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<\/a><\/p>\nSacrifice is an important topic for any Pagan. I wrote about it last year<\/a>, I gave my impressions of a panel discussion on sacrifice<\/a> at this year\u2019s Pantheacon, and I wrote about a very specific sacrifice<\/a> I was instructed to make earlier this year.<\/p>\n Sacrifice is a dialogue between us and the Gods. It affirms the sacred principle of reciprocity: we receive and so we give, that we may receive again. As the Gods do, so we do as well. Sacrifice acknowledges there are things in life that are necessary even if they are unpleasant. It affirms our commitment to do that which must be done.<\/p>\n Most of my sacrifices have been food and drink; a few have been objects I\u2019ve been asked to give. I\u2019ve made sacrifices of time and money, and you probably have too, even if you didn\u2019t think of them as sacrifices at the time. I\u2019ve never sacrificed a living animal \u2013 I\u2019ve never been asked to. Given the deities I worship and the traditions in which I work, it\u2019s likely (though far from certain) that request will never come.<\/p>\n But I have killed animals. I grew up on a small farm \u2013 at various time we raised cows, chickens, and rabbits. I hunted squirrels and quail; I shot blue jays to keep them out of the cherries. I was given the job of shooting crows to keep them out of the corn. I failed. Not only did I never kill a crow, I never even got a shot off. Crows are smart.<\/p>\n We kept the chickens for eggs and the cows were too big \u2013 we sent them to a packing house. But we butchered the rabbits ourselves. My father was a good Baptist and a child of the Great Depression \u2013 the rabbits were a source of food<\/a> and nothing more. But he made it clear: do it right so the animal doesn\u2019t suffer needlessly. I learned to do it right.<\/p>\n Minus ritual, the lives and deaths of those rabbits were virtually indistinguishable from the lives and deaths of animals sacrificed in polytheistic rites, and far better than the lives and deaths of the animals that provide your hamburgers and fried chicken.<\/p>\n The bulk of the arguments against animal sacrifice aren\u2019t coming from vegetarians. They\u2019re coming from omnivores having a gut level reaction against a practice they\u2019ve been told is primitive, barbaric, and unnecessary. I understand that gut level reaction. But at some point, I would expect Pagans who pride themselves on being educated and open-minded to actually consider what is and isn\u2019t being done and the context in which it\u2019s being practiced.<\/p>\n In a post that went up on his blog on Tuesday night, the Anomalous Thracian addressed this situation<\/a> in detail. His essay is quite long but it\u2019s also quite complete: it addresses the long history of animal sacrifice, the necessity of it in some religious traditions, and the many invalid arguments made against it by people who should know better. If you want to understand the practice, do yourself a favor and read the whole thing. It\u2019s long but it\u2019s not boring. If you\u2019re a Pagan or a polytheist, you have an obligation to educate yourself about a practice that\u2019s an important part of some of our traditions, even if it\u2019s not a part of yours.<\/p>\n The Thracian\u2019s essay isn\u2019t easy to summarize or excerpt, but here\u2019s a key quote:<\/p>\n The class-and-culture related bias in this discussion is astoundingly thick, complicated, and driven. But right now, all of the people discussing Polytheists and the subject of animal sacrifice sound a lot like Evangelicals discussing homosexuality, with disgust and revulsion and superiority. That \u201cothering\u201d is just so insidiously harmful that it makes me sick.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That\u2019s an important point. Again, the vast majority of the objections aren\u2019t coming from people who object to killing animals. They\u2019re coming from people who are experiencing \u201cdisgust and revulsion and superiority\u201d over a practice that\u2019s not part of their culture.<\/p>\n If you fall into that category, ask yourself why you feel that way. Emotions aren\u2019t morally wrong \u2013 you feel what you feel. But \u201cothering\u201d isn\u2019t a feeling \u2013 it\u2019s an action, and some actions are<\/em> morally wrong. Are your visceral emotions leading you into actions that aren\u2019t in alignment with your values?<\/p>\n No one is suggesting you must or even should perform animal sacrifices. In fact, you probably shouldn\u2019t. Here\u2019s the Thracian again:<\/p>\n not all Polytheists believe in or endorse or practice animal sacrifice. Polytheism is not \u201cone religion\u201d, but a set of them \u2026 But for many of us, this is an important topic, and an important practice, which like any lived cultural facet is something that we will guard and protect, as is our natural (and legal, and federally protected) right \u2026 There is zero emphasis or encouragement on people adopting these practices without training for any reason \u2026 Our gods are demanding service, submission, discipline and training of us, as laity and clergy alike, which is sort of the opposite of what the moral panic arguments against sacrifice are suggesting so publicly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There\u2019s another factor at work here, and that\u2019s the fear that if animal sacrifice becomes widely associated with Paganism, it will generate what one commenter called \u201canti-Pagan sentiment.\u201d Again, I understand. We\u2019re just getting to the point where the average person on the street doesn\u2019t automatically equate Paganism with Satanism. Discrimination and at times outright harassment are still problems for too many members of minority religions. There is a strong impulse to say \u201csee, we\u2019re harmless, we\u2019re nice and safe, we\u2019re just like you.\u201d<\/p>\n The vast majority of us became Pagans because the mainstream religion and the mainstream culture didn\u2019t work for us. We felt the call of the Gods, or of Nature, or of Magic, or of Community. Our very presence is a threat to the culture of patriarchy, consumption, and empire. While discretion is sometimes necessary, the approval of the mainstream comes with a price: your soul.<\/p>\n There\u2019s one more fear involved here, a fear that keeps coming up over and over again in the Pagan \/ polytheist arguments: the fear of people who take their religion seriously.<\/p>\n Again, to a certain extent this is understandable. In the Christian context we never hear about the Catholic monk who spends his life in silence and prayer or the Methodist lay person who spends her life feeding the poor because that\u2019s what Jesus did. No, we hear about the fundamentalists who picket funerals, fight against the rights of women and gay people, and push for war in the Middle East because they think it will bring the rapture. Based on what we see on TV, all people who take their religion seriously want to force everybody to live just like them.<\/p>\n That wasn\u2019t polytheism in ancient times and it certainly isn\u2019t polytheism now. If some people\u2019s Gods tell them to sacrifice a chicken, or a goat, or a bull, that has exactly zero effect on me \u2013 or on you. My Gods haven\u2019t told me to make any blood sacrifices. If They do, we\u2019ll talk about it.<\/p>\n People who take their religion seriously serve as reminders that this is real. The Gods are real<\/a>. The ancestors are real. The land, the sky, and the sea are real. And if They\u2019re real then They can affect us, as some of us have been discussing<\/a> for the past week or so.<\/p>\n Real Gods are a lot scarier than the polytheist next door killing, cleaning, and cooking a chicken in his back yard and seasoning it with prayers and invocations.<\/p>\n Negative reactions to animal sacrifice are understandable. My hope and my prayer is that Pagans will examine those reactions and find their source, then make sure their actions are in alignment with their values.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Real Gods are a lot scarier than the polytheist next door killing, cleaning, and cooking a chicken in his back yard and seasoning it with prayers and invocations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1129,"featured_media":8903,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[532,323,4,5,8,70],"class_list":["post-2953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-theology","tag-animal-sacrifice","tag-anomalous-thracian","tag-pagan","tag-paganism","tag-polytheism","tag-sacrifice"],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a><\/a>