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:

398. To see that going out from before Jehovah [or from Jehovah's face] means being cut off from the good inherent in a loving faith, review the comments above at verse 14 [§387]. The meaning of his living in the land of Nod as living outside truth and goodness is established by the meaning of the [Hebrew] word nod: to be a wanderer and fugitive. ¹ And being a wanderer and fugitive means being deprived of truth and goodness, as you can also see above [§382].

Living to the east of Eden means living by the dictates of the intellectual part of the mind, where before love had reigned supreme; it is also living by the dictates of the rational mind, where before charity had reigned supreme. This is established by earlier statements [§§98, 101] concerning the symbolism of Eden's east, in which the east is identified with the Lord, and Eden, with love.

Among the people of the earliest church, the mind, composed of will and intellect, was unified. The will part of the mind was everything, with the result that the intellect belonged to the will. This was because they made no distinction between love (in the will) and faith (in the intellect), since love was everything and faith belonged to love. After faith was detached from love, however, as it was by those referred to as "Cain," the will no longer ruled in any form. But because in that kind of mind the intellect ruled in place of the will — that is, faith ruled in place of love — it says that Cain lived to the east of Eden. This was due to the singling out of faith (as just described) by the mark put on it to preserve it for the use of the human race.

Footnotes: