Researching this series has shown me that no human behavior is more hidden or misunderstood than offering sacrifice, both animal and human. In Part I, I'll demonstrate that blood sacrifice is part of a heritage almost all religions share.
Part I - Our Bloody Past
The act of ritual murder is probably as old as we are. Throughout the ages, people sacrificed when they needed something. Our ancestors often gave up the best they had, their first-born, to save themselves. Cities and cultures have been built on blood. To the Greeks, offering humans and animals was "as old as the moon." It is a tradition so pervasive that one anthropologist suggests calling our species Homo Necans (Human Killer) instead of Homo Sapiens (Human Knower). Blood sacrifice was a powerful method of talking with the gods and remains an act of extreme piety that challenges our modern idea of morality.
Modern conditioning might bring forth the response of revulsion, of sacrifice being an act of savagery. While I researched this rite, the first word that came to me was "animal," which is the wrong response. Some animals are predators, but none relinquish their first-born to a pit of fire or choose a scapegoat to carry their guilt. Sacrifice is at the root of America's Judeo-Christian culture, whether we admit it or not. Even after the Jews abolished human sacrifice, they were accused of continuing it for hundreds of years. Christians receive salvation through the sacrifice of Christ, and it's been suggested that the church burned heretics as blood-offerings, to win forgiveness from God.
Most societies have buried their traditions. Farmers began offering the best of their harvest instead of a child. Bloody remains, meant for food, are shrink-wrapped in plastic. When your parents spoke of sacrifices, they were usually the financial kind. Nowadays, we leap over the Beltaine fire rather than toss in one of our own. When was the last time a drunken stranger called John Barleycorn was plowed under to fertilize your fields?
Human sacrifice was common in India until the British banned it in the 19th century. When Maharishi Mahesh Yogi introduced the Vedas to a new generation, he called their references to human and animal sacrifice merely symbolic. In fact, these texts recommend human sacrifice to bring wealth and immortality. Like the Druids, Greeks, Aztecs and Israelites, the Hindus would humbly offer humans as the foundation for a temple, to win victory in battle or to end famine.
Around the world, sacrifice rituals reenacted war or the hunt, but the purpose was never frivolous. The results of the sacrifices were salvation: Rains came; crops were saved; the enemy would retreat. Sacrifice forced a community to reach a consensus, either through positive results or fear.
In "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, New England villagers draw lots each summer, stoning the winner to bring a good harvest. "Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon." An old farmer scorns the young ones who talk of giving up the sacrifice. "A pack of crazy fools... first thing you know, we'll all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns." The modern victim does not go down quietly, screaming "It's not fair!"
No human behavior is more hidden or misunderstood than offering sacrifice, both animal and human.
In real sacrifices of the past, victims might have drawn lots or volunteered for the honor. Prepared for this holy event, they believed their life would guarantee the health of the entire community. The ancient sacrifice of the king, while sparing the queen, was the ultimate act of fertility. Later, he would save his skin with substitutes, offering his children, or prisoners and heretics.
The Romans and Aztecs held yearly festivals honoring a mock-king. He enjoyed the privileges of a monarch and went without a struggle. Only later, as the original intent was lost, would victims disagree.
In Patrick Tierney's study of modern sacrifice in the Andes, The Highest Altar, he offers some history in hopes of making modern South American practices easier to understand. An 85-year-old Mapuche shaman laments that her village suffers more earthquakes and tidal waves since "we stopped sacrificing orphans." Her attitude is shared by others in her village in southern Chile. Tierney journeys to the Andes to study the sacrifice of a young girl, buried alive on a mountain top 500 years ago. His shock at learning that human sacrifice is still practiced is only mitigated by the similarities he finds between the shamans of Chile and the Israelites. The animals and humans the Mapuche offer their mountain and water spirits are mirrored by the offerings the Israelites once made to an angry storm-god called Yahweh.
A Mapuche shaman, or machi, learns from the spirits of water, mountains or the dead. A circle of power exists between the machi, their victims and the mountains. Without irrigation, the Mapuche depend on rain. Mountains spirits provide a link with all water.
If water is angry, it must be fed. The spirits of warriors were buried atop one mountain to help tame the ocean and prevent floods. Children sacrificed by their families became saints and dwell in volcanoes to calm the serpents of seismic destruction.
