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Blood links to Kali, the only link anywhere in the atlas connecting the "deities and sacred figures" and "the body and its centres" sections at all. Read against each other, the two pages' own descriptions state something close to a reversal.

Given Up, Forbidden, or Turned Into Wine

Blood's own survey of the traditions in this atlas holds the substance sacred while keeping it away from the mouth. The Hebrew Bible identifies the life of the flesh as being in the blood and forbids its consumption on that ground, a rule carried whole into Islamic dietary law. Christian eucharistic theology keeps the reverence but changes the substance: the wine stands as, or becomes, the blood of Christ, so blood itself is never what is actually swallowed. Aztec and Maya tradition sends the blood outward instead, offered through bloodletting and, in the Aztec case, human sacrifice, nourishment given to the sun and the gods rather than taken from them. Forbidden, transformed, or given away: three different rules, and all three keep blood moving away from consumption.

The One Exception, Stated Without Apology

Kali's own description states the exception directly. She emerges in the Devi Mahatmya from the forehead of the angry Goddess and drinks the blood of the demon Raktabija before it can touch the ground, an act of consumption rather than a rule against one. Her devotees do not read the image as an embarrassment needing a softer account; the terror is named as the point, an image of the Goddess as time and death, addressed as Ma, mother, and worshipped most strongly in Bengal, Assam and Kerala, with Kalighat and Dakshineswar as her great centres. The bridge between the two pages is not a shared reverence for blood, which every tradition surveyed here holds sacred in its own way. It is the one point where drinking it, rather than refusing, transforming or pouring it out, is the sacred act itself.

Where To Read More

• BloodBlood, whose own survey of traditions here keeps the substance sacred but away from the mouth
• KaliHindu DeitiesKali, whose own myth has her drinking the blood of Raktabija before it touches the ground