Bloody Religion?

[Manoah]

“Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.”
― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

I came across this quote in my new Tarot of Vampyres deck, which has a guidebook that surprised me with its spirituality.

First let me say that I think probably we need both water and blood in our religion, but blood (metaphorically as well as literally) gets a bad rap in a lot of modern, liberal, systematic theology.

Let me also note there is a rich history of thick, physical, even bloody worship. For example, Confucius wrote that (sorry, this is just from memory) whoever discovered the secret of the blood sacrifice at the Temple of Heaven would rule China with an iron hand. Visual images of Durga drip with blood as she wears demon heads as a necklace. Even though Judaism rejected pictures and statues of G-d, the temple in Israel must have looked like a slaughter house, and there are other examples of a visceral, substantial worship. For Christians, whether transubstantiation or simply symbolic elements, communion suggests in a powerful sense physically eating the body and drinking the blood of the incarnation.

As for myself, to maintain coherence, I have to kind of compartmentalize my beliefs or put them on different levels. I find myself drawn to images, incense, yoga poses, and other very physical expressions of worship. The extreme forms of many of these could contradict my religious and philosophical beliefs--for example, that there is only one God or that there is no such thing as ESP.

I have to water these "bloody" or thick, physical expressions down at a higher level of philosophy. So I use Perennialism to tell myself that God has many faces. The masks of mythology have an underlying truth. Cultural relativism allows all peoples to be treated with dignity, taken seriously, and considered sacred.

C.S. Lewis found ways to honor the bloody physicality of myth and ritual, finding incarnation to be more than a ghost in the machine.

“When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”
― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

In the Christian context (the only one I know well enough to dive into the necessary depth), spiritual truth can be experienced in something as bloody and crassly physical as the Tarot of Vampyres. According to the Christian story, we have all become undead, disconnected from our divine Source. We have an eternal soul that perishes apart from the blood of Another.

I do know the concept of Atonement and even eating meat is offensive to some--as is tarot and vampire lore to others. My apologies. What is a Perennialist Christian Mystic to do?

 

[Kapalika]

Blood is a regular part of my practice, such as in this sigil I recently made.

That's a crude protection sigil I made a while ago. Hadn't made it in ages and accidentally made it too small so did the best I could. Detail is missing a lot of detail due to that (plus it had been a while since I made the design and I lost the old master copy). I kinda worked fast too as I tried using a new brand of blade and it was a little too good, hence the lines were so thick.

I frequently offer symbols made of blood as well, and then burn them and then use the ashes in later rituals. In my elemental system Fire, Blood and Ashes are three of my 7 "main" elements so it fits; the other elements are represented or invoked as needed. Light and Darkness for example are represented in the ritual chamber itself and lightning is represented either with music or in the invocations itself; the last, Ice, tends to be represented by a very cold drink in the chalice drank between two invocations in my ritual set up.

So to me, the blood is often a central lynch pin of sorts, since it represents the physical self and the physical world which all of these other elements are manifesting in their series of interactions. It is our connection to the carnal, to the sublime mundane and the essence of life by which our Satanic energy manifests. This may not be just blood, but it is represented by it as the most visceral and easily available part of it.

That is, anyways, a quasi-pantheistic, Satanist view

 

[tayla]

Let me also note there is a rich history of thick, physical, even bloody worship.

Yes, religions are savage and primitive. Like animals eating animals. We need to evolve into higher levels of ideas but, sadly, these old religions have encapsulated this gruesomeness and passed it on even into this modern era.

 

[Kapalika]

Yes, religions are savage and primitive. Like animals eating animals. We need to evolve into higher levels of ideas but, sadly, these old religions have encapsulated this gruesomeness and passed it on even into this modern era.

What's so "savage" and "primitive" about blood offerings? Those words reek of Ethnocentrism.

 

[Manoah]

Kapalika, if everyone only follows the path of western abstract and systematic thinking, before we know it, we could end up as disembodied brains floating in saline or even completely digital entities!

 

[Kapalika]

Kapalika, if everyone only follows the path of western abstract and systematic thinking, before we know it, we could end up as disembodied brains floating in saline or even completely digital entities!

Huh? I don't know what you are getting at.

 

[Manoah]

My point is just that if worship is "bloodless"--purely nonphysical and abstract--we might as well be brains without bodies. Offerings, dances, ceremonies, and sacraments are all physical components, and religion has been replete with candles, curtains, altars, washings, incense, etc.