Salvete
History of Blood rituals
The power of blood in belief and superstition has often been the subject of ethnographic discussion. Among the Greeks what is striking is, if anything, acertain reticence towards blood magic; there is nothing of a universal blood taboo as in the law of the Jews. Animal sacrifice is the shedding of blood; that the altars become bloody (haimassesthai) is a characteristic of the sacrificial act. On vase paintings there are white-chalked sides of the alatrs that are always shown splashed with blood in testimony to the sacred work. An altar in Didyma is said to be made from the blood of the victims. Significantly, the victims which are pleasing to the Gods are warmblooded animals, mostly larg mamals; fish, though much more important for everyday sustenance, are rearely if ever sacrificed. What counts is the warm, running blood which arouses fear and suspicion. Unbloody sacrifices are described with special emphasis as pure. The sacrificer however, is not in some sense impure, but enjoys a sacred, exceptional status in accordance with the divine ordinance which sanctions and demands the shedding of blood at the sacred pot. Ofcourse today this isn't really necessary unless you use your own blood without killing yourself ofcourse. For this reason a man who sits on or next to a altar cannot be killed or harmed; this would be a perversion of the sacred and would inevitably plunge the whole city into ruin. The asylum of the alatar stands in polar relation to the shedding of blood; the shedding of humn blood constitues the most extreme, yet dangerously similar contrast to the pious work.
In a number of cults human blood is shed. This human sacrifice can be traced back to the barbaric origines as to the dark ages of the Greek history. The image of the Taurian Artemis, which is presided over the human sacrifices in Colchis and was later brought to Greece by Orestes along with Iphigeneia, is mentioned in particular as provoking as such rites. It is said to be preserved in Halai Araphenides in Attica where at the sacrifice for Artemis Tauropolos a man has his throat scratched with a knife or else with Ortheia in Sparta where the epheboi are whipped at the altar. There are sacrificial rituals in which the shedding of blood appears to be carried out for its own sake and noot as the prelude to a meal. These type of blood sacrifices can be found in two extreme situations, before battle and at the burial of the dead; the other context in which they occur is at purification.
valete optime in pace deorum