The Question of Animal Sacrifice
Should modern paganism concern itself with reestablishing animal sacrifices? Notes on its origins, meaning, and practicability.
Gnosticism, Marcionism, Adoptionism, Judaizers, Docetism, Modalism, Donatism, Arianism, Pelagianism… the early Christian church battled perhaps thousands of different competing teachings of the religion, which today are recognized as heresies. There was never any guarantee to which one would win. In fact, at multiple points in history these heresies were the dominant belief. It’s no secret that paganism today is undergoing a sort of revival; and, like the early church, must embattle itself with an infinite number of competing ideas and value sets of which it will define itself with as a religion (the idea that such a set can be or should be defined, ironically, is one such battle). Racialist or universalist? Are gods real or archetypes? Nature or transhumanism? There is no guarantee to which ones will win.
One such debate occurring in this religion’s infancy, in its contemporary form, is the question of animal sacrifice.
In short form, the question goes something like this: “I’m a pagan. My pagan ancestors, who I revere, sacrificed animals. I don’t want to sacrifice animals. Is that bad?” There’s a lot of topics within paganism that fit this category, but animal sacrifice is up-and-front because it is especially undeniable that it played an important and regular role in ancient religion, and it is additionally undeniable that it’s something Westerners really would rather not involve themselves with. And so, most of the writings on this topic are about rationalizing a way out. They could point to alternatives like libations, or radically alter the theology at stake entirely.
Rather than working backwards, I’m going to take a different approach and work from the beginning forward. What role did it play in the first religious traditions? Why was it performed, and why did it stop? In answering these questions, I find that not only should contemporary pagans practice animal sacrifice (with certain conditions attached), but it’s also perfectly practicable for us to do so.
I. Origins
The picture of animal sacrifice as we know it, and all of our historical anecdotes, universally involve the killing of a domesticated animal. That has led to a long-lasting debate encompassing a wide variety of literature on the topic of when sacrifices began, particularly before or after the Neolithic.
Whether or not it’s said animal sacrifice began in the Neolithic or not is probably a matter of defining terms. But I do think it’s clear that its basis is in the Paleolithic. A number of academics in the field of “ritual theory” have put forward an agreeable thesis that rituals in the ancient world, including animal sacrifices, involved the sacralization of everyday activities through “ritualization”. This would certainly involve the everyday activities of the Paleolithic in proximity to Neolithic animal sacrifice, including hunting and the burial of wild animals.
In Yeliseyevichi (Bryansk), a Venus figurine carved from mammoth ivory roughly 15,000 years ago was discovered surrounded by a circle of 27 meticulously-placed mammoth skulls, each with their tusks removed and faces pointing towards the Earth. At Meiendorf and Stellmoor near Hamburg, an extensive excavation of Mesolithic sites revealed the ritual sinking of reindeers into bogs and lakes by hunters who had sewn rocks into their stomachs. There are even examples of Neanderthals burying their dead with cave bear bones in a ritualistic manner, including a (hotly debated) archaeological site at Drachenloch, Switzerland. We can safely assume that Neanderthals were not tying down and ritually killing cave bears like Greeks would with goats or bulls, nor were Ancient North Eurasians doing the same to mammoths. But they were offering the deceased animals to gods in a ritualistic manner, and so we can safely point to a very primordial genesis for the idea of animal sacrifice. Far smarter people than I continue on this thought, indicating that ancient peoples themselves thought this:
On the other hand, the hunting situation is often evoked and acted out in later civilizations, as if one had to catch a wild beast so as to sacrifice it at a predetermined place. Thus, Plato combines the hunt and sacrifice in a semi-barbarous context, his fictitious Atlantis, and in fact bull-hunts are attested in the marginal areas of Greek culture. An Attic myth tells how Theseus subdued the wild bull of Marathon so that it let itself be led to the sacrifice - and this is said to be the legendary origin of the local festival in Marathon, the Hekeleia. Among the Sumerians, a “wild bull” was considered the most eminent sacrificial animal, even though it had been long extinct in Mesopotamia. The consecrated horns in the sanctuaries of Çatalhöyük were, however, still obtained from genuine wild aurochs; bull- and stag-hunting appear on the very impressive wall paintings there. (Walter Burkert, Homo Necans p. 15)
An origin of offerings this old brings two additional points. First, we can state that animal sacrifice is not an arbitrary cultural innovation devised in response to domestication, but has roots in human (and Neanderthal!) religiosity as far back as archaeology allows us to see. Secondly, it indicates that these rituals encompassed everyday human life across the entire world. This means that sacrifice cannot be shrugged off easily as some bygone relic as some pagans have. It must be taken seriously as a fundamental aspect of human religiosity, as old as the idea of religion itself. We have offered animals to gods for as long as we have known them.
II. Killing and Reciprocity
Two things defined the act of animal sacrifice in the ancient world: first, it was an act of killing. Secondly, the act was performed in the hopes that a god or supernatural force would give something in return.
Man is a killer. We are obligate carnivores, killing animals in cruel and violent ways to use their flesh for our own benefit. No living creature on this Earth has been more destructive to other forms of life than we. The killing of animals is an hourly activity, though we have outsourced this behind the sterile swing-doors of a supermarket. And, just like any other everyday activity, the act of slaughter is ritualized in a religious context as a means to offer something to a god.
There is an obvious level of absurdity in a specific type of pagan who seeks to reestablish a nature religion, though scorns not only the lifestyles of their ancestors but man’s place in nature entirely. These types give hundreds of culled animals to their pet cats but refuse to give a single ounce to the gods they claim to worship out of a process of moralization. Just-so rationalizations of “sending the animal’s soul to the afterlife” are not necessary here, either. We are participating in our role in nature as we always have, and there is absolutely nothing incorrect or admonishable about this. How could a nature religion sterilize itself of nature’s most fundamental law, that to live you must take?
The second element to the ritual is what is sought: reciprocity. There is a lot of nuance necessary on this point, and it can be hard to define outright. So I want to first start by saying what sacrifice is not for. Reciprocity is not economic or bartering. The point is not to give up what is of the most personal or monetary value to receive a relatively large return. In fact, it would be impossible to give a god something that would be as valuable as what you’re asking for. A simple libation is not equal to preventing a famine, a couple of aurochs is not equal to the eternal glory of a battle won. Were this the case, sacrifices would more often be one’s bloodline than a common livestock.
Nor is it bribery, as there is never a guarantee that your request will be granted. As said today in another context, “God answers all prayers, but sometimes the answer is no”. In the Iliad, Briseis is seized by Agamemnon and prompts her father Chryses to cry out to Apollo:
Hear me, you of the silver bow, who have under your protection Chryse and sacred Cilla, and who rule mightily over Tenedos, Smintheus, if ever I roofed over a pleasing shrine [χαρίεντ ̓ ἐπὶ νηὸν] for you, or if ever I burned to you fat thigh pieces of bulls or goats, fulfill for me this wish: let the Achaeans pay for my tears by your arrows.
First, note the repeated “If ever I…”, implying that Chryses is not calling in a favor from a specific offering, but a favor from the relationship established by those offerings. Secondly, we must look closely at the word “pleasing”, or charienta, χαρίεντα. This is our root word for “grace, favor" and it is repeatedly used in the Septuagint as such. From this example, we can show that sacrifice was understood as giving something charming or pleasing to a god to establish a hierarchical relationship.
Reciprocity is best understood as this exchange of gifts which establishes and reaffirms a hierarchical relationship. Daniel Ullicci in his book “The Christian Rejection of Animal Sacrifice” gives a solid modern example of this relationship:
An asymmetrical power relationship between humans and the gods is assumed in sacrifice. It is humans who are in need of things from the gods, not the gods from humans. But the gods are pleased by proper offerings, sacrifice being chief among them. This point has been so often missed that it bears further elaboration. The system is not as strange as it may seem. In fact, it is directly analogous to asymmetrical power relationships among humans, in both the ancient world and our own. To cite a well-known example, students give apples to teachers. We do not conclude from this either that teachers are too poor to purchase their own apples, or that teachers subsist solely on student-brought apples and will die without them. We immediately parse the social act for what it is: an attempt to create a reciprocal relationship. (Ullicci, 2011)
With animal sacrifice clarified into something tangible, of things it is and of things it isn’t, we can finally move on with this as a basis to the question at hand: Why sacrifice animals specifically? And should modern pagans, and under what criteria?
III. Charming the Gods
Our look into ancient sources, language, archaeology, and the nature of the ritual reveals that a good way to think about animal sacrifice is the establishment of a reciprocal relationship of “favor” with gods through ritual killing, and that the specifics of this ritual are intended to “charm” the recipient, as a teacher would be charmed by a student who gives her an apple.
I have read and heard of a lot of rather “un-charming” examples of attempts at animal sacrifice. A now-dead pagan blog once wrote of his first attempt, which sought to replicate an old Shinto ritual where fish are captured and sacrificed to local kami. He decided to go to a local pet store, bought three goldfish, and threw the entire bag into a fire. Upon seeing the charring fish flopping around in the now-struggling fire, smelling the room stench up with plastic, wet logs, and flesh, he knew that he hadn’t accomplished what he sought. Though he didn’t rationalize it this way, an interpretation available to us is that this ritual obviously failed to impress anyone, and in the eyes of gods, such a waste probably achieved the opposite.
Would you bring a teacher a rotting apple? Perhaps a plastic one would do fine. Or would she rather a perfectly ripe one, plucked from the family orchard this morning, still moist from the morning dew? Any of these three would probably find its way into the garbage by noon, but each choice gives a different impression and puts the relationship in a different direction, so it matters which one is given. A ritual should be a work of art, it should be a beautiful and precise act. Sacrificing an animal should be no different. They require extensive planning and caution - botched rituals have consequences.
Specifics on rituals themselves won’t be explored here for the sake of brevity. But, I encourage reading ancient sources (such as the Iliad and its depictions of a thysa), which are rife with examples of animal sacrifice and explain the thought process. Additionally, they can be read through the context of this post’s inquiry.
IV. Practicability
An obvious problem with the idea of going about animal sacrifices is that most of us simply don’t live in a setting where it makes a lot of sense. We buy our food from markets, we don’t attend regular religious services (if any are available at all, and most of the time they aren’t - a serious problem for paganism at the moment), and we lack the space, privacy, or experience to go about such an act. These seem like strong reasons to discourage entirely.
But this is a condition that shouldn’t be so in the first place. We shouldn’t be reliant upon supermarkets for our food, livestock and self-sufficiency in regards to food sounds like a good idea. We shouldn’t live in single-bed apartments, we shouldn’t abandon public religion in favor of highly individualized micro-beliefs in which no social activity is possible. These aren’t excuses to shun animal sacrifice, they’re roadblocks to a satisfying life in general, and they should be done away with entirely.
If you are successful in bringing about such a lifestyle, then it becomes a question of when and how. As a husbandrist, there is no getting around the fact that you’ll have to kill an animal to use it for meat. Once that occasion arises, so too does the opportunity to ritually sacrifice that animal and give portions of its body to a fire as ancient sources describe. Just like the hunters of the Mesolithic, you are only ritualizing an inevitable and everyday activity to include the gods and develop a relationship with them.
But for the majority of us, unfortunately, this lifestyle will have to wait. At this stage, alternatives may be pursued: offering of wild animals hunted and killed (you should be hunting, try public lands!), votive offerings and libations to shrines, the burning of handwritten prayers and poems at home, pilgrimage to holy and natural sites. Of course, animal sacrifice is but a small part of pagan religion and forms of worship. But it is an integral one, and should not be avoided for the sake of convenience.
To use modern a modern example in pagan religion, the Vedas describe 5 obligatory daily “Great-Sacrifices”, or Mahayajna: offering of ghee to a fire for the gods, offering of water/rice cakes to the ancestors, study and recitation of the Vedas, a form of ritualized hospitality known as atithi-yajna, and the offerings of food, shelter, and water to animals. Note that none of these daily practices involve animal sacrifice. And yet, animal sacrifice is well attested in Vedic literature, often performed on holidays or annual/seasonal events. Animal sacrifices will be and should be rare, significant events. The availability of alternatives for daily practice do not allow us to shun the concept of sacrifices entirely. I think this serves as a reasonable and achievable model for contemporary pagans.
V. Conclusion
Animal sacrifice is a contentious thing, and probably rightfully so. It is a dramatic, difficult, and yes dangerous act to perform. For many reasons including these, reconverting pagans wish to ignore the act entirely in favor of simpler forms of worship.
But through the inquiry into a number of different fields and sources, we can demystify the idea of animal sacrifice into something rather practicable. We are continuing an everyday and inevitable act in a manner which is ritualized and involves gifts to the gods, which seeks to establish a reciprocal relationship. We seek to gain favor with the gods through these acts, we seek to supplement our daily rituals and offerings with animal sacrifices performed on the days of significant events or times of need, not replace the act entirely. This thought process is as old as religion itself.
