Human sacrifice

Reasons for human sacrifice include:

• Sacrifice to accompany the dedication of a building like new temple or bridge. Chinese legends hold that thousands of people were entombed into the Great Wall of China.
• Sacrifice upon the death of a king, high priest or great leader; the sacrifices were to serve or accompany the deceased leader in the next life. Mongols, Scythians and various Mesoamerican chiefs could take most of their household, including servants and concubines, with them to the next world.
• Sacrifice for divination; priest would try to divine the future from the body parts of a slain prisoner or slave. According to Strabo, Celts stabbed a victim with a sword and divined the future from his death spasms.
• Sacrifice in times of natural disaster. Droughts, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions etc. were seen as a sign of anger or displeasure of gods and sacrifices were made to appease the divine ire. Cretans tried to stop the destruction of their island this way.
• Ritual combat: Victim was killed in nominally fair fight against a warrior.

Human sacrifices were made in the Bronze age Celtic religions in Europe, and in rituals related to worship of Norse gods (modern Ásatrú and Druidism do not condone such practices). However, because most of the information comes from outside sources (Greeks and Romans for Celts and Medieval Christians for Norsemen) who may have had ulterior propaganda motives, some historians consider them suspect.

Sacrifice in the classic world

Ancient Greeks practiced human sacrifice; there are references to sacrifice of maidens to Artemis.

According to Roman sources, Phoenicians and Carthaginians sacrificed infants to their gods; since Carthaginians were rivals to Roman power in the Mediterranean, this info is also sometimes considered suspect.

Romans practiced various forms of human sacrifice in their first centuries; from Etruscans (or, according to other sources, Sabellians), they adopted the original form of gladiatorial combat where the victim was slain in a ritual combat. During the early republic, criminals who had broken their oaths or defrauded others were sometimes ?given to the gods? (that is, executed as a human sacrifice). Prisoners of war and vestal virgins were buried alive as offerings to Manes and Dil Inferi (infernal gods). Archaeologists have found sacrificial victims buried in building foundations. Note that Romans usually cremated their dead.

However, religious practices changed over the centuries. According to Pliny, human sacrifice was abolished by a senatorial degree in 97 BCE. Most of the rituals turned to animal sacrifice like taurobolium or became merely symbolic. Roman general could bury a statue of his likeness to thank the gods for victory. Cicero refers to a sacrifice of rush puppets in the Vestal ritual that might have originally included sacrifice of old men. When the Roman Empire expanded, Romans stopped human sacrifices as barbarian.

Hebrew sacrifice

For the later Israelites, human sacrifice in the sense of slaughtering people on an altar was a great abomination associated with the worship of foreign gods, and thus strictly forbidden.

On the other hand, the practice of "banning" an enemy town in war by killing all its inhabitants -- or variously only the people but not the animals; only the males; or only the adults --, and sometimes including burning the city and all the spoil, is lauded and commanded in several places, and is considered a religious act and pleasing to God. King Saul is removed from the kingship for not rigorously carrying out this procedure when ordered by Samuel the prophet.

Celtic sacrifice

According to Roman sources, Celtic druids used human sacrifice extensively. According to Caesar, Gauls built wicker figures that were filled with living human sacrifices and then burned with them. Druids at least supervised the sacrifice. During her rebellion against Roman occupation, Boudicca impaled Roman prisoners as offerings to gods.

Different gods required different kind of sacrifices. Worship of Attis included a selection of a young man who was treated as a king for a year and then sacrificed to ensure a good harvest. Victims meant for Esus were hanged, those meant for Taranis immolated and those for Teutates drowned. Some, like the Lindow Man, may have gone to their deaths willingly.

Viking sacrifice

According to Norse mythology, Odin hanged himself to the branch of the world-tree Yggdrasil to attain divine wisdom; he emerged alive with only a loss of one eye. According to medieval Christian sources, Norsemen sometimes sacrificed prisoners by hanging them to trees but in what extent is unclear.

Norse warriors were sometimes buried with slave girls with a belief that the woman would become their wife in Valhalla.

Chinese sacrifice

Ancient Chinese are known to have made sacrifices of young men and women to river deities.

Mesoamerican sacrifice

One of the most famous forms of ancient human sacrifice was practiced by various Pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica. The Aztec were particularly noted for practicing this on an unusually large scale; a human sacrifice to Huitzilopochtli would be made every day to aid the Sun in rising. The dedication of the great temple at Tenochtitlan was reportedly marked with the sacrifice of thousands.

Sacrifices to Xipe Totec were bound to a post and shot full of arrows. Earth mother Teteoinann required flayed female victims. According to Spanish sources, original form of Aztec game ulama included sacrifice of the whole losing team.

Aztecs practiced warfare, the so-called Flowery Wars, for capturing prisoners for sacrifice. There are multiple accounts of captured Conquistadores being sacrificed during the wars of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico.

Aztecs sometimes killed the more aristocratic victims in ritual combat; the victim wearing only a loincloth was chained to the floor and given a weapon and a shield and he died fighting against fully armoured Jaguar knight or warrior.

Modern human sacrifice

Human sacrifice still happens today as an underground practice in some traditional religions, for example in muti killings in Eastern Africa. Human sacrifice is no longer officially condoned in any country and these cases are regarded as murder.

Some people in India are adherents of a religion called Tantrism (not to be confused by Tantric Buddhism); a very small percent of them still engage in real human sacrifice. Most either use animal sacrifice or symbolic effigies.

Local authorities seem to agree. After a rash of similar killings in the area -- according to an unofficial tally in the English-language Hindustan Times, there have been 25 human sacrifices in western Uttar Pradesh in the last six months alone -- police have cracked down against tantriks, jailing four and forcing scores of others to close their businesses and pull their ads from newspapers and television stations. The killings and the stern official response have focused renewed attention on tantrism, an amalgam of mystical practices that grew out of Hinduism. (In India, case links mysticism, murder John Lancaster, Washington Post, 11/29/2003)

In western cultures there is no human sacrifice beyond murders of serial killers or the largely unsubstantiated rumours of Satanic ritual abuse. Modern occultists consider them unnecessary or use them only in the symbolic form where the volunteer "sacrifice" is not killed for real. Christianity holds that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was the last sacrifice that mattered.

Prominent human sacrifices include:

• Lindow Man in UK
• Tollund Man in Denmark

Books:

• Miranda Aldhouse Green - Dying for the Gods (2001)

Referenced By