Human Sacrifice for Halloween

[Siebenbürgerin]

Our culture has been anthropocentric for a long time. However, I don't agree Christianity is the only reason. Because Christianity accepts sacrifice too. What else did Jesus Christ do when he allowed himself to be crucified for our sins? But I don't want to go off topic too much since it's the Germanic Heathenry forum.

I think human sacrifice in any religion should be justified if it's voluntary and doesn't harm another person against the will, and I've to say even if the society considers it taboo, it doesn't impede peoples to sacrifice themselves for their gods, in battle, as Grimner said. If you believe in your gods and you want to sacrifice yourself you could defend your country by enlisting in the national forces or something like that.

[velvet]

If, then, these sacrifices were voluntary, is there any place in the modern world for a person to make a blood sacrifice to the Gods? Or does the cyclical nature of reality mandate that things like human sacrifice must simply fade away until a new cycle begins? Or are human sacrifices forever more useless?

Interesting question indeed.
Not all sacrifices were voluntary, although this happened too. But the most people ending up as sacrifice were Thralls, specially those sacrificed in the nine-years cycle blots or in the yearly Thing blots.

But of course it also happened that children of Jarls or even kings themselves were sacrificed, when the gods demanded that.

In our modern society, where a human sacrifice or a living sacrifice to the gods might not be very well received by other people (or by the law for that matter) it is still possible for you to make a blood sacrifice. In ritual practice you 'color the runes', and nowhere is said that the blood that you use for coloring must be from a killed animal or human. You can just cut your skin and use your own blood.


In general, the human sacrifice is a problematic thing. Specially those which happened voluntary and then endet the existence of an entire family, wife, children, cattle, thralls, following their husband / master into death. Although I'm not sure if this qualifies as sacrifice or happened out of desperation, since this, beside the ritual burying or ship burning did not include other sacrifice rituals to please the gods.

This might be something that when it gets out of control or becomes a general practice might eradicate your entire folk / tribe, I would guess that this would have been stopped or at least limited at some point with or without christianity.

On the other hand, depending on the purpose of the ritual, there is, basically, nothing wrong with a human sacrifice. In the nine years cycle blots there have been human sacrifices as well as animal sacrifices, nine of each species to thank the gods for the recent years and to make them friendly for the next, to protect the animals and humans and the soil on which they live.

[Ocko]

The way we look at death changed of the millenia. A heathen who sacrificed himself was sure to go to Asgard. It means they now they were 'Souls' not just material matter. The virutes were different then than they are now.

Preservation of life is a distinct christian goal. They exercise compassion with other human beings. For them also mercy is important and in this modern time love is the most important thing for christians. they rather sacrifice themselves instead of fighting and killing their enemy.
Today even christians pay only lipservice to being a soul. Their attitudes show, that they don't trust anymore, what is written in the bible.

A heathen's virtues have been different: Truth, honor, courage and so on. The preservation of life was only for the next kin. And for that reason they would be willing to sacrifice themselves (or their thralls). They had the certain understanding that their Gods did exist and the sacrifice had meaning and purpose. They really believed that the Gods wanted this sacrifice and when accepted the pursued issue would have been helped. they expected then the Gods would do their part of 'the deal'.

A last remnant of human sacrifice you find in India, where the wive of a deceased burns herself on the stake. But it deteriorated to economical reasons as a woman who is old and can't work anymore as a young one and is most likely not marrying again would sacrifice herself not to be a burden (though often pressured or forced to do so).

Part of that reason might have been also in germanic sacrifices. If the weather was bad and the food scarce it might have also be considered to have one eater less.

So we have two different types of human sacrifices: The one strictly to please a God and the other after the death of a chief his wife, consort, servants etc would be killed to serve him in the aftermath.

Both should be considered differently

[velvet]

Another form of human sacrifice happened after a battle, when the entire bunch of the prisoners of war were given to the sea or were otherwise ritually killed.

I think it was quite rare that our ancestors sacrificed one of their own, let alone themselves. Thralls were mostly bought or caught from other folks (although there of course also have been some of our own stock), and with prisoners of war you almost have no other possibility than to kill them anyway.

Before battles there often have been promises to sacrifice the defeated warriors from other tribes in exchange for the luck of victory. When the battle was over they did as they had promised.

The self sacrifices are rare occasions and indeed, like Ocko said, mostly in hard times. The Uppsala sacrifice when the king himself was given, and indeed this was voluntary (as far as a community vote to do so qualifies), was the last resort to end the landwide misery though. This was not at all 'common'.

That we sacrificed thralls and other 'worthless' humans was even a harsh point of critique by christian missionaries. Although it can hardly be considered a sacrifice to spend your life in a monastery, they ridiculed the practice with saying that they give their best people to serve god while we would only give those for which we anyway had no further need.

This is of course just another bigotry by christians, who saw in that a devaluation of life as such in our societies. It was not, we valued life in a similar way, and giving a life to the gods was giving a life to the gods, whether they were thralls or kings or prisoners of war.

[dwarvenmorning]

What's very strange to me is the idea that Christians would pooh-pooh the idea of human sacrifice, but would then worship an entity that not only demanded a series of sacrifices to atone for sin, and not only sacrificed himself, but also wouldn't bat an eye at straight-out genocide - only to then turn around and say "OH WELL, now that that's behind us, let's turn the other cheek". Puzzling stuff. I find heathenism to be a fairly internally consistent belief system. That is, I feel, one of its primary strengths.

Many have commented on the difference between the death penalty and ritual sacrifice, but not many have mentioned abortion.

As I see it, ancient sacrifice had a couple of different roles, potentially. Let's say there's a famine. Here, not only would a human sacrifice possibly appease the Gods, but it was a sort of brutally pragmatic way to have one less mouth to feed.

Couldn't abortion be seen in the same light? Perhaps this is controversial territory, but I do see abortion as a kind of murder. At the same time, and depending on the circumstances, I'm not sure I necessarily disagree with it. For conservation of resources, it seems to have some parallels to sacrifice.

[arvak]

Respect to the others very well written advise on sacrifice.
Sacrifice represents the totality of communicating to Odinn the god of blood and sacrifice.
On a wind swept tree
I hung for nine long nights
Wounded with a spear
Dedicated to Odin my self to my self
On that tree of which no man knows
Where its roots run
Downwards I peered screaming then
I fell back from their.
Then I had a drink
Poured from Odreir
Then I began to quicken and to be wise
One word found another word for me
One deed found another deed for me.

This is a direct way of making a open wound to let the life force flow from you and then to fall into unconciousness then to connect to a divinity power.
The open wound represents the gift to the gods and the pain that is experienced as the gift is given to them freely. The passing of the life force entails the body shaking with absalute violence as the soul detaches from the physical body best described as being blown by a very strong wind.
As you pass into unconciousness a window opens up in the mind and it is here you ride the road of death to meet with this spiritual dream power which conects you to the godly power you have invoked and made a offering to. It is in this state that you receive their knowledge and this is bought back to the physical world as spiritual enlightenment ,if you made it back you and the tribe would act upon this information received. If you failed to return it was considered that the god Odinn kept your spiritual soul which was then guided to Vallhalla where it was kept until a re incarnation into a future time designated by Odinn himself to fight at Ragnarok the destruction of the powers

[dwarvenmorning]

I was listening to a long interview with Heimgest from the Odinic Rite, and he had what I thought to be a pretty insightful comment as regards the runes/magic/etc.

I'm paraphrasing, so please excuse the inaccuracies, but roughly speaking he was expressing the notion that not everyone is cut out to be some sort of runic magical master. If everyone were some seidr spinning magician, there would be nobody to tend to the farms or the everyday business of life.

So while I'm sure that there's a mystical/shamanistic aspect to hanging one's self up for 9 days and ritualistically bleeding, I'll go ahead and pass. I'm not destined for Valhalla anyways, unless it was in some sort of logistical support role. Handling the maps or something like that.

[GroeneWolf]

More interesting (to me!) is the fact that my thoughts are so corroded by Christianity as to equate sacrifice with punishment. When I think of dying, or more properly being killed, my default thought is something along the lines of a Jehovian blood-atonement situation, where people have to die because they've been condemned, or in order to rectify some situation.

Actually the Jewish sacrifice-thing involves a bit more then that. The animal you kill is supposed to take over your sins. It is not that they have to sacrifice something as a penalty to rectify some situation, but to pass on there sins to the scapegoat (where do you think that word came from ). To compare someone is sentenced to death for the raping of a child, but instead of the guilty party being executed they kill some random person in the street so that the convicted party gets cleaned of the crime.

[rainman]

I have a section on this in my book. Sacrifice was common in all culture roughly until Christianity and modern Marxist ideals. Today because we are a band of degenerates who have exessive wealth we have lost touch with reality.

Basically death is celebrated in Paganism. As is birth and life. It is a trinity of existance, birth, life, death (passing to rebirth). You need death in order to have life. So people accepted this as the order of the universe (order is at the center of the religion and is a primary meaning of the swastika).

People are usually killed when there are bad harvests, disease or other conflict. One practical purpose for this probably was population control. Usually degenerates, criminals, prisoners of war etc. were killed. This was Eugenics. Though sometimes virgins, royalty etc. were used. Back then people didn't have birth control. It was not uncommon for a family to have 10 children. Sometimes there just isn't enough food to go around. In Egypt there was a law that in times of little most of the food would be given to the first born and the other siblings would starve so that one would be strong enough to work the field, survive and carry on the blood line. Its just practical. Yes it can be enshrined in myths. Maybe the people were not aware of the practical reason for their actions. Whether they were or not civilizations that sacrificed were more successful.

The second reason is that blood and death has magickal power. So does semen and other such things. a blot literally means blood. If you dip your hand in blood you can feel the energy of it (vril or chi in the East) but I worry some about the spread of disease and such when you do this.

As far as our ancestors- again human sacrifice was only common in times of want and even in the viking age it already was not common. Another form of eugenics/thinning the herd was war. We had noble war and savage war. Two kinds. Most commonly Europeans engaged in noble war which was a deadly competition between two rivals who respected each other. It helped keep the folk strong, settle disputes, keep the population fed in times of want etc.

In modern times we have abortion, birth control, sterilization etc. which would cut down severely on the need for any kind of sacrifice. What is abortion? Nothing more than human sacrifice. Though at least when you kill adults you know you aren't aborting the next genius.