| RELIGIOUS RITES |
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| 4 THE CONCEPT AND FORMS OF RITUAL |
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Sacrifice is a religious rite in which
an object is offered to a divinity in order to establish, maintain, or restore a
right relationship of man to the sacred order. It is a complex phenomenon that
has been found in the earliest known forms of worship and in all parts of the
world. The present article will treat the nature of sacrifice and will survey
the theories about its origin. It will then analyze sacrifice in terms of its
constituent elements, such as the material of the offering, the time and place
of the sacrifice, and the motive or intention of the rite. Finally, it will
briefly consider sacrifice in the religions of the world. (see also
sacred and profane) |
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The term sacrifice derives from the
Latin sacrificium, which is a
combination of the words sacer, meaning
something set apart from the secular or profane for the use of supernatural
powers, and facere, meaning "to
make." The term has acquired a popular and frequently secular use to
describe some sort of renunciation or giving up of something valuable in order
that something more valuable might be obtained; e.g.,
parents make sacrifices for their children, one sacrifices a limb for one's
country. But the original use of the term was peculiarly religious, referring to
a cultic act in which objects were set apart or consecrated and offered to a god
or some other supernatural power; thus, sacrifice should be understood within a
religious, cultic context. |
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Religion is man's relation to that which
he regards as sacred or holy. This relationship may be conceived in a variety of
forms. Although moral conduct, right belief, and participation in religious
institutions are commonly constituent elements of the religious life, cult or
worship is generally accepted as the most basic and universal element. Worship
is man's reaction to his experience of the sacred power; it is a response in
action, a giving of self, especially by devotion and service, to the
transcendent reality upon which man feels himself dependent. Sacrifice and
prayer--man's personal attempt to communicate with the transcendent reality in
word or in thought--are the fundamental acts of worship. |
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In a sense, what is always offered in
sacrifice is, in one form or another, life itself. Sacrifice is a celebration of
life, a recognition of its divine and imperishable nature. In the sacrifice the
consecrated life of an offering is liberated as a sacred potency that
establishes a bond between the sacrificer and the sacred power. Through
sacrifice, life is returned to its divine source, regenerating the power or life
of that source; life is fed by life. Thus, the word of the Roman sacrificer to
his god: "Be thou increased (macte) by this offering." It is, however, an increase of sacred
power that is ultimately beneficial to the sacrificer. In a sense, sacrifice is
the impetus and guarantee of the reciprocal flow of the divine life-force
between its source and its manifestations. |
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Often the act of sacrifice involves the
destruction of the offering, but this destruction--whether by burning,
slaughter, or whatever means--is not in itself the sacrifice. The killing of an
animal is the means by which its consecrated life is "liberated" and
thus made available to the deity, and the destruction of a food offering in an
altar's fire is the means by which the deity receives the offering. Sacrifice as
such, however, is the total act of offering and not merely the method in which
it is performed. |
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Although the fundamental meaning of
sacrificial rites is that of effecting a necessary and efficacious relationship
with the sacred power and of establishing man and his world in the sacred order,
the rites have assumed a multitude of forms and intentions. The basic forms of
sacrifice, however, seem to be some type of either sacrificial gift or sacramental
meal. Sacrifice as a gift may refer either to a gift that should be followed by
a return gift (because of the intimate relationship that gift giving
establishes) or to a gift that is offered in homage to a god without expectation
of a return. Sacrifice as a sacramental communal meal may involve the idea of
the god as a participant in the meal or as identical with the food consumed; it
may also involve the idea of a ritual meal at which either some primordial event
such as creation is repeated or the sanctification of the world is symbolically
renewed. |
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Since the rise of the comparative or
historical study of religions in the latter part of the 19th century, attempts
have been made to discover the origins of sacrifice. These attempts, though
helpful for a greater understanding of sacrifice, have not been conclusive. (see
also History
of Religions school) |
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In 1871 Sir
Edward Burnett Tylor, a British anthropologist, proposed his theory that
sacrifice was originally a gift to the gods to secure their favour or to
minimize their hostility. In the course of time the primary motive for offering
sacrificial gifts developed into homage, in which the sacrificer no longer
expressed any hope for a return, and from homage into abnegation and
renunciation, in which the sacrificer more fully offered himself. Even though
Tylor's gift theory entered into later interpretations of sacrifice, it left
unexplained such phenomena as sacrificial offerings wholly or partly eaten by
worshippers. |
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William
Robertson Smith, a Scottish Semitic scholar and
encyclopaedist, marked a new departure with his theory that the original motive
of sacrifice was an effort toward communion among the members of a group, on the
one hand, and between them and their god, on the other. Communion was brought
about through a sacrificial meal. Smith began with totemism,
according to which an animal or plant is intimately associated in a "blood
relationship" with a social group or clan as its sacred ally. In general,
the totem animal is taboo for
the members of its clan, but on certain sacred occasions the animal is eaten in
a sacramental meal that ensures the unity of the clan and totem and thus the
well-being of the clan. For Smith an animal sacrifice was essentially a
communion through the flesh and blood of the sacred animal, which he called the
"theanthropic animal"--an intermediary in which the sacred and the
profane realms were joined. The later forms of sacrifice retained some
sacramental character: people commune with the god through sacrifice, and this
communion occurs because the people share food and drink in which the god is
immanent. From the communion sacrifice Smith derived the expiatory or
propitiatory forms of sacrifice, which he termed piaculum,
and the gift sacrifice. There were great difficulties with this theory: it
made the totem a sacrificial victim rather than a supernatural ally; it
postulated the universality of totemism; and, further, it did not adequately
account for holocaust sacrifices in which the offering is consumed by fire and
there is no communal eating. Nevertheless, many of Smith's ideas concerning
sacrifice as sacramental communion have exerted tremendous influence. |
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Sir
James George Frazer, a British anthropologist and
folklorist, author of The Golden Bough, saw
sacrifice as originating from magical
practices in which the ritual slaying of a god was performed as a means of
rejuvenating the god. The king or chief of a tribe was held to be sacred because
he possessed mana, or sacred
power, which assured the tribe's well-being. When he became old and weak, his
mana weakened, and the tribe was in danger of decline. The king was thus slain
and replaced with a vigorous successor. In this way the god was slain to save
him from decay and to facilitate his rejuvenation. The old god appeared to carry
away with him various weaknesses and fulfilled the role of an expiatory victim
and scapegoat. (see also sacred
kingship) |
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Henri
Hubert and Marcel
Mauss, French sociologists, concentrated their investigations on Hindu
and Hebrew sacrifice, arriving at the conclusion that "sacrifice is a
religious act which, through the consecration of a victim, modifies the
condition of the moral person who accomplishes it or that of certain objects
with which he is concerned." Like Smith, they believed that a sacrifice
establishes a relationship between the realms of the sacred and the profane.
