When the Newcastle colliers held their earliest strikes they made compacts by spitting on a stone.  There are still “spitting stones” in the north of Scotland.  When bargains are made in rural districts, hands are spat upon before they are shaken.  The first money taken each day by fishwives and other dealers is spat upon to ensure increased drawings.  Brand, who refers to various spitting customs, quotes Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft regarding the saliva cure for king’s evil, which is still, by the way, practised in the Hebrides.  Like Pliny, Scot recommended ceremonial spitting as a charm against witchcraft.[54] In China spitting to expel demons is a common practice.  We still call a hasty person a “spitfire”, and a calumniator a “spit-poison”.

The life principle in trees, &c., as we have seen, was believed to have been derived from the tears of deities.  In India sap was called the “blood of trees”, and references to “bleeding trees” are still widespread and common.  “Among the ancients”, wrote Professor Robertson Smith, “blood is generally conceived as the principle or vehicle of life, and so the account often given of sacred waters is that the blood of the deity flows in them.  Thus as Milton writes: 

Smooth Adonis from his native rock
Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood
Of Thammuz yearly wounded.

Paradise Lost, i, 450.

The ruddy colour which the swollen river derived from the soil at a certain season was ascribed to the blood of the god, who received his death wound in Lebanon at that time of the year, and lay buried beside the sacred source."[55]

In Babylonia the river was regarded as the source of the life blood and the seat of the soul.  No doubt this theory was based on the fact that the human liver contains about a sixth of the blood in the body, the largest proportion required by any single organ.  Jeremiah makes “Mother Jerusalem” exclaim:  “My liver is poured upon the earth for the destruction of the daughter of my people”, meaning that her life is spent with grief.

Inspiration was derived by drinking blood as well as by drinking intoxicating liquors—­the mead of the gods.  Indian magicians who drink the blood of the goat sacrificed to the goddess Kali, are believed to be temporarily possessed by her spirit, and thus enabled to prophesy.[56] Malayan exorcists still expel demons while they suck the blood from a decapitated fowl.[57]

Similar customs were prevalent in Ancient Greece.  A woman who drank the blood of a sacrificed lamb or bull uttered prophetic sayings.[58]

But while most Babylonians appear to have believed that the life principle was in blood, some were apparently of opinion that it was in breath—­the air of life.  A man died when he ceased to breathe; his spirit, therefore, it was argued, was identical with the atmosphere—­the moving wind—­and was accordingly derived from the atmospheric or wind god.  When, in the Gilgamesh epic, the hero invokes the dead Ea-bani, the ghost rises up like a “breath of wind”.  A Babylonian charm runs: