The Art of Sacrifice

The practice of sacrifice particuarly animal sacrifice though also in certain cases human sacrifice has played a very promiment and important role in traditional pagansim, though these days it seems that the ritual and ceremonious art of sacrifice has developed quite a bad rap, the very word itself tends to conjure up mixed images and feelings, ranging from uncivilized, babaric, savage, santnistic, curel, and so forth, there is a varity of reasons for this, and it is largely to do with peoples miconceptions and misinformation about what sacrifice really is or they simply choose to ignore certain facts for the sake of proving thier point or becasue it does not fit into thier view of what sacrifice should be. Yes, I, one of the foremost leaders for animal rights, is going to defend the practice of animal sacrifice, but perhpas by the time you are finnished reading, it will not sound quite so crazy.

So for starters some of the key factors in why the very word sacrifice seems to cary such a stigma today, envolve of course, Christain villification of Pagan traditions and beleifs in thier quest to spread Christainty, as the assicociation sacrifice with the occasional cultic group of a bunch of young punks who call themselves Satanists or Devil Worshipers or some such, and to be "cute" thinking they are cool and just plain assholes they will slaughter some innocent animal in the name of "sacrifice" and though theoricaly this might be a sacrifice it is techniqually not what true sacrifice is all about and does not relate in anyway to the old traditional cremony of sacrifice, and there is the media, priarmarly hollywood that makes sacrifice scenes sensesananolized and as bloody and gory as possible.

And of course one of the biggist problems which is often a factor when dealing with history there is the fact that people try to anylize sacrifice and judge it based upon the mondern world and the way we veiw things now without trying to understand the way people thought back in the time of the event, and without viewing the rite of sacrifice from thier eye and view point and taking into consideration what was going on with the world in thier time. All too often people try to apply mondern ideals to historical events.

The rite of sacrifice was seen as very imporant, it was the way in which the people appealed to the gods, gave thanks to the gods, and appeased the gods, the animals which were choosen for the sacrifice were highly revered in many cases, and widely resepcted, the people were grateful to them, and saw it as a great honor that they were to die for the sake of the people and often the animals that were choosen for the sacrifice were pampared up untill the day of the sacrifice. To die in sacrifce for either animal or human was often viewed as the most elated death a living thing could know or have.

In many cases these sacrifces were acutally very humane as well, as the idea was not to cause the animals harm or to torument them, and they were often granted a swift and mercicful death in which they would be killed by one single blow, one common method for killing a sacrifical animal was to cut open the throat which causes instentanious death.

And one of the key and most imporant things to remeber is that after the sacrifice there would be held a great feast in which the people would eat the fleash of the animals that were killed, and often a great many people would get to eat, and mind you this was back in the days before the super market when a person could just pick up a slab of beef whenever they wanted, and the animals that were typicaly used in sacrifice were not the typical game of which the peasentry could commonly get, and so the feast proived an oppertunity to eat the kind of food which they would not normaly have the opperunity to enjoy.

With that being said I am not advocating the practice of sacrifice today, becasue things and view points are different now then they were then, but on the other hand, if a person or group of persons were to preform a humane sacrifice in which they used the animal for food afterwords, well that would be a lot more harmless and less destructive then millions of acres of rainforest being burned done to raise beef cattle for fast food joints, all without any spiritual meaning or ceremony, or apperication for the lost life.

10:55 PM - 4/11/2007 - post comment

For though All are not able to write books, all conceive themselves able to judge them. ~The Monk

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