This occurs through the mediation of the ritually slain victim, which acts as a
buffer between the two realms, and through participation in a sacred meal. The
rituals chosen by Hubert and Mauss for analysis, however, are not those of
preliterate societies. |
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Another study by Mauss helped to broaden
the notion of sacrifice as gift. It was an old idea that man makes a gift to the
god but expects a gift in return. The Latin formula do ut des ("I give that you may give") was formulated in
classical times. In the Vedic
religion, the oldest stratum of religion known to have existed in India,
one of the Brahmanas
(commentaries on the Vedas, or sacred hymns, that were used in ritual
sacrifices) expressed the same principle: "Here is the butter; where are
your gifts?" But, according to Mauss, in giving it is not merely an object
that is passed on but a part of the giver, so that a firm bond is forged. The
owner's mana is conveyed to the object, and, when the object is given away, the
new owner shares in this mana and is in the power of the giver. The gift thus
creates a bond. Even more, however, it makes power flow both ways to connect the
giver and the receiver; it invites a gift in return. (see also
Hinduism) |
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Gerardus
van der Leeuw, a Dutch historian of religion,
developed this notion of gift in the context of sacrifice. In sacrifice a gift
is given to the god, and thus man releases a flow between himself and the god.
For him sacrifice as gift is "no longer a mere matter of bartering with
gods corresponding to that carried on with men, and no longer homage to the god
such as is offered to princes: it is an opening of a blessed source of
gifts." His interpretation thus melded the gift and communion theories, but
it also involved a magical flavour, for he asserted that the central power of
the sacrificial act is neither god nor giver but is always the gift itself. |
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German anthropologists have emphasized
the idea of culture history,
in which the entire history of mankind is seen as a system of coherent and
articulated phases and strata, with certain cultural phenomena appearing at
specific levels of culture. Leo
Frobenius, the originator of the theory that later became known as the Kulturkreislehredistinguished the creative or expressive phase of a culture, in
which a new insight assumes its specific form, and the phase of application, in
which the original significance of the new insight degenerates. Working within
this context, Adolf E. Jensen attempted to explain why men have resorted to the
incomprehensible act of killing other men or animals and eating them for the
glorification of a god or many gods. Blood sacrifice is linked not with the
cultures of the hunter-gatherers but with those of the cultivators; its origin
is in the ritual killing of the archaic cultivator cultures, which, in turn, is
grounded in myth. For Jensen the early cultivators all knew the idea of a mythic
primal past in which not men but Dema lived on the Earth and prominent among
them were the Dema-deities. The central element of the myth is the slaying of a Dema-deity,
an event that inaugurated human history and gave shape to the human lot. The
Dema became men, subject to birth and death, whose self-preservation depends
upon the destruction of life. The deity became in some way associated with the
realm of the dead; and, from the body of the slain deity, crop plants
originated, so that the eating of the plants is an eating of the deity. Ritual
killing, whether of animals or men, is a cultic re-enactment of the mythological
event. Strictly speaking, the action is not a sacrifice because there is no
offering to a god; rather, it is a way to keep alive the memory of primeval
events. Blood sacrifice as found in the later higher cultures is a persistence
of the ritual killing in a degenerated form. Because the victim is identified
with the deity, later expiatory sacrifices also become intelligible: sin is an
offense against the moral order established at the beginning of human history;
the killing of the victim is an intensified act restoring that order. |
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Another interpretation of some
historical interest is that of Sigmund
Freud in his work Totem und Tabu (1913;
Eng. trans., Totem and Taboo1918). Freud's theory was based on the assumption that the Oedipus
complex is innate and universal. It is normal for a child to wish to have
a sexual relationship with its mother and to will the death of its father; this
is often achieved symbolically. In the primal horde, although the sons did slay
their father, they never consummated a sexual union with their mother; in fact,
they set up specific taboos against such sexual relations. According to Freud,
the ritual slaughter of an animal was instituted to re-enact the primeval act of
parricide. The rite, however, reflected an ambivalent attitude. After the primal
father had been slain, the sons felt some remorse for their act, and, thus, the
sacrificial ritual expressed the desire not only for the death of the father but
also for reconciliation and communion with him through the substitute victim.
Freud claimed that his reconstruction of the rise of sacrifice was historical,
but this hardly seems probable. |
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In 1963 Raymond
Firth, a New Zealand-born anthropologist, addressed himself to the
question of the influence that a people's ideas about the control of their
economic resources have on their ideology of sacrifice. He noted that the time
and frequency of sacrifice and the type and quality of victim are affected by
economic considerations; that the procedure of collective sacrifice involves not
only the symbol of group unity but also a lightening of the economic burden or
any one participant; that the use of surrogate victims and the reservation of
the sacrificial food for consumption are possibly ways of meeting the problem of
resources. Firth concluded that sacrifice is ultimately a personal act in which
the self is symbolically given, but it is an act that is often conditioned by
economic rationality and prudent calculation. |
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Most social anthropologists and
historians of religion in the mid-20th century, however, concentrated less on
worldwide typologies or evolutionary sequences and more on investigations of
specific historically related societies. Consequently, since World War II there
have been few formulations of general theories about the origin of sacrifice,
but there have been important studies of sacrifice within particular cultures.
For example, E.E. Evans- Pritchard,
a social anthropologist at Oxford University, concluded after his study of the
religion of the Nuer, a people
in the southern Sudan, that for them sacrifice is a gift intended "to get
rid of some danger of misfortune, usually sickness." They establish
communication with the god not to create a fellowship with him but only to keep
him away. Evans-Pritchard acknowledged, however, that the Nuer have many kinds
of sacrifice and that no single formula adequately explains all types.
Furthermore, he did not maintain that his interpretations of his materials were
of universal applicability. Many scholars would agree that, though it is easy to
make a long list of many kinds of sacrifice, it is difficult, if not impossible,
to find a satisfactory system in which all forms of sacrifice may be assigned a
suitable place. |
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It is possible to analyze the rite of
sacrifice in terms of six different elements: the sacrificer, the material of
the offering, the time and place of the rite, the method of sacrificing, the
recipient of the sacrifice, and the motive or intention of the rite. These
categories are not of equal importance and often overlap. |
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In general, it may be said that the one
who makes sacrifices is man, either an individual or a collective group--a
family, a clan, a tribe, a nation, a secret society. Frequently, special acts
must be performed by the sacrificer before and sometimes also after the
sacrifice. In the Vedic cult, the sacrificer and his wife were required to
undergo an initiation (diksa)
involving ritual bathing, seclusion, fasting, and prayer, the purpose of which
was to remove them from the profane world and to purify them for contact with
the sacred world. At the termination of the sacrifice came a rite of
"desacralization" (avabhrta)
in which they bathed in order to remove any sacred potencies that might have
attached themselves during the sacrifice. (see also
initiation rite) |
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There are sacrifices in which there are
no participants other than the individual or collective sacrificer. Usually,
however, one does not venture to approach sacred things directly and alone; they
are too lofty and serious a matter. An intermediary--certain persons or groups
who fulfill particular requirements or qualifications--is necessary. In many
cases, sacrificing by unauthorized persons is expressly forbidden and may be
severely punished; e.g., in the book
of Leviticus, Korah and his followers, who revolted against Moses and his
brother Aaron and arrogated the priestly office of offering incense, were
consumed by fire. The qualified person--whether the head of a household, the old
man of a tribe, the king, or the priest--acts as the appointed representative on
behalf of a community. (see also Judaism) |
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The head of the household as sacrificer
is a familiar figure in the Old
Testament, particularly in the stories of the patriarchs; e.g.,
Abraham and Jacob. Generally, in cattle-keeping tribes with patriarchal
organization, the paterfamilias long
remained the person who carried out sacrifices, and it was only at a late date
that a separate caste of priests developed among these peoples. In ancient
China, too, sacrifices were not presided over by a professional priesthood but
by the head of the family or, in the case of state sacrifices, by the ruler. |
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The old man or the elders of the tribe
are in charge of sacrifices among several African peoples. Among the Ila,
a people of Zambia, for instance, when hunters have no success, the oldest
member of the band leads the others in praying for the god's aid; when the
hunters are successful in killing, the old man leads them in offering portions
of the meat to the god. Similarly, among peoples in Australia the leading role
in all sacrificial acts is filled by the old men as bearers of tradition and
authority. In cases in which there is a matriarchal organization, as in some
parts of West Africa, the oldest woman of the family acts as priestess. |
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The king
has played an important role as the person active in sacrificing, particularly
in those cultures in which he not only has temporal authority but also fulfills
a religious function. The fact that the king is the primary sacrificer may stem
from two roots. It may be that the most important gods of the state were
originally family gods of the rulers, and, thus, the king is simply continuing
the task of paterfamilias, only now on behalf of the whole community. The second
root lies in the notion of sacred kingship, according to which the royal office
is sacred and the king set apart from ordinary people is the intercessor with
the supernatural world. These two concepts often go together. Thus, in ancient
Egypt the pharaoh was divine because he descended from the sun god Re. The
pharaoh stood for Horus, the son of Re. The concepts of the god as family
ancestor and of sacred kingship were combined. Although worship in ancient Egypt
was controlled by a powerful priesthood, officially all sacrifices were regarded
as made by the pharaoh. (see also
Egyptian religion) |
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Most frequently, the intermediary
between the community and the god, between the profane and the sacred realms, is
the priest. As a rule, not everyone can become a priest; there are requirements
of different kinds to be satisfied. Usually, the priest must follow some
training, which may be long and severe, There is always some form of
consecration he has to undergo. For communities in which a priest functions, he
is the obvious person to make sacrifices. (see also
priesthood) |
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The sacrificer is not always man,
however; at times gods also make sacrifices. Examples of this are found chiefly
in India and are set down particularly in the Brahmana
texts; e.g., it is said in the Taittiriya
Brahmana: "By sacrifice the gods obtained heaven." The idea of
gods making sacrifice, however, is found in the older Rgveda-Samhita,
a collection of sacred Vedic hymns: "With offerings the gods offered up
sacrifice." In this conception man makes sacrifices in imitation of a
divine model inaugurated by the gods themselves. Another instance is the Iranian
primordial god Zurvan (Time),
who offered sacrifice for 1,000 years in order to obtain a son to create the
world. |
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Any form under which life manifests
itself in the world or in which life can be symbolized may be a sacrificial
oblation. In fact, there are few things that have not, at some time or in some
place, served as an offering. Any attempt to categorize the material of
sacrifice will group together heterogeneous phenomena; thus, the category human
sacrifice includes several fundamentally different sacrificial rites.