In a closing remark, I would mitigate the conclusion here with caution. Do not jump head-first and buy an animal off a farmer and slit its throat in a field. At this moment, you have no idea what you’re doing. Ancient priests and augurs spent years training to perform sacrifices properly, and in a setting where it is entirely practicable to do so. I would look at this as an ultimate goal, an accomplishment of which can be met with excitement that you have revived an ancient art for a noble cause which is well understood to you. Until then, and until such practical situations as mentioned above arise, consider sticking with practices such as the 5 daily sacrifices and its European equivalents. This is the exact advise the professional priestly caste in Hinduism gives to its commoners to this today, and should be considered seriously.
Further Reading:
The Christian Rejection of Animal Sacrifice, Daniel C. Ullucci. Cited several times in this post, and for good reason - it grants a very readable view of sacrifice from an academic standpoint.
Homo Necans, Walter Bukert. An especially interesting book which is the first of its kind in an attempt to apply ethological principles to religious & social phenomenon. It’s a treasure trove of ancient sources on the topic of sacrifice.
Beyond Sacred Violence: A Comparative Study of Sacrifice, Kathryn McClymond. A shorter and easier read which looks at some of the non-violent alternatives to animal sacrifice, including libations and vegetal offerings. Heavy on Old Testament and Vedic sources.
>How could a nature religion sterilize itself of nature’s most fundamental law, that to live you must take?
I assume you're referring to some of the "vegetarian" crowd, who do permeate Pagan spheres (and frankly they always have) and I think you are mostly correct. However, there is also the argument that meat consumption in this day and age is the issue, and not meat consumption in general. Due to factory farming, of course. It troubled me for a while, because factory farming really is utterly disgusting even beyond any utilitarian concerns. But ultimately, "sustainable living" is not saving the environment. It is simply freeing up more space for the useless mouths to take up (ex: Africans who are having 5 kids and becoming increasingly wealthy and lavish-living)
There are also some who simply refuse to eat un-sacrificed meat (I believe Pythagoras was among this type, even though some sources say he was entirely vegetarian). This is somewhat understandable when you recognize how the ancients viewed sacrifice for the animals involved. It was seen as the most dignified and respectable way of killing an animal. Greks even viewed the animals as having to show a sign of acceptance or support for their sacrifice in order to do it. I think some Hindoos have justified it as literally formalizing the ascent of some animal's soul into a higher rung on whatever their kind calls the Chain of Being.
>At this moment, you have no idea what you’re doing. Ancient priests and augurs spent years training to perform sacrifices properly, and in a setting where it is entirely practicable to do so.
Yes, correct. Just as how Rabbinical Judaism is something of a provisional Jewish religion in the absence of their priestly class, Pagans have to recognize that certain elements of Paganism were contingent on a setting with a correct tripartite division of society.
I would say, hmm, currying favor with the gods is indeed the goal of sacrifice, but it is also an act of piety (in the Roman sense) or the Vedic equivalent of Bhakti. We wish for the favor of gods but even if it does not come in the way we wish, sacrifice is still proper behavior.
Very interesting read, though there seems to be a clear, practical, and contemporarily attractive alternative.
In the comparison of the teacher and the apple, particularly that of the fresh, handpicked fruit from the family’s tree, what exactly is it that the teacher finds charming; undoubtedly the extra effort to select something particularly pleasing to the recipient, something born of personal toil gifted for the sake of expressing appreciation. The value of its act is partially determined by the personal expenditure (ie. a nice gesture, taken the extra mile by the effort behind it). In this sense, the sacrifice of an animal would be a fitting act for a farmer, a praise of the gods by offering their best steer, possibly in the hopes of breeding yet more. However, the average person has no stake in the animal that is offered, unless they are giving their effort to its care and health. Four kids offer a single apple to the teacher, picked from the offerer’s tree; one kid is charming, the rest are transparently mooching off their friend in an attempt to gain a similar boon.
Would not a more personal example of creative devotion be a more significant sacrifice? The writing of a poem, carefully perfecting it in the months leading up to the holiday where it is offered/performed. It would be far more impressive to have a group of tradesmen spend a year working on a sculpture in praise of a specific deity, for it is an act of personal dedication. Essentially, saying “I give my best work to you, because you deserve it”. Creative sacrifice is a much more accessible means in the current day and age, but I’d argue, is a more superior offering. Not solely because of the effort behind it, but because it makes the offering deeply personal to its creator, fostering stronger devotion.