| Anthropology of Sacrifice |
| ANTHROPOLOGY OF SACRIFICE
Conventional model or paradigm of sacrifice is Judeo-Christian model, especially Abraham�s near-sacrifice of son Isaac (called akedah or �binding�). However, other culture�s practices do not match model. What is sacrifice? Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss 1898. Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function. �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� The procedure �consists in establishing a means of communication between the sacred and the profane worlds through the mediation of a victim, that is, of a thing that in the course of the ceremony is destroyed.� E. B. Tylor: a gift to the gods, renounced by humans Robertson Smith: a communal meal, that integrates humans and gods M. F.C. Bourdillon and Meyer Fortes, ed. 1980. Sacrifice Sacrifice �is a special ritual procedure for establishing or mobilizing a relationship of mutuality between the donor (individual or collective) and the recipient; and there is generally, if not always, an implication of mutual constraint, and indeed of actual or potential mutual coercion in the act�. Sacrifice is more commonly a response to a demand or command from supernatural agencies or else a rendering of a standard obligation, than a spontaneous offering; and whether or not it is thought of as expiation or propitiation or purgation, there is commonly an element of demand, certainly of persuasion, on the donor�s side.� But if so, WHY sacrifice? Rene Girard 1977. Violence and the Sacred. �The function of sacrifice is to quell violence within the community and to prevent conflicts from erupting.� � Mimetic desire � Intrasocial competition and hostility � Sacrificial substitution �Religion ins its broadest sense, then, must be another term for that obscurity that surrounds man�s efforts to defend himself by curative or preventative means against his own violence.� � Depends on the misunderstanding of sacrifice and religion � Most likely to occur in societies without a formal and impersonal judicial/legal system Walter Burkert. 1981. Homo Necans Sacrifice is a symbolic re-enactment of the horror of killing that humans experience in hunting BUT the ethnographic evidence does not support these conclusions: � Hunting cultures do not practice sacrifice � Cultures that do practice sacrifice usually do not sacrifice �wild� animals � Sacrifice is more common in complex and politically centralized societies�and the more complex and centralized, the more (and more extreme) the sacrifice (e.g., Aztec empire, Dahomey kingdom, Hawaiian kingdom, even Greek and Roman societies) For instance: � Sacrifices often associated with farming and farm land: blood or body parts may be implanted in fields � Sacrifices often associated with building: blood or body parts place on or in the foundation of walls, towers, etc. � Sacrifices often associated with coronation of king � Sacrifices often associated with crisis moments for individual or society Case: Aztec sacrifice Human victims sacrificed by removal of heart while alive. Blood collected, bodies often rolled down the stairs of temple, priests occasionally wore flayed skin of victim Mythical foundations: (1) God Huitzilipochtli was born fully mature and fully armed. Fought other gods including his own sister. Hacked her to death and tossed her body down the stairs. Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan was a symbolic replica of the god�s space, and with a carving of dead god at bottom. Human victim reproduced the myth, falling where the god fell. (2) Sun-god has been born and reincarnated 4 times. Each time, he eventually weakens and dies. Sacrificial blood was needed feed the god and keep him strong. (3) Sacrifice was part of�the manifestation and �theater� of�the emperor�s power. He is chief sacrificer. His own life and health must be preserved (e.g. hasina in Madagascar). He is closest to the gods. He is the master of life and death. Case: Hawaiian sacrifice Valerio Valeri 1985. Kingship and Sacrifice: Ritual and Society in Ancient Hawaii. 1. Occasions for sacrifice: life cycle events (birth, betrothal, marriage, death, posthumous commemoration. Work and other activities (apprenticeship, house construction, new fishing lines and nets, construction of irrigation ditches and dams and fields). Misfortune (sickness, breaking vows, moral violations). Propitiation (fertility, rain, protection from sharks, prevent volcanoes, win battles). Sorcery and divination. 2. Sacrifice as food for gods 3. Sacrifice as prerogative of kings: king �participates in the nature of the god.� He is supreme mediator between society and gods. �It is precisely this that gives him authority over men, since it makes his actions more perfect and efficacious than theirs.� King must be kept healthy and strong, since he is �the point of connection between the social whole and the concept that justifies it.� King marries his own sister (�marriage with female double� and kills his male relatives (�sacrifice of male double�). Case: Buid (Philippines) sacrifice Thomas Gibson 1986. Sacrifice and Sharing in the Philippine Highlands: Religion and Society among the Buid of Mindoro. Small nonviolent society Sacrificed animals �serve as mediators between the human and spirits worlds�and contain a source of vitality which can be tapped by humans.� Proper animals for sacrifice are pigs and chickens, both domesticated by Buid. No ritual use of wild animals, except those that enter into human territory (wild pig, monkey). Chickens used to mediate with spirits of sky. Pigs used to mediate with spirits of earth. Buid say that �humans are the pigs of the evil spirits, and that the death of a human provides the evil spirits with a feast in the same way as the killing of a pig in sacrifice provides humans with a feast.� Ghost have everything they need for life in underworld except domesticated animals, so they return and beg for them. �Sacrifices, then, involve the controlled appropriation of animal vitality. They are performed when the vitality of men is under direct threat of appropriation by predatory spirits, and they are used to counter that threat�. In other rituals, the vitality of animals is shared with the spirits of fertility.� For example, in Judeo-Christian scriptures, �For the life of the flesh is in the blood: I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that maketh atonement by reason of the life� (Leviticus 17:11) In Christianity, Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice�God sacrificing himself to humans (rather than vice versa). Sacrifice constitutes not a symbolic but an instrumental and (from the member�s perspective) effective �economy of life�: E. O. James. 1933. Origins of Sacrifice: A Study in Comparative Religion �In the ritual shedding of blood, it is not the taking of life but the giving of life that really is fundamental, for blood is not death but life. The outpouring of the vital fluid in actuality, or by substitute, is the sacred act whereby life is given to promote and preserve life, and to establish thereby a bond of union with the supernatural order.� �It being firmly established that to sacrifice life means to promote life, the throne, or the creative power behind it, could be maintained as the center of vitality, by a continual outpouring of blood. Therefore, instead of the gods being compelled virtually to immolate themselves in the persons of their earthly reincarnations, in order that they might be enabled to continue their beneficent vegetative functions toward mankind, sacrificial victims came to figure more and more prominently in the ritual cycle of plowing, seedtime, and harvest, upon which the agricultural community depends for its subsistence.� �Consequently, the destruction of the victim, to which many writers have given a central position in the rite, assumes a position of secondary importance in comparison with the transmission of soul-substance to the supernatural being to whom it is offered.� 4 goals: (1) to augment the power of the spirits (2) to release potency to meet forces of death and decay (3) to strengthen worshippers against evil/weakening forces (4) to establish and renew the bond with benevolent powers |