Nevertheless, for convenience sake, the variety of sacrificial offerings will be
treated as (1) blood offerings (animal and human), (2) bloodless offerings
(libations and vegetation), and (3) a special category, divine offerings. |
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Basic to both animal
and human sacrifice is the recognition of blood as the sacred life-force in man
and beast. Through the sacrifice--through the return of the sacred life revealed
in the victim--the god lives, and, therefore, man and nature live. The great
potency of blood has been utilized through sacrifice for a number of purposes; e.g., earth fertility, purification, and expiation. The letting of
blood, however, was neither the only end nor the only mode of human and animal
sacrifice. |
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A wide variety of animals have served as
sacrificial offerings. In ancient Greece and India, for example, oblations
included a number of important domestic animals, such as the goat, ram, bull,
ox, and horse. Moreover, in Greek
religion all edible birds, wild animals of the hunt, and fish were used.
In ancient Judaism the kind and number of animals for the various sacrifices was
carefully stipulated so that the offering might be acceptable and thus fully
effective. This sort of regulation is generally found in sacrificial cults; the
offering must be appropriate either to the deity to whom or to the intention for
which it is to be presented. Very often the sacrificial species (animal or
vegetable) was closely associated with the deity to whom it was offered as the
deity's symbolic representation or even its incarnation. Thus, in the Vedic
ritual the goddesses of night and morning received the milk of a black cow
having a white calf; the "bull of heaven," Indra, was offered a bull,
and Surya, the sun god, a white, male goat. Similarly, the ancient Greeks
sacrificed black animals to the deities of the dark underworld; swift horses to
the sun god Helios; pregnant sows to the earth mother Demeter; and the dog,
guardian of the dead, to Hecate, goddess of darkness. The Syrians sacrificed
fish, regarded as the lord of the sea and guardian of the realm of the dead, to
the goddess Atargatis and ate
the consecrated offering in a communion meal with the deity, sharing in the
divine power. An especially prominent sacrificial animal was the bull (or its
counterparts, the boar and the ram), which, as the representation and embodiment
of the cosmic powers of fertility, was sacrificed to numerous fertility gods (e.g., the Norse god Freyr; the Greek "bull of the Earth,"
Zeus Chthonios; and the Indian "bull of heaven," Indra). (see also
cattle) |
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The occurrence of human
sacrifice appears to have been widespread and its intentions various,
ranging from communion with a god and participation in his divine life to
expiation and the promotion of the earth's fertility. It seems to have been
adopted by agricultural rather than by hunting or pastoral peoples. Of all the
worldly manifestations of the life-force, the human undoubtedly impressed men as
the most valuable and thus the most potent and efficacious as an oblation. Thus,
in Mexico the belief that the sun needed human nourishment led to sacrifices in
which as many as 20,000 victims perished annually in the Aztec and Nahua
calendrical maize ritual in the 14th century AD. Bloodless human sacrifices also
developed and assumed greatly different forms: e.g.,
a Celtic ritual involved the sacrifice of a woman by immersion, and among
the Maya in Mexico young maidens were drowned in sacred wells; in Peru women
were strangled; in ancient China the king's retinue was commonly buried with
him, and such internments continued intermittently until the 17th century. (see
also Aztec religion) |
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In many societies human victims gave
place to animal substitutes or to effigies made of dough, wood, or other
materials. Thus, in India, with the advent of British rule, human sacrifices to
the Dravidian village goddesses (grama-devis)
were replaced by animal sacrifices. In Tibet, under the influence of Buddhism,
which prohibits all blood sacrifice, human sacrifice to the pre-Buddhist Bon
deities was replaced by the offering of dough images or reduced to pantomime.
Moreover, in some cults both human and animal oblations could be
"ransomed"--i.e., replaced
by offerings or money or other inanimate valuables. |
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Among the many life-giving substances
that have been used as libations
are milk, honey, vegetable and animal oils, beer, wine, and water. Of these, the
last two have been especially prominent. Wine
is the "blood of the grape" and thus the "blood of the
earth," a spiritual beverage that invigorates gods and men. Water
is always the sacred "water of life," the primordial source of
existence and the bearer of the life of plants, animals, human beings, and even
the gods. Because of its great potency, water, like blood, has been widely used
in purificatory and expiatory rites to wash away defilements and restore
spiritual life. It has also, along with wine, been an important offering to the
dead as a revivifying force. |
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Vegetable offerings have included not
only the edible herbaceous plants
but also grains, fruits, and flowers. In both Hinduism and Jainism, flowers,
fruits, and grains (cooked and uncooked) are included in the daily temple
offerings. In some agricultural
societies (e.g., those of West Africa)
yams and other tuber plants have been important in planting and harvest
sacrifices and in other rites concerned with the fertility and fecundity
of the soil. These plants have been regarded as especially embodying the
life-force of the deified earth and are frequently buried or plowed into the
soil to replenish and reactivate its energies. (see also
fertility cult) |
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One further conception must be briefly
mentioned: a god himself may be sacrificed. This notion was elaborated in many
mythologies; it is fundamental in some sacrificial rituals. In early sacrifice
the victim has something of the god in itself, but in the sacrifice of a god the
victim is identified with the god. At the festival of the ancient Mexican sun
god Huitzilopochtli, the
statue of the god, which was made from beetroot paste and kneaded in human blood
and which was identified with the god, was divided into pieces, shared out among
the devotees, and eaten. In the Hindu soma ritual (related to the haoma
ritual of ancient Persia), the soma plant, which is identified with the god
Soma, is pressed for its intoxicating juice, which is then ritually consumed.