Animals must be offered each year, but sheep's blood can't always prevent disasters. The last known child sacrifice occurred in 1960, when earthquakes and tidal waves devastated South America. The machi who fed blood to the ocean after removing the arms of a small boy is still hated and feared. She carries the guilt for those who attended the sacrifice but still won't admit their involvement.
Like the Mapuche, the Israelites once climbed mountains to talk with God. When the Jewish reformers of the 7th century BC campaigned to suppress human sacrifice, they began by killing the shaman-priests who performed these rites on their own altars. They destroyed hill-shrines identical to the high-mountain shrines still used by shamans in South America. The Mosaic Law received from a mountain now made bloody Moses a heretic. Animal sacrifice was confined to the temple, and human sacrifice forbidden.
Hyam Maccoby in The Sacred Executioner sees inconsistencies in the story of Cain, who becomes the first Sacred Executioner, the one who performs the dirty work to bring about the desired effect. In the case of Cain, he's cursed to wander, but ends up building the first city. His sacrifice was a success.
Maccoby cites other cases of Old Testament characters being robbed of their true intentions. Yahweh is transformed from a horned storm-god to the loving God of Hillel. He also makes the controversial claim that the Judaic suppression of human sacrifice later led to anti-Semitism, when the early Christian church, led by Paul, revived the ultimate sacrifice in the person of Jesus. If the Crucifixion was the final human sacrifice, then the "blame" for the murder of Jesus was thrust upon the Jews.
An 85-year-old Mapuche shaman laments that her village suffers more earthquakes and tidal waves since "we stopped sacrificing orphans."
Like Cain, all Jews were painted as Sacred Executioners, cursed to wander. Christians were offered salvation in the blood and body of a sacrifice. While the Jews ran from the blood cult of old, the Christians embraced it.
Furthermore, negative stereotypes of Jews, as well as witches, were created out of a sublimated desire to offer sacrifice. Jews and other heretics were forced, in effect, to carry the guilt of the Christian world.
By the Middle Ages, anti-Semitism and witch-fear were Christian institutions. The Jews were blamed for plagues and poisoned wells. Pogroms often coincided with Christian holidays. Many Christians were convinced that Jews were devils who secretly mocked Easter by sacrificing a kidnapped Christian child on a cross. Vampire legends were adapted to the hatred of Jews and women. Because of circumcision, Jewish men were alleged to require blood, while Jewish women were Liliths, lustful bloodsuckers all.
Vampire legends were adapted to the hatred of Jews and women.
Centuries of anti-Semitism led to the Third Reich, whose mission was to purify the world. Even Adolph Hitler justified the extermination of Jews because they were the killers of Christ. Adolph was not the first, and scapegoating not the only reason to offer sacrifice. The human foundation sacrifice as the spiritual cornerstone is global. Archaeologist Aubrey Burl found the "smell of ritual sacrifice" at both Stonehenge and Woodhenge. A young girl is buried as a foundation sacrifice at Woodhenge. The purpose? Her spirit will become the guardian of the site. At Stonehenge, a man is found as another foundation sacrifice, killed with arrows, his body is lashed to a pillar in a burial shaft, a common method of ritual murder among the Druids. (Foundation sacrifices would continue into the Gothic age, with bones of saints sometimes buried in the cornerstones of cathedrals. Their souls stood guard, even though they were not glorified through ritual murder.)
In his study of Stonehenge and similar sites, Aubrey Burl reveals it to be a monument to life and death, something more powerful than a large, stone clock. Human remains are found throughout the site. The Druids picked up where a far older culture left off, using the power of sacrifice to barter with the gods and predict the future. Without taking a moral tone, Burl concludes that it's builders were a different society from our own. They feared ghosts, and death was all around them. Originally, they worshipped their ancestors, who offered guidance and protection. The most powerful clan had the strongest ancestors, who guaranteed the best harvest.
When over-population led to hunger and war, the old ones failed them and were replaced by gods. The gods demanded more. The riches and blood- offerings demanded by a deity could only be offered by the wealthy and strong. The world was no longer equal. As their society changed, so did their spirits, conforming with the new social order.
Our age is vastly different from the world that built Stonehenge. Whoever these ancient builders were, they lived closer to their dead. In cultures throughout the world, ancestors have been both worshipped and feared. Heads of the conquered were collected after battle and preserved. The Irish Macha, like the Hindu Kali, wore these trophies, symbols of the cycle of creation and destruction. The skulls that adorned Celtic doorways and city walls held the spirits of the dead, who acted as powerful wards, to frighten away intruders and bring power to the land
Another example of a "whitewashed" sacred site is the Nazca Lines of Peru, first made famous as the alleged UFO landing strips of ancient astronauts in "Chariots of the Gods." Recent findings prove that along these stone lines are hundreds of buried jars containing amulets mixed with human and animal remains.
Gradually, cultures began to reform themselves.
The Egyptians and Greeks, and later the Jews and Christians, would make human sacrifice taboo. Once the Jewish and Christian elders outlawed human offerings, their god changed in personality, from all-furious to more understanding.
The primal goddess lost her creative powers, cast instead as a paradoxical virgin. Hell and Satan would punish those who broke the new code. The old rage and demands for blood were transferred to Satan, the god Moloch, or any other demon who would serve as a bloodthirsty well of souls.
Moloch, however, has been robbed of his god-status by biblical researchers who now call him the product of a translation error. The demon Moloch was erroneously derived from mlk, or molek, the Hebrew word for victims. Some Christians scholars have resisted this correction. To accept it would make the molek offerings of bloody Carthage identical to the burnt offerings of our Christian fathers, the Israelites. If the Carthaginians were fiends, the Israelites would become their partners in crime.
With human sacrifice outlawed by the Jews and Christians, the punishment to guarantee social control was a place called Hell. It was an ironic threat that was probably based on the real-life hell, or Gehenna, in the Valley of Ben-Himmon, outside Jerusalem. Deep fire pits, called tophets, were found in this valley, where kings offered their own children to Yahweh. Long ago, child-sacrifice was widespread in North Africa, from Carthage to the Holy Land. While history damns the Phoenicians as great explorers but dreadful parents, their tradition of child-sacrifice was learned from their cousins in the Holy Land. The pits that once held the holiest of offerings would be transformed into the Hell of Satan, and later still, the bonfire of the Inquisition.
Some cynics accuse scientists, both past and present, of seeing only what they want to see, of censoring our bloody past. Cultural blinders can mislead a modern astronomer into thinking of the Mayans and Aztecs as grim stargazers, while the killing machine that fed these cultures takes a back seat in the pursuit of higher mathematics. If written accounts of initiations and rituals are thin, the physical evidence remains for our own evaluation: Our recent ancestors offered both human and animal sacrifices. In some parts of the world, human sacrifice continues. Perhaps the secrecy and misinformation that surrounds so many mystery religions is designed to hide this rite.
If the Israelites abolished human sacrifice, replacing it with the revolutionary idea of personal responsibility, why do some religions continue to follow the old ways and offer blood? All beliefs are in a state of flux. The discovery of the Gnostic gospels are forcing Christians to face the hateful politics of their past. Druids are indeed reformed, their prognostication by entrails now a dying art. Some practitioners of Santeria no longer feed spirits animal blood. But will the need to feed spirits die completely? Physical science still can't prove that offering warriors and virgins quiets a volcano, but if Congress kills funding for the U.S. Geological Survey, will St. Helens be satisfied if we toss in Newt Gingrich and Slade Gorton?
If we're personally responsible, why do so many of us continue to treat victims as saints while living the lie of dumping our primal hatreds on easy scapegoats? If our world is different, is it because we choose the spirits we talk to?
Paranoid critics accuse witches and neo-pagans of Satanic acts, of doing everything their pagan ancestors did, including ritual murder.
Before you cry "Fundamentalist fools!" consider the reality of ritual history. Before you call every mother-goddess in the book, treating them like a modern siserhood, remember that babies were burned for Tanie and Astarte. The Bel, or Baal, of Beltaine was fed from a bloody pyre. We revere the female warrior-queens, but does it mean we still murder our male consort after a year and a day? The king of the horse cult was initiated by pretended to mate with a mare. After she was butchered, he bathed in her blood, acquiring her strength.
Mysteries still exist, but some have been exposed. Enlightenment has always required us to face the dark.
Coming in Part II: Sacrifice Today
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