of life
• Blood is precious stuff
• Material blood ties were obvious
• Infants received their nourishment from their mothers milk for probably at least three years, so were very much attached to their mothers physically as well as psychologically.
• The easiest concepts to share with others would be in the context of one's relationship with one's mother
• A human's first conceptual stage was the concrete thinking of actual feeling, touching and doing to understand.
• A feeling of self and being more than the body is probably a very basic
• The dead returned to the earth (by carrion or flies, fire and/or burial in soil or water)
• The human mind may pattern the cycle of material and spiritual/soul/self identity recycling by a Mother Earth
• It would follow, that to be in relationship with one's Earth Mother, one or one's clan would "act out" that relationship
• All life comes from The Mother Earth and returns to that Mother to be born again
• To build a confidence and confirm this belief, giving up one most treasured gifts and lives would be deemed acceptable
• Some believe that men wanted to be like women and bleed life-creating blood and that may have been the actual beginning of human sacrifice
• Death might not even be a bad thing, and being a gift (sacrificed) or to become a surrogate god/dess was a privilege and honor (this was the beginning mindset on the small scale - not the later fear-based religious slaughter of captives that some religious societies engaged in)
• Blood, the stuff of life could also be the stuff of rebirth, renewal, blessing and connectedness

  See: | The Evolution of Blood Substitutes for Sacrifice and Grounding |