The Eucharist, as understood
in many of the Christian churches, contains similar elements. In short, Jesus is
really present in the bread and wine that are ritually offered and then
consumed. According to the traditional eucharistic doctrine of Roman
Catholicism, the elements of bread and wine are "transubstantiated"
into the body and blood of Christ: i.e., their
whole substance is converted into the whole substance of the body and blood,
although the outward appearances of the elements, their "accidents,"
remain. (see also Christianity) |
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In many cults, sacrifices are
distinguished by frequency of performance into two types, regular and special.
Regular sacrifices may be daily, weekly, monthly, or seasonal (as at planting,
harvest, and New Year). Also often included are sacrifices made at specific
times in each man's life--birth, puberty, marriage, and death. Offerings made on
special occasions and for special intentions have included, for example,
sacrifices in times of danger, sickness, or crop failure and those performed at
the construction of a building, for success in battle, or in thanksgiving for a
divine favour. |
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In the Vedic cult the regular sacrifices
were daily, monthly, and seasonal. The daily rites included fire offerings to
the gods and libations and food offerings to the ancestors and the earth
divinities and spirits. The monthly sacrifices, conducted at the time of New and
Full Moons, were of cakes or cooked oblations to sundry deities, especially the
storm god Indra. Some daily and monthly sacrifices could be celebrated in the
home by a householder, but only the official priesthood could perform the
complex seasonal sacrifices, offered three times a year--at the beginning of
spring, of the rainy season, and of the cool weather--for the purpose of
expiation and of abundance. Of the occasional sacrifices, which could be
celebrated at any time, especially important were those associated with
kingship, such as the royal consecration and the great "horse
sacrifice" performed for the increase of the king's power and domain. (see
also sacred
kingship) |
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In ancient Judaism the regular or
periodic sacrifices included the twice daily burnt offerings, the weekly sabbath
sacrifices, the monthly offering at the New Moon, and annual celebrations such
as Pesah (Passover), Yom Kippur
(Day of Atonement), and Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles). Special sacrifices were
usually of a personal nature, such as thank and votive offerings and "guilt
offerings." |
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The common place of sacrifice in most
cults is an altar. The table
type of altar is uncommon; more often it is only a pillar, a mound of earth, a
stone, or a pile of stones. Among the Hebrews in early times and other Semitic
peoples the altar of the god was frequently an upright stone (matztzeva)
established at a place in which the deity had manifested itself. It was bet el, the "house of God." (see also
sacred place) |
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Frequently, the altar is regarded as the
centre or the image of the universe. For the ancient Greeks the grave marker (a
mound of earth or a stone) was the earth altar upon which sacrifices to the dead
were made and, like other earth altars, it was called the omphalos,
"the navel" of the Earth--i.e., the
central point from which terrestrial life originated. In Vedic India the altar
was regarded as a microcosm, its parts representing the various parts of the
universe and its construction being interpreted as a repetition of the creation
of the cosmos. (see also oracle) |
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Along with libation and the sacrificial
effusion of blood, one of the commonest means of making an oblation available to
sacred beings is to burn it. In both ancient Judaism and Greek religion the
major offering was the burnt or fire offering. Through the medium of the fire,
the oblation was conveyed to the divine recipient. In ancient Greece the generic
term for sacrifice (thysia) was
derived from a root meaning to burn or to smoke. In Judaism the important
sacrifices ('ola and zevah)
involved the ritual burning, either entirely or in part, of the oblation, be it
animal or vegetation. For the Babylonians, also, fire was essential to
sacrifice, and all oblations were conveyed to the gods by the fire god
Girru-Nusku, whose presence as intermediary between the gods and men was
indispensable. In the Vedic cult the god of fire, Agni, received the offerings
of men and brought them into the presence of the gods. |
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As burning is often the appropriate mode
for sacrifice to celestial deities, so burial is often the appropriate mode for
sacrifice of earth deities. In Greece, for example, sacrifices to the chthonic
or underworld powers were frequently buried rather than burned or, if burned,
burned near the ground or even in a trench. In Vedic India the blood and
entrails of animals sacrificed on the fire altar to the sky gods were put upon
the ground for the earth deities, including the ghosts and malevolent spirits.
In West Africa yams and fowls sacrificed to promote the fertility of the earth
are planted in the soil. (see also
chthonic deity) |
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In sacrifice by burning and by burial,
as also in the effusion of blood, the prior death of the human or animal victim,
even if ritually performed, is in a sense incidental to the sacrificial action.
There are, however, sacrifices (including live burial and burning) in which the
ritual killing is itself the means by which the offering is effected.
Illustrative of this method was the practice in ancient Greek and Indian cults
of making sacrifices to water gods by drowning the oblations in sacred lakes or
rivers. Similarly, the Norse cast human and animal victims over cliffs and into
wells and waterfalls as offerings to the divinities dwelling therein. In the
Aztec sacrifice of human beings to the creator god Xipe Totec, the victim was
lashed to a scaffold and shot to death with bow and arrow. |
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There are also sacrifices that do not
involve the death or destruction of the oblation. Such were the sacrifices in
ancient Greece of fruits and vegetables at the "pure" (katharos)
altar of Apollo at Delos, at the shrine of Athena at Lindus, and at the altar of
Zeus in Athens. These "fireless oblations" (apura
hiera) were especially appropriate for the deities of vegetation and
fertility; e.g., Demeter and Dionysus.
