BLOOD. - The contact of blood, which the experience of primitive peoples considers as the organic element closely bound to life (cf. Lev. 17:14; Deut. 12:23), is held to produce two diametrically opposed effects: one positive and beneficial, the other negative and harmful, depending on its quality and the circumstances in which the contact occurs.
As a vital element, blood is widely used in initiatory rites aimed at strengthening the force of the youth who enters into membership among the adult members of the tribe. Thus among the Arunta (central Australia), after a smearing of red ochre which they regard as the residue of solidified blood, the youths are sprinkled with blood, which is then also sprinkled on the elders so that they may acquire strength. Among the Dayak (Borneo) children up to 10-12 years of age are, for the same purpose, smeared with blood, which is also used there for healing from illness, for the inauguration of a house, and for fertilizing a field for sowing.
But blood can produce harmful effects if it is shed through a wound caused by an accidental cause or by another's violence, in which case expiatory ceremonies are required. And if it is a matter of killings or wounds inflicted on a member of a tribe that considers itself descended from the same ancestor, the vengeance of the shed blood is an obligation that falls to the whole group. For the same reason incest is severely forbidden, since it entails the shedding of ancestral blood; and the killing of a member of one's own family is almost more a suicide than a crime (Aeschylus, Eumenides, 212).
In general the one guilty of shedding another's blood is punished in such a way that the blood must not come out, so as not to provoke new pollutions; that is, by burning, or strangling, or drowning; the Hebrews are forbidden to eat the flesh of strangled animals, that is, whose blood has not entirely flowed out. At the dawn of Christianity the Jewish Christians wanted the Gentile Christians also to observe this prescription (Acts 15:20; 29).
The blood shed in the menstrual flow, in abortion and in the puerperium also produces a harmful effect. For the meaning of blood in the bloody sacrifice, v. SACRIFICIO.