Bleeding for Martin

Cockerel standing on top of the sun gate, on the border between the darkness and light, between the land of the dead (where sun spends night) and the land of the living (where sun spends day). Medieval (?) standing stone, Bosnia...

In the old Irish calendar, the solar year was divided into two parts: the dark part (Nov-Apr) and the light part (May-Oct). The day that marked the end of the light part of the year and the beginning of the dark part of the year was the first of November. Samhain...

But because in the Irish calendar the day started at sunset, Samhain is celebrated  at the sunset of the October 31, on Halloween...And just like the day started with the evening, in the Irish calendar, year started with the beginning of the dark period, on Samhain...

Now until very recently, in Ireland, the practice in many places was to kill a cockerel on "Ould Halloweve" night, the night prior to St. Martin ’s feast day on the 11th of November.

The date for "Ould Halloweve", or old Halloween, came about as a result of the removal of ten days from the calendar when the Gregorian calendar replaced the Julian in 1582...

Here is the interesting bit. The killing of the cockerel was known as "the bleeding". The bleeding was done by cutting the neck, or more usually by slitting the head of the bird along the comb and then hanging it to allow the blood to fall on the ground or to be gathered in a jar...

The blood was then sprinkled in all four corners of the house (kitchen if house had more than one room) and across the main threshold, in the belief that this protected the home from evil or "bad luck".

When the blood was not sprinkled in this manner it was daubed in the shape of a cross on the front and back doors while saying, "I shed this blood in honour of God and St. Martin to bring us safe from all illnesses and disease during the year"...

The rest of the blood was collected and used to make a Sign of the Cross on the residents foreheads, again as a protective talisman.

So this was not just "killing of a cockerel to make dinner". This was a blood sacrifice. That this is the case can be seen from the ethnographic data collected around Ireland in the 1930's. I particularly love this story from county Kerry:

So it seems that "the bleeding" was an obligatory blood sacrifice. It was strictly observed that bleeding must be done between Nov. 1st and the eve of the feast, or on the Vigil, as it was said: Martin will accept before his feast but not after it".

But blood sacrifice to whom? To St Martin? Well, no, of course not. To the dead? Samhain eve, Halloweve, Halloween, was in the Irish tradition the day of the dead...

Irish believed that on that night, the barrier between our world and the world of the dead became so thin, that the dead could come back to our world.

And the dead looooove blood. It's their favourite drink, because it makes them feel alive again...I wrote about this in my post "Blood red vine" in which I talked about why red vine is used in mortuary rituals... 

That this is indeed the case can be seen from the identical ritual which is performed on St Mrata's day in Serbia. In Serbia Samhain was replaced by two Holy Days: Mitrovdan (St Martin's day) and Mratindan (St Mrata's) day.

Both days mark the beginning of winter and the beginning of the dark part of the year, as the Old Serbian calendar, just like the old Irish calendar, divided the solar year into the dark part (Nov - Apr) and the light part (May - Nov). 

More about this in my post "Two Crosses".

And on the day of St Mrata, Serbs used to slaughter a cockerel on the house doorstep. 

After the cockerel is slaughtered, a hair from every animal in the household is placed in its beak.

The beak is then tied with a red thread and is hanged over the door or is buried under the doorstep to protect the house and its animals from the evil spirits. The wings and sometimes the head were hanged on the cauldron chain over the fire. I talked about this in my post "Verige".

Both the door and particularly the doorstep and the fire place are in Serbian tradition closely linked with the cult of the dead and are places believed to be inhabited by the spirits of the dead ancestors.

So slaughtering the cockerel on the doorstep is literal blood sacrifice to the dead on their altar. This is the equivalent of the Irish custom of marking the doors with sacrificed cockerel's blood.

Burying the cockerel's head under the doorstep with the hairs of all the animals from the household is clearly a panspermia (mixed sacrifice), a type of sacrifice which was in Serbia offered to family ancestors and to the ancestor of all Serbs, Giving God, Dabog...

The fact that the sacrifice was given to the hearth is the equivalent to the Irish sprinkling cockerels blood only in the room with the hearth. But what about the Irish custom of sprinkling the cockerel's blood in the corners?

Well in Serbian mythology, corners are also seen as places where ancestors gather. During Christmas dinner, which was in Serbia seen as "meal eaten together with the ancestors", walnuts, symbol of fertility was thrown into each corner of the house, for the dead...

Now here is something very interesting. Serbian ancestral deity Dabog has another name: Hromi Daba. In several of my posts I talked about the similarities between the Serbian Hromi Daba and the Irish Chrom Dubh...

One of the similarities is that both gods were in the past offered Human Sacrifices...On Samhain...As thanksgiving for the bountiful harvest which had just finished...

Now remember that in Serbian mythology, cockerel sacrifice is a replacement for a human sacrifice...Particularly when it comes to agricultural rituals. I talked about this in my post "Cock bashing"...

And knowing that St Martin's day is just another Christianised Samhain, when we "bleed cockerel for Martin" who are we sacrificing really and to whom?