In Egypt bloodless offerings of food and drink were simply laid before the god
on mats or a table in a daily ceremony called "performing the presentation
of the divine oblations." In both Greek and Egyptian cults such offerings
were never to be eaten by the worshippers, but they were probably
surreptitiously consumed by the priests or temple attendants. In ancient Israel,
on the other hand, the food offerings of the "table of the shewbread"
(the "bread of the presence" of God) were regarded as available to the
priests and could be given by them to the laity. In Hinduism the daily offering
of cooked rice and vegetable, after its consecration, is distributed by the
priests to the worshippers as the deity's "grace" (prasada).
In some cases the sacrificial gifts are put out to be eaten by an animal
representative of the deity. In Dahomey wandering dogs consume, on behalf of the
trickster deity Eshu (Elegba),
the consecrated food oblations presented to the god each morning at his shrines. |
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Sacrifices may be offered to beings who
can be the object of religious veneration or worship. They will not be made to
human beings unless they have first been deified in some way. In some cases
sacrifice is made only to the god or gods; in others it is made to the deity,
the spirits, and the departed; in others it is made only to the spirits and the
departed, who are considered intermediaries between the deity and men. The Nkole
people of Uganda, for example, are said to make no sacrifices to God, thinking
he does not expect any. But, on the third day following the New Moon, they make
offerings to the guardian spirits (emandwa),
and they also make offerings at the shrines of ancestors (emizimu) of up to three generations back. Worship of spirits and of
ancestors, often including the offering of sacrifices, occurs in widely
distributed cultures; in fact, according to some scholars, probably the major
recipients of sacrifice in non-Western traditions are the ancestors. (see also
ancestor worship) |
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Sacrifices have been offered for a
multiplicity of intentions, and it is possible to list only some of the most
prominent. In any one sacrificial rite a number of intentions may be expressed,
and the ultimate goal of all sacrifice is to establish a beneficial relationship
with the sacred order, to make the sacred power present and efficacious. |
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Serious illness, drought, pestilence,
epidemic, famine, and other misfortune and calamity have universally been
regarded as the workings of supernatural forces. Often they have been understood
as the effects of offenses against the sacred order committed by individuals or
communities, deliberately or unintentionally. Such offenses break the
relationship with the sacred order or impede the flow of divine life. Thus, it
has been considered necessary in times of crisis, individual or communal, to
offer sacrifices to propitiate
sacred powers and to wipe out offenses (or at least neutralize their effects)
and restore the relationship. (see also
atonement) |
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Among the Yoruba
of West Africa, blood sacrifice must be made to the gods, especially the earth
deities, who, as elsewhere in Africa, are regarded as the divine punishers of
sin. For the individual the oblation may be a fowl or a goat; for an entire
community it may be hundreds of animals (in former days, the principal oblation
was human). Once consecrated and ritually slain, the oblations are buried,
burnt, or left exposed but never shared by the sacrificer. |
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In ancient Judaism the hatta`t, or "sin offering," was an important ritual for
the expiation of certain, especially unwittingly committed, defilements. The
guilty laid their hands upon the head of the sacrificial animal (an unblemished
bullock or goat), thereby identifying themselves with the victim, making it
their representative (but not their substitute, for their sins were not
transferred to the victim). After the priest killed the beast, blood was
sprinkled upon the altar and elsewhere in the sacred precincts. The point of the
ritual was to purify the guilty and to re-establish the holy bond with God
through the blood of the consecrated victim. It was as such an expiatory
sacrifice that early Christianity regarded the life and death of Christ.
By the shedding of his blood, the sin of mankind was wiped out and a new
relationship of life--eternal life--was effected between God and man. Like the
innocent and "spotless" victim of the hatta`t,
Christ died for men--i.e., on
behalf of but not in place of them. Also, like the hatta`t,
the point of his death was not the appeasement of divine wrath but the
shedding of his blood for the wiping out of sin. The major differences between
the sacrifice of Christ and that of the hatta`t
animal are that (1) Christ's was regarded as a voluntary and effective
sacrifice for all men and (2) his was considered the perfect sacrifice, made
once in time and space but perpetuated in eternity by the risen Lord. (see also
scapegoat) |
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There are sacrifices, however, in which
the victim does serve as a substitute for the guilty. In some West African cults
a person believed to be under death penalty by the gods offers an animal
substitute to which he transfers his sins. The animal, which is then ritually
killed, is buried with complete funeral rites as though it were the human
person. Thus the guilty person is dead, and it is an innocent man who is free to
begin a new life. |
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Finally, some propitiatory sacrifices
are clearly prophylactic, intended to avert possible misfortune and calamity,
and as such they are really bribes offered to the gods. Thus, in Dahomey
libations and animal and food offerings are frequently made to a variety of
Earth spirits to ensure their good favour in preventing any adversity from
befalling the one making the offering. |
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Although all sacrifice involves the
giving of something, there are some sacrificial rites in which the oblation is
regarded as a gift made to a deity either in expectation of a return gift or as
the result of a promise upon the fulfillment of a requested divine favour. Gift
sacrifices have been treated above. Here, it can be briefly noted that numerous
instances of the votive offering
are recorded. In ancient Greece sacrifices were vowed to Athena, Zeus, Artemis,
and other gods in return for victory in battle. The solemnity and irrevocability
of the votive offering is seen in the Old Testament account of the judge
Jephthah's sacrifice of his only child in fulfillment of a vow to Yahweh. |
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One form of thank offering is the
offering of the first fruits in agricultural societies. Until the first fruits
of the harvest have been presented with homage and thanks (and often with animal
sacrifices) to the deity of the harvest (sometimes regarded as embodied in the
crop), the whole crop is considered sacred and thus taboo and may not be used as
food. The first-fruits sacrifice has the effect of "desacralizing" the
crops and making them available for profane consumption. It is a recognition of
the divine source and ownership of the harvest and the means by which man is
reconciled with the vegetational, chthonic powers from whom he takes it. |
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Another distinctive feature of the
first-fruits offering is that it serves to replenish the sacred potencies of the
earth depleted by the harvest and to ensure thereby the continued regeneration
of the crop. Thus, it is one of many sacrificial rites that have as their
intention the seasonal renewal
and reactivation of the fertility of the earth. Fertility rites usually involve
some form of blood sacrifice--in former days especially human sacrifice. In some
human sacrifices the victim represented a deity who "in the beginning"
allowed himself to be killed so that from his body edible vegetation might grow.
The ritual slaying of the human victim amounted to a repetition of the
primordial act of creation and thus a renewal of vegetational life. In other
human sacrifices the victim was regarded as representing a vegetation spirit
that annually died at harvest time so that it might be reborn in a new crop. In
still other sacrifices at planting time or in time of famine, the blood of the
victim--animal or human--was let upon the ground and its flesh buried in the
soil to fertilize the earth and recharge its potencies. (see also
fertility cult) |
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Numerous instances are known of animal
and human sacrifices made in the course of the construction of houses, shrines,
and other buildings, and in the laying out of villages and towns. Their purpose
has been to consecrate the ground by establishing the beneficent presence of the
sacred order and by repelling or rendering harmless the demonical powers of the
place. In some West African cults, for example, before the central pole of a
shrine or a house is installed, an animal is ritually slain, its blood being
poured around the foundations and its body being put into the posthole. On the
one hand, this sacrifice is made to the earth deities and the supernatural
powers of the place--the real owners--so that the human owner may take
possession and be ensured against malevolent interferences with the construction
of the building and its later occupation and use. On the other hand, the
sacrifice is offered to the cult deity to establish its benevolent presence in
the building. |
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Throughout the history of man's
religions, the dead have been the recipients of offerings from the living. In
ancient Greece an entire group of offerings (enagismata)
was consecrated to the dead; these were libations of milk, honey, water, wine,
and oil poured onto the grave. In India water and balls of cooked rice were
sacrificed to the spirits of the departed. In West Africa, offerings of cooked
grain, yams, and animals are made to the ancestors residing in the Earth. The
point of such offerings is not that the dead get hungry and thirsty, nor are
they merely propitiatory offerings. Their fundamental intention seems to be that
of increasing the power of life of the departed. The dead partake of the life of
the gods (usually the chthonic deities), and sacrifices to the dead are in
effect sacrifices to the gods who bestow never-ending life. In Hittite funeral
rites, for example, sacrifices were made to the sun god and other celestial
deities--transcendent sources of life--as well as to the divinities of Earth. |
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Communion in the sense of a bond between
the worshipper and the sacred power is fundamental to all sacrifice. Certain
sacrifices, however, promote this communion by means of a sacramental meal. The
meal may be one in which the sacrificial oblation is simply shared by the deity
and the worshippers. Of this sort were the Greek thysia and the Jewish zevah sacrifices
in which one portion of the oblation was burned upon the altar and the remainder
eaten by the worshippers. Among the African Yoruba
special meals are offered to the deity; if the deity accepts the oblation (as
divination will disclose), a portion of the food is placed before his shrine
while the remainder is joyfully eaten as a sacred communion by the worshippers.
The communion sacrifice may be one in which the deity somehow indwells the
oblation so that the worshippers actually consume the divine; e.g.,
the Hindu soma ritual. The Aztecs
twice yearly made dough images of the sun god Huitzilopochtli that were
consecrated to the god and thereby transubstantiated into his flesh to be eaten
with fear and reverence by the worshippers. |
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The constituent elements of sacrifice
have been incorporated into the particular religions and cultures of the world
in various and often complex ways. A few brief observations that may illustrate
this variety and complexity are given here. |
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Speculations regarding sacrifice and
prescribed rituals seem to have been worked out more fully in the Vedic
and later Hindu religion in India than anywhere else. These rites, laid down in
a complicated system known mainly from the Brahmanatexts, included obligatory sacrifices following the course of the
year or the important moments in the life of an individual and optional
sacrifices occasioned by the special wishes of a sacrificer. Yet cultic
sacrifice has not developed in Buddhism,
another religion that arose in India. Ritual sacrifice was judged to be
ineffective and in some of its forms to involve cruelty and to run counter to
the law of ahimsa, or non-injury.
There are, however, in the Jataka stories
of the Buddha's previous births accounts of his self-sacrifices. Furthermore,
Buddhism emphasizes the notion of ethical sacrifices, acts of self-discipline;
and there are instances of devotional offerings, such as burnt incense, to the
Buddha. (see also Hinduism) |
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In China sacrifice, like other aspects
of religion, has existed at a number of different levels. The essential feature
of Imperial worship in ancient China was the elaborate sacrifices offered by the
emperor himself to Heaven and Earth. There are also records of sacrifice,
including human sacrifice, associated with the death of a ruler because it was
thought proper for him to be accompanied in death with those who served him
during life. But, because the common people were excluded from participation in
Imperial sacrifices, they had lesser gods--some universal, some local--to whom
sacrifices were made. Furthermore, ancestor
worship has been the most universal form of religion throughout China's
long history; it was the responsibility of the head of a household to see to it
that sacrificial offerings to the dead were renewed constantly. The blending of
these elements with such established religions as Buddhism and Taoism influenced
the great diversification of sacrificial rites in China. (see also
Chinese religion) |
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In ancient Japan offering occupied a
particularly important place in religion because the relationship of the people
to their gods seems frequently to have had the character of a bargain rather
than of adoration. It is probable that the offerings were originally individual,
but they gradually became collective, especially as all powers, including
religious, were concentrated in the hands of the emperor, who officiated in the
name of all his people. Human sacrifice to natural deities and at burials was
once common but seems generally to have been abandoned in the early Middle Ages.
