1001. There is a great deal of evidence for the symbolism of blood as neighborly love. ¹ As a result, blood symbolizes a new will that the spiritual person who has been reborn receives from the Lord. This new will is the same thing as neighborly love, because the new will is formed of that love. Charity — love — is the vital essence itself of the will, or the life of the will. The only possible reason for saying we will something is that we favor or love it. We might say we think something, but that is not the same as willing it, unless the will lies behind the thought.

This new will, which is neighborly love, is the blood. The new will is not ours but is the Lord's in us. And since it is the Lord's, it must never be mixed together with the promptings of our own will, which again are quite foul. That is why the representative church had this proscription against eating flesh in its soul, that is, in its blood, meaning that people were not to mix the two together.

[2] Because blood symbolized charity, it symbolized what was holy; and because flesh symbolized human will, it symbolized what was profane. Since the two, being opposites, are separate, people were forbidden to eat blood. The reason was that the eating of flesh together with blood in those days presented to heaven a picture of profanation, or the intermingling of something sacred and something profane. Such a picture could not help striking the angels of the time with horror. In those days, everything that was happening among members of the church was being turned into a corresponding spiritual representation among the angels, in accord with its inner-sense symbolism.

Since meanings always depend on the individual they apply to, so does the symbolism of blood. In relation to a regenerate spiritual person, blood symbolizes charity, or love for one's neighbor. In relation to a regenerate person of heavenly character, it symbolizes love for the Lord. In relation to the Lord, however, it symbolizes his core human essence and therefore Love itself, that is, his mercy toward the human race. Since blood, then, symbolizes love and anything connected with love, in general it symbolizes heavenly traits, which are the Lord's alone. So in relation to humans, it symbolizes heavenly qualities that we receive from the Lord. The heavenly qualities that a regenerate spiritual person receives from the Lord are heavenly-spiritual ones (discussed elsewhere, by the Lord's divine mercy). ²

[3] This fact — that blood symbolizes heavenly qualities and that in the highest sense it symbolized the Lord's core human essence and so love itself, or his mercy toward the human race — can be seen from the holiness that the representative Jewish religion was commanded to accord blood. On that account it was called the blood of the covenant and was spattered on the people. Along with the anointing oil, it was also spattered on Aaron and his sons. ³ And the blood of every burnt offering and sacrifice was spattered on and around the altar. On these subjects, see Exodus 12:7, 13, 22-23; 24:6, 8; Leviticus 1:5, 11, 15; 4:6-7, 17-18, 25, 30, 34; 5:9; 16:14-15, 18-19; Numbers 18:17; Deuteronomy 12:27. ⁴

[4] The reason the eating of blood was so strictly forbidden was that blood was considered this holy and human will is this profane, and the practice represented the profanation of something holy. Moses says, for instance:

It is an eternal statute throughout your generations, everywhere you live: you shall not eat any fat or any blood. (Leviticus 3:17)

Fat stands for heavenly life, and blood (in this verse) for heavenly-spiritual life.

(A heavenly-spiritual entity is something spiritual that develops out of something heavenly. For example, love for the Lord was the heavenly trait belonging to people in the earliest church, because it was planted in their will. Their heavenly-spiritual possession was the faith that grew out of it, as described in §§30-38, 337, 393, 398. With spiritual people, on the other hand, a heavenly attribute is not possible, since love for others is planted in their intellectual side; they can have only a heavenly-spiritual dimension.)

In the same author:

Any from the house of Israel or from among the immigrants residing in your midst who may have eaten any blood — I will set my face ⁵ against the souls eating blood, and I will cut them off from the midst of their people, because the soul of the flesh is in the blood. And I have given it to you [for use] on the altar, to make atonement over your souls, because the blood itself must atone for the soul. The soul of all flesh is its blood; everyone eating it will be cut off. (Leviticus 17:10-11, 14)

This says explicitly that the soul of flesh is in the blood and that the soul of flesh is the blood — the heavenly aspect, the sacred element, the Lord's possession.

[5] In the same author:

Set yourself firmly against eating blood, because the blood itself is the soul, and you shall not eat the soul with the flesh. (Deuteronomy 12:23, 24, 25)

These verses again show that blood is being called the soul, that is, heavenly life, or a heavenly quality, as represented by the burnt offerings and sacrifices of that religion. The prohibition in Exodus 23:18 and 34:25 against offering the blood of a sacrifice on top of yeast bread ⁶ also represented a ban on mingling any heavenly aspect, which belongs to the Lord — and only what belongs to him is heavenly and sacred — with any distinctly human aspect, which is profane. Anything containing yeast symbolized what was corrupt and tainted.

