Blood a Protective.
Blood is naturally closely connected with life. “The flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.” Hence blood comes to be a scarer of demons. In Scott’s Lay the wizard’s book would not open till he smeared the cover with the Borderer’s curdled gore. In Cornwall, the burning of blood from the body of a dead animal is a very common method of appeasing the spirits of disease,45 and the blood sacrifices so prevalent all over the world are performed with the same object. A curious Evil Eye charm is recorded from Allahâbâd. A woman of the Chamâr or carrier caste gave birth to a dead child. Thinking that this was due to fascination, she put a piece of the cloth used at her confinement down a well, having previously enclosed in it two leaves of betel, some cloves, and a piece of the castor-oil plant.46 Here we have, first, a case of well-worship; secondly, the use of betel, cloves, and the castor-oil plant, all scarers of evil spirits; and thirdly, an instance of the use of blood for the same purpose. We have elsewhere noticed the special character attached to menstrual or parturition blood. But blood itself is most effectual against demoniacal influence. There are many cases where blood is rubbed on the body as an antidote to disease. In Bombay some Marhâtas give warmed goat’s blood in cases of piles, and in typhus, or red discoloration of the skin with blotches, the patient is cured by killing a cock and rubbing the sick man with the blood. Others use the blood of the great lizard in cases of snake-bite.47 A bath of the blood of children was once ordered for the Emperor Constantine, and because he, moved by the tears of the parents, refused to take it, his extraordinary humanity was rewarded by a miraculous cure.
Similarly, among the Drâvidians, the Kos drink the blood of the sacrificial bull; the Malers cure demoniacs by giving the blood of a sacrificed buffalo; the Pahariyas, in time of epidemics, set up a pair of posts and a cross beam, and hang on it a vessel of blood.48 So, the Jews sprinkled the door-posts and the horns of the altar with blood, and the same customs prevail among many other peoples.
We shall meet with instances of the same rite when dealing with the blood covenant and human sacrifice. On the same analogy many Indian tribes mark the forehead of the bride with blood or vermilion, and red paint is smeared on the image of the village godling in lieu of a regular sacrifice.