The term ‘Body and Blood’ in the depth-psychology corpus occupies a nexus where sacramental theology, alchemical symbolism, archaic physiology, and depth-psychological hermeneutics converge. The most theologically explicit treatments appear in John of Damascus, who frames the eucharistic transformation of bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood as an operation of the Holy Spirit that surpasses reason — a supernatural act continuous with God’s original creative energy. From a depth-psychological angle, this sacramental logic is taken up in alchemical commentary: von Franz and Abraham both read ‘blood’ in alchemical texts as a figure for the divine water, the transformative tincture capable of dissolving an old body and generating a new, spiritualized one. Onians grounds the symbolism archaeologically, tracing how blood, wine, fat, and marrow functioned interchangeably as ‘life-liquid’ in archaic Greek and Indo-European thought, with wine explicitly representing the blood/seed of the vine in Dionysian cult. Hillman’s psychosomatic register introduces a further tension: the body as lived fantasy versus the body as mere flesh, a distinction that gives the blood-and-body complex its psychological density. Plato’s Timaeus contributes the physiological substrate — blood as nourishment, seat of soul, and medium of disease — that underlies much later symbolic elaboration. Taken together, the corpus reveals ‘body and blood’ as a master symbol where sacred transformation, physiological vitality, and psychic renewal are inseparable.
if He said, Let there be light and there was light… can He not then make the bread His body and the wine and water His blood?
Damascus grounds the eucharistic transformation of bread and wine into body and blood in the same divine creative power that fashioned the cosmos, arguing that the miracle is continuous with God’s omnipotent Word.
, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2021thesis
how the bread became Christ’s body and the wine and water Christ’s blood. And I say unto thee, ‘The Holy Spirit is present and does those things which surpass reason and thought.’
Damascus locates the eucharistic conversion of bread and wine into body and blood in the pneumatic action of the Holy Spirit, placing the transformation explicitly beyond rational comprehension.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016thesis
The alchemical blood appears in various forms throughout the opus. It first occurs as the blood of death and sacrifice at the opening of the opus, when the old body of the metal… is dissolved or killed in order to be renewed.
Abraham identifies alchemical blood as the symbolic agent of death and renewal throughout the opus, linking it explicitly to Christ’s body and blood as a figure for transformative sacrifice.
, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, 1998thesis
‘its power is a spiritual blood… and it changes the body into spirit… for everything that the soul possesses, the blood possesses also.’
Von Franz documents the alchemical identification of blood with the divine transformative water, showing that spiritual blood was understood to transmute physical body into spirit.
, Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy, 1966thesis
Wine appeared to be the liquid of the seed of the vine and was assimilated to the seed of man. The cult of Dionysos identified with wine was notably phallic.
Onians traces the archaic identification of wine with life-blood and generative seed, providing the mythological substrate for later body-and-blood symbolism in both cult and sacrament.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
blood: its relation to breath and consciousness, 47-9, 61-3, 481-2, to sense of touch, 81, to character, 121-2; represented by wine and food, 218 n. 1, 272 n. 1, 278 n. 2
Onians’ index entry encapsulates his thesis that in archaic European thought blood was the material correlate of consciousness, character, and breath, and was ritually represented by wine and food.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
Thumos is the boiling of the blood around the heart through a desire to retaliate… formed from the seething and boiling of the psyche.
Onians reconstructs the archaic Greek physiology in which blood around the heart is the material seat of thumos, demonstrating the intimate bond between blood, emotional soul, and consciousness.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
miraculous acts, crucifixion, and resurrection all turn on the enigmatic relationship of flesh and body… Our contemporary symptoms force us to enter the flesh in a new way, through the psyche, inwardly, symbolically.
Hillman draws a parallel between the christological mystery of flesh and body in crucifixion and resurrection and contemporary psychosomatic experience, arguing that both require a symbolic, inward approach to embodied life.
, Insearch: Psychology and Religion, 1967supporting
When they have drunk blood, psychai recall relationships on earth. They are filled with sorrow. They do not know what has happened to their relatives but they remember them and enquire about them.
Sullivan shows that in Homeric tradition blood restores psychic capacities to the shades of the dead, establishing blood as the medium that reconnects soul to embodied memory and relational life.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
the dry bones, it might be hoped, receiving life-liquid, might live. Those of which we have fullest account in Homer… are laid in ‘twofold fat’… gathered in unmixed wine and grease.
Onians documents the ritual practice of anointing heroic bones with wine and fat as a means of reinfusing life-liquid, illuminating the archaic logic that links body, blood-surrogates, and resurrection.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
Tisis, revenge, is written into the name of the Erinys titled Tisiphone, ‘Blood-Avenger.’ In other contexts, too, Erinyes haunt possibilities of family bloodshed, or blood shed in relationships bonded by oath.
Padel situates blood within the Greek tragic imagination as the substance that activates the Erinyes and makes kin-violence an inescapable metaphysical event, giving the body-and-blood complex its darkest psychological register.
, In and Out of the Mind Greek Images of the Tragic Self, 1994supporting
Harvey’s crucial demonstration that the blood must circulate combines visible evidence… If the pulse beats 72 times a minute, in one hour the left ventricle will throw into the aorta no less than… 38 stone 8 pounds… It must be the same blood in continuous circulation.
Hillman traces Harvey’s mechanistic revolution, in which the body’s blood becomes a measurable, circulating quantity, as the turning point after which the heart loses its symbolic interiority and becomes a pump.
, The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World, 1992supporting
In Empedocles it is the seat of the physical soul and consciousness. Plato has already described… the composition of marrow, bone, sinew, and flesh; blood is formed directly out of the digested food and contains portions suitable for the nourishment of all the tissues.
Cornford’s commentary on the Timaeus situates Plato within the tradition that makes blood the nutritive medium of the entire body and, in Empedoclean precedent, the material seat of the soul.
, Plato’s cosmology the Timaeus of Plato, 1997supporting
There is a natural order in the human frame according to which the flesh and sinews are made of blood, the sinews out of the fibres, and the flesh out of the congealed substance which is formed by separation from the fibres.
Plato’s Timaeus presents blood as the generative substrate from which the body’s principal tissues are formed, grounding the body-and-blood relation in a cosmological physiology.
, Timaeus, -360aside
Blood, HSUEH: yin fluid that maintains life; mone—
The I Ching glossary identifies blood as the yin fluid of life-maintenance, placing body-and-blood within a Chinese cosmological framework where it carries vitalist and feminine associations.
, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994aside