[6] The reason blood is called soul and symbolizes the holiness of charity, and the reason it represented the holiness of love in the Jewish religion, is that it constitutes the life of the body. Since blood constitutes the life of the body, it is the body's outermost soul, so that we can call it the physical soul, or the vehicle of our physical life. ⁷ And since external objects represented inner attributes in the representative churches, blood represented the soul, or heavenly life.

Footnotes:

1361. Idolatry turned the church into a representative religion, but no one can see this without knowing what it means to be representative. What was represented in the Jewish religion and what is represented in the Word are the Lord and his kingdom and therefore the heavenly qualities of love and the spiritual properties of faith. These and many other things related to them are what is being represented, as is everything having to do with religion.

The things that represent them are either people or various objects that exist in the world or on earth — in short, everything that is perceptible to the senses. In fact there is hardly any perceptible thing that cannot serve a representative role.

A general rule of representation, however, is that it implies nothing about the person or thing that does the representing, only about the phenomenon represented.

[2] For example, every monarch, no matter who it was — in Judah or Israel, even in Egypt and elsewhere — was able to represent the Lord. The monarchy itself of these people was representative. So the Lord could be represented by the worst sovereign of all, such as the pharaoh who set Joseph up over the land of Egypt, or Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon (Daniel 2:37-38), or Saul, or the other monarchs of Judah and Israel, whatever they were like. Their actual anointing (because of which they were referred to as "Jehovah's anointed") involved this representation. ¹

All the priests without exception similarly represented the Lord. Priesthood itself is representative. Priests who were evil and impure represented the Lord as well, because with representative roles there is no implication concerning the character of the actual person.

Not only people played a representative role but animals too, such as all the sacrificial ones. Lambs and sheep represented heavenly qualities; pigeons and turtledoves represented spiritual ones. Rams, he-goats, young cattle, and adult cattle did too, but the heavenly and spiritual qualities they represented were of a lower order.

[3] What is more, not only animate beings played a representative role, as noted, but inanimate objects too. Examples are the altar and even the altar stones, the ark and the tabernacle with all that was in it, the Temple with all that was in it as well (as anyone can recognize), and so the lamps, the loaves of bread, and Aaron's garments. ²

And not only were these items representative but all the rituals of the Jewish religion were too.

In the ancient churches, [which were steeped in symbolism,] symbolic items ³ included all the objects of the senses, such as mountains and hills; valleys, plains, rivers, brooks, springs, and wells; groves of trees; trees in general; and every tree in particular, to the point where each individual tree meant something specific. Later, when the symbolic church ended, such objects became representative. These remarks show what "representative objects" means.

Again, not only humans — without regard to their identity or character — but also animals and inanimate objects were capable of representing heavenly and spiritual attributes (that is, attributes of the Lord's kingdom in the heavens and of the Lord's kingdom on earth). And from this, one can deduce what a representative church is.

[4] Because of the way the representative relationship worked, any activity that met the requirements laid down for ritual appeared holy in the eyes of spirits and angels. This was true, for instance, when the high priest washed with water, wore the priestly garb as he ministered, and stood in front of the burning lamps. It did not matter what he was like, even if he was extremely impure and an idolater at heart. The same was true for the other priests as well. To repeat, when it comes to representative items, they imply nothing about the actual person, only about the quality itself that is being represented, in complete isolation from the person. The quality is just as separate from the person as it was from the adult cattle, young cattle, and lambs that were sacrificed, or from the blood that was poured out around the altar, or from the altar itself, and so on.

[5] This representative religion was established after all inward worship had died out and become not merely shallow but even idolatrous. It was established in order to maintain some connection between heaven and earth, or rather between the Lord and humankind through heaven. This occurred after the bond created by the deeper elements of worship had broken. However, the nature of this connection created only by representative elements will be told later [§§3478-3480, 4311, 8588:5-6, 8788, 9457, 9481, 10500], by the Lord's divine mercy.

Representative meanings do not start till the next chapter, but each and every detail from there on is purely representative. The present verse deals with the circumstances of the forefathers before some of them (and their descendants) came to serve representative roles. The fact that they practiced idolatrous worship is shown above [§1358].

Footnotes: