Blood!
By M.E. Brines
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 by M.E. Brines
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Blood on the face in the mirror tells a man it’s time to change razor blades. Blood on her sheets tells a girl she’s become a woman.
Blood is what gives you that panicky feeling when you feel wetness and your hand comes away stained red.
Blood can often bring back unpleasant memories: the coppery taste of a split lip from a fight in sixth grade. That sluggish drip down the back of your throat from the nosebleed that just won’t quit. The tackiness of hands coated in blood as it clots and dries.
Blood influences us in every area of life and has for millennia been a decisive factor in history and culture. Its effects range from the mundane to the cosmic, far beyond its prevalence in horror movies and literature.
I grew up on a farm and helped my father with slaughtering. I remember a time, hands coated in blood to both elbows, wearing the sticky mess in the hot summer sun like a pair of familiar work gloves. The smell of gallons of fresh blood soaking into the warm earth has a scent like no other.
And the odor of the not so fresh dead is memorable also in its own way. No one who has ever stumbled across a carcass left lying for a week in the sun of an Arizona summer will ever forget it. I was in seventh-grade and I can still see the wriggling maggots swarming over the dog’s hairy coat. The odor is seared into my memory. But I digress. My subject is blood, not death, although the two are intimately related.
“The life of the flesh is in the blood,” states the Holy Bible. That passage in Leviticus goes on to quote God himself that “I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.” (Leviticus 17:11)
Hebrews 9:22 restates the matter even clearer: “almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood (there) is no remission (of sins.)
Blood sacrifice was an essential rite of many ancient religions and once played a central role in many religions still common today.
Ancient Judaism once revolved around animal sacrifices, which were performed in the temple in Jerusalem where animals were slaughtered by the thousands daily to atone for the sins of the people.
Modern Judaism has completely eliminated this practice, once the focal point of their religion. Perhaps that is why now instead of the parting of the Red Sea or the death of Egypt’s first born, the most supernatural power ever demonstrated by faithful Jews these days is their ability to suffer through a long-winded sermon by a rabbi and then survive a fellowship time swollen with coffee and cholesterol-laden treats. Except for occurring on Saturday, a contemporary synagogue service is hardly distinguishable anymore from that of a “Christian” church.
But Christianity is all about the blood, isn’t it? In the old days we sang hymns about the power in the blood, and the blood we meant was that of Jesus.
The writer of Hebrews explaining how Christianity was the culmination of the ancient ceremonial customs of the Jewish religion wrote, ”Now when these things were thus ordained, the priests went always into the first (outer) tabernacle, accomplishing the service of God. But into the second (the Holy of Holies) went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people.” (Hebrews 9:6-7)
He further explained how Jesus’ death upon the cross at the hands of the Romans provided the blood whereby Christ, in the heavenly tabernacle, paid the price for our sins. That bloody murder has been celebrated for 2,000 years in the ceremony of the Mass or Holy Communion where wine plays the part of Christ’s blood. The Spanish word for blood, sangre, also refers to a type of wine, sangria, bloodwine, also an important part of Satanic and other occult ceremonies.
According to Catholic theology the wine served in the Mass actually becomes the blood of Christ through the “magic” of transubstantiation. This has provided fodder for charges by enemies through the centuries that Christians engage in ritual cannibalism. (Although if I had known about transubstantiation when I was a kid, church might have been a lot more interesting.)
Today, of course, those grotesque old hymns about fountains “filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel’s veins” are rarely heard anymore. And most protestant churches have long since replaced alcoholic wine with pasteurized grape juice. Mormons typically don’t even use juice, preferring a symbolic portion of plain water.
Meanwhile, the descendants of Christians who once stood valiant for the faith struggling against the encroachments of medieval Islam, crusaders who fought against the evils of slavery, for prison reform in the 19th century and civil rights in the 1950s, have retreated back into their churchy bastions where their leadership rails against same-sex marriage or Hollywood’s latest pandering.
The legions of young men charging into combat with the Battle Hymn of the Republic on their lips or braving a cannibal cook pot to spread the Gospel and Western medicine in pagan lands have been replaced by dour-faced old ladies scandalized by tattoos and belly button piercings. It’s as if along with the blood, all the supernatural power has also been drained out of the church.
Although those church ladies would be happy to know that the same portion of Scripture in Leviticus that warns against tattooing also condemns the eating of blood, clear support from the word of God for their universal dislike of vampires, Goths and anybody who dresses in black. (This in spite of the fact the pilgrims dressed in black.)
Scripture declares: “Whatsoever soul it be that eateth any manner of blood, even that soul shall be cut off from his people.” (Leviticus 7:26-27)
This is probably why vampires are not welcome in church, although that prohibition is difficult to square with the consumption of blood sausage, a traditional dish unfamiliar to most Americans but quite common throughout “Christian” Europe from Ireland to Russia and Scandinavia to Spain.
Blood sausage is animal blood cooked with fillers until it congeals, then used to stuff sausages. The British call it “black pudding,” not to be confused with the Dungeons & Dragons monster of the same name. And D&D is something church ladies also heartily disapprove of.
Another thing the church ladies disapprove of is Harry Potter. In the Harry Potter series blood is an important sub-theme, the non-magic capable Muggles being contemptuously referred to as “mud-bloods” by some of the less savory characters. Harry’s mixed blood parentage holds him up for contempt by the purebloods, demonstrating that some of the more esoteric beliefs of the Nazis would definitely be agreeable to the “Death Eaters” in the series. (The stylish black uniforms decorated with a silver skull motif worn by Hitler’s SS also illustrate the two groups also have similar taste in clothing.)
Some believe the inner circle of Himmler’s SS actually were modern-day wizards in black robes. If the blood sacrifice of a single virgin was thought to bring prosperity to an entire tribe for the coming year, what diabolical benefits would the sacrifice of millions purchase? Enough for a middle-sized European nation to conquer half a continent in only two years and then hold out for four more against the combined military power of the rest of the world? Perhaps that was the real motivation behind the Holocaust?
And speaking of sacrifices, in ancient times it was common to swear over an animal sacrifice a “blood oath” to make a contract binding on both parties. The understanding was that anyone breaking the oath would have to pay in blood. The Hittite word for blood was Ishar, the same as their word for both “oath” and “bond.”
We see this illustrated graphically in Genesis chapter 15 verses 7-21, in the covenant God made with Abraham granting him the Promised Land. The modern nation of Israel was founded in 1948 based directly on this 4,000-year old blood oath. That probably resulted in more violence in the last hundred years than anything but the Nazis’ belief in the superiority of Aryan blood.
In the First World War Imperial Germany fought for “blood and iron.” Twenty years later their sons fought to establish the superiority of their Aryan blood over the “lesser races.” They were defeated by the combined efforts of the “subhuman Slavs” of the Soviet Union and of the United States, who they considered a “mongrel nation.” (But every breeder knows that hybrids are always healthier and stronger than purebreds.)
While there are different blood types: A, B, AB and O, these do not correlate to different races as the Nazis might have supposed. Each of those blood types is represented in every tribe and nation on earth, with O being the most common and AB the least.
Transfusion of different types of blood can result in severe and sometimes fatal health problems, but some blood types are compatible. Someone with type O is the “universal donor.” Their blood can be transfused into anyone of any blood type with no ill effects. A person with type AB is a universal receptor and can receive any blood type with no ill effect. (Would vampires be type AB?)
Another mingling of different bloods is called “blood play,” a kinky rite performed by Gothic vampire wannabes who cut each other and suck at each other’s wounds, forging a deep karmic bond between their souls (and perhaps a little something more, considering the frightening diseases that can be spread through such contact.)
A less drastic mingling occurs when young boys imitate the Indians of the frontier by pricking their thumbs and pressing them together to become blood brothers, meaning they now have a tie that binds them as closely as “blood” relatives.
We say blood is thicker than water, the blood referring to family connections, also known as bloodlines. The quality of a person’s blood was once thought to determine their suitability for higher positions in society, marking the difference between the aristocrats that were made to rule, over the rest of us.
Medieval “bluebloods” married into other noble families to preserve and extend these blood ties. Such inbreeding eventually leads to genetic problems most graphically illustrated by the last direct heir to the throne of Imperial Russia. The obsession of his parents with the “mad” monk Rasputin and his ability to treat the Crown Prince’s hemophilia distracted them from managing the upheaval that led directly to the Bolshevist seizure of power.
The Russian Revolution led to a phenomenal amount of bloodshed, not only in Russia but other communist nations of the world as diverse as China and Cuba and Mozambique. In the 1970s a third of the population of Cambodia perished in a communist bloodbath, many being killed for no more reason than they wore spectacles or possessed a college degree. These “political” slaughters are referred to as “purges,” the same term used by Renaissance physicians to describe the bloodletting they performed to (supposedly) restore their patients to health.
The theory was an excess of blood or other body fluids was a direct cause of illness; therefore relieving the excess would restore the patient. This treatment was what killed George Washington (and many others as well.)
Concerning other deaths brought about by issues of blood, blood oaths are sworn by members of secret societies like the Masons, whose members are promised a grisly death if they reveal lodge secrets. The exact details of that oath I can’t reveal or I will have my throat cut across, my tongue torn out by its roots and buried in the rough sand of the sea where the tide ebbs and flows twice in twenty-four hours.
The Mormon Church used to have its inner circle “temple Mormons” swear a similar oath which has since been discontinued, perhaps a move toward the same sanitization of religion that has emasculated other blood-based religions like Judaism and Christianity.
The Bush family illustrates where the blood oaths of secret societies and the bloodlines of prominent families coincide. That family includes a recent President, who was once governor of Texas, and his brother, the governor of Florida (a fact that came in quite handy in the disputed election of 2000.) Their father was in turn, a congressman, head of the CIA, Vice President and then President.
His father was scientific advisor to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman as well as a founding member of the Majestic-12 committee of Roswell Incident UFO fame. And HIS father originally organized the Federal Reserve banking system. All were members of the “secret” society Skull and Bones in their Harvard undergraduate days. Often believed to be “tools of the Illuminati and eastern establishment international bankers,” four successive generations of Bushes each in positions of great power and influence makes one wonder, who exactly is the tool of who?
You can see from my rambling that blood was a direct cause of both world wars, the Holocaust, Cold War, the current strife in the Middle East as well as the decline of the influence of traditional religion in Western Civilization.
From the ancient blood oath sworn between Abraham and Jehovah to those sworn by modern secret societies that pull strings unseen in our economy and government, the magic of blood continues to have a vital influence on the history and culture of our supposedly modern and secular world.
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If you liked this book (or at least appreciated having your belief-system thoughtfully challenged) you might also be interested in reading:
The Truth About Conspiracy Theories
The Knights Templar - Medieval Cult or Modern Nemesis?
Self-defense Against Alien Abduction
All of those and more by M.E. Brines are available from Smashwords
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