From immemorial times, blood has had great significance, ritually and esoterically. It has been used to imitate rain in rain-making ceremonies; smeared on the wood-work of houses to appease the tree spirits; used by magicians for evil purposes and so on. Religious fundamentalists such as Jehovah’s Witnesses forbid the “eating of blood” and its use for ritualistic purposes is frequently described in the Christian Holy Bible.

Helena P. BLAVATSKY (CW VIII:181) writes, “‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves’ [John, vi, 53], can never be understood or appreciated at its true occult value, except by those who hold some of the seven keys, and yet care little for St. Peter. These words, whether said by Jesus of Nazareth, or Jeshua Ben-Panthera, are the words of an INITIATE. They have to be interpreted with the help of three keys — one opening the psychic door, the second that of physiology and the third that which unlocks the mystery of terrestrial being, by unveiling the inseparable blending of theogony with anthropology. It is for revealing a few of these truths, with the sole view of saving intellectual mankind from the insanities of materialism and pessimism, that mystics have often been denounced as the servants of Antichrist, even by those Christians who are most worthy, sincerely pious and respectable men.”

Blavatsky also writes, “The circulation of Life, Prāṇa, through the Body is by way of the Blood. It is the vital Principle in us, Prāṇic rather than Prāṇa, and is closely allied to Kāma and to the Linga-Śarīra. The essence of the Blood is Kāma, penetrated by Prāṇa, which is universal on this plane. When Kāma leaves the Blood it congeals. So that the blood may be regarded as Kāma-Rūpa, the ‘form of Kāma’ in a sense. While Kāma is the essence of the Blood, its red corpuscles are drops of electric fluid, the perspiration oozing out of every cell of the various organs and caused to exude by electrical action. They are the progeny of the Fohatic principle” (CW XII:699-700).

Gottfried de PURUCKER wrote about the symbolic significance of blood in an article on the Eucharist. The drinking of blood through the wine and the eating of flesh through the cereal were taken in the mystical sense by the Dionysiacs. Blood meant cosmic vitality or Jīva, the life. “The blood became the symbol for the life of the Christ, the Christ’s life, the Christ’s vitality, the divine vitality in individual man which transformed him and raised him so as to become at one with the Christ or with the Buddha” (Studies in Occult Philosophy, Pasadena: T.U.P., 1945, p. 79).

P.S.H

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