Besides human sacrifices and their more modern substitutes, the Japanese offered
to the gods all the things that man regards as necessary (e.g.,
food, clothing, shelter) or merely useful and pleasing (e.g.,
means of transportation, tools, weapons, objects of entertainment) for life.
These practices, which were found in the traditional religion known as Shinto,
were modified when Confucianism and Buddhism were introduced into Japan during
the 5th and 6th centuries AD. (see also
Japanese religion) |
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The Homeric poems contain the most
complete descriptions of sacrificial rites in ancient Greece. These rites, which
were maintained almost without change for more than 10 centuries, were of two
types: rites (thysia) addressed to the
Olympian deities, which included burning part of a victim and then participating
in a joyful meal offered to the gods during the daytime primarily to serve and
establish communion with the gods; and rites (sphagia)
addressed to the infernal or chthonic deities, which involved the total burning
or burying of a victim in a sombre nocturnal ceremony to placate or avert the
malevolent chthonic powers. Besides the official or quasi-official rites, the
popular religion, already in Homer, comprised sacrifices of all kinds of animals
and of vegetables, fruits, cheese, and honey offered as expiation, supplication,
or thanksgiving by worshippers belonging to all classes of society. Furthermore,
the secret worship of what are known as the mysteries--cults normally promising
immortality or some form of personal relationship with a god--became widespread.
This practice became especially prominent during the Hellenistic period. (see
also Greek
religion) |
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The destruction of the Second Temple in
AD 70 marked a profound change in the worship of the Jewish people. Before that
event, sacrifice was the central act of Israelite worship; and there were many
categories of sacrificial rites that had evolved through the history of the Jews
into a minutely detailed system found in that part of the Torah
(Law; the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) that is ascribed by biblical
scholars to the Priestly Code,
which became established following the Babylonian Exile (586-538). The
sacrificial system ceased, however, with the destruction of the Temple, and
prayer took the place of sacrifices. In modern Judaism the Orthodox prayer books
still contain prayers for the reinstitution of the sacrificial cult in the
rebuilt Temple. Reform Judaism, however, has abolished or modified these prayers
in keeping with the conception of sacrifice as a once adequate but now outmoded
form of worship, and some Conservative congregations have also rephrased
references to sacrifices so that they indicate solely past events without
implying any hope for the future restoration of the rite. (see also Jerusalem, Temple
of) |
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The notion of sacrifice emerged in the
early Christian communities in several different contexts. The death of Christ
upon the cross preceded by the Last Supper was narrated in the Gospels in
sacrificial terms; the life of Christ, culminating in his Passion and death, was
seen as the perfect sacrifice, and his Resurrection and glorification were seen
as God the Father's seal of approval on that life. The notion that members of
the church are vitally linked to Christ and that their lives must be sacrificial
was also elaborated, especially in the letters of St. Paul. Moreover, from the
first decades of the church's existence, the celebration of the eucharistic meal
was connected with the sacrifice of Jesus; it was a "memorial" (anamnesis)--a
term denoting some sort of identity between the thing so described and that to
which it referred--of that sacrifice. |
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The interpretation of sacrifice and
particularly of the Eucharist
as sacrifice has varied greatly within the different Christian traditions,
partly because the sacrificial terminology in which the Eucharist was originally
described became foreign to Christian thinkers. In short, during the Middle
Ages, the Eastern Church viewed the Eucharist principally as a life-giving
encounter with Christ the Resurrected; the Roman Church, however, saw it
primarily as a bloodless repetition of the bloody sacrifice of Christ on the
cross. For the Protestant Reformers in the 16th century, the sacrifice of Christ
was unique and all sufficing, so that the idea of repeating it in cult became
unnecessary. Sacrifice was separated from liturgy and was associated, especially
in Calvinist Protestantism,
with the personal ethical acts that should be made by a Christian believer. The ecumenical
movement of the 20th century, bolstered by modern biblical scholarship,
has led some of the Christian churches--e.g.,
the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches--to realize that they are not so
far apart in their understanding of the Eucharist as sacrifice as was formerly
thought and that they hold many elements of belief in common. (see also
Eastern Orthodoxy, mass,
Christianity, Lutheranism) |
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Sacrifice has little place in orthodox Islam.
Faint shadows of sacrifice as it was practiced by the pre-Islamic Arabs
have influenced Muslims, so that they consider every slaughter of an animal an
act of religion. They also celebrate feasts in fulfillment of a vow or in
thanksgiving for good fortune, but there is no sacrificial ritual connected with
these festive meals. On the last day of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, animals
are sacrificed; nevertheless, it is not the sacrificial rite that is important
to the Muslims, but rather their visit to the sacred city. |
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The organization of sacrificial rites in
the different cultures and religions has undoubtedly been influenced by a number
of factors. Economic considerations, for example, certainly have had some impact
upon primitive peoples in the selection of the victim and the time of sacrifice
and in the determination of whether the victim is consumed or totally destroyed
and whether the sacrificer is an individual or a collective group. The
importance of such factors is an aspect of sacrifice that deserves increased
investigation. Nevertheless, sacrifice is not a phenomenon that can be reduced
to rational terms; it is fundamentally a religious act that has been of profound
significance to individuals and social groups throughout history, a symbolic act
that establishes a relationship between man and the sacred order. For many
peoples of the world, throughout time, sacrifice has been the very heart of
their religious life. (see also
sacred and profane) |
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(R.F.) |
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