Human sacrifice is a staple
of fantasy adventures. It usually takes
place in the sinister temple to a psychopathic elder god, where shaven,
skull-faced priest cackle as they slaughter hundreds of innocent virgins. At least, they would if the hero didn't turn
up just in time to put a permanent stop to the disgusting ritual.
Now, there's nothing wrong
with using this trope. I've used human
sacrifice as something practiced by the acolytes of the power of evil, where
it's suggested to true offering to the evil god is the worshippers giving up
their humanity. But does this really
reflect human sacrifice in the real world?
Well, it depends, of
course. It's tempting to see all
societies that perform blood sacrifices, human or not, as evil, but often
that's missing the point. When the
Greeks sacrificed animals to the gods, for instance, all they were really doing
was slaughtering the animal as normal, but in a special place. A portion was set aside for the god, and
then the people had a feast. As simple
as that — there was really no
difference from a butcher slaughtering the animal purely for meat. We might wonder at the concept of gods who
enjoyed the blood, but there was nothing unusually cruel.
When it comes to human
sacrifice, there certainly have been societies whose religions wade in blood,
but they're in the minority. Roman
authors accused the druids of human sacrifice; and, although this can be put
down to propaganda justifying the conquest of Britain for entirely economic
reasons, some archaeological evidence has been found for it.
"Some" being the
operative word. A couple of cases, over
centuries and over the whole of Britain, and it's only speculation that these
were sacrifices rather than, say, ritual executions for sacrilege.
This is true of the majority
of societies that have had human sacrifice — it was rare, and possibly only
happened in special circumstances.
Imagine a people constantly on the edge of extinction if the harvest
fails. There's been a drought for three
years — the gods are angry, and if they don't relent, everyone will die. These people genuinely believe that they can
send a messenger to the gods to plead their case.
Why wouldn't they do
it? It's quite likely the victim would
be a volunteer, proud to be the people's saviour. In any case, what society isn't willing to "sacrifice"
its individual members — often in numbers that would flabbergast the Aztecs —
when there's danger to the whole? We
call it war, and that somehow makes it different, but it's the same thing.
It's easy to look at another
society and condemn it for what looks like barbarism. Those Roman writers who were so shocked at the druids performing
human sacrifice, perhaps in great need, would have happily gone and watched human
beings slaughtered in the arena in the name of entertainment.
And what about the tradition
of the summer king being sacrificed annually and ploughed into the soil? Well, maybe it happened, maybe it
didn't. There's always a problem when outsiders
try to understand a religion's descriptions of its rituals, because most
religions tend to describe them in very symbolic terms. Many Romans (again) were deeply shocked by
the early Christians because it was "well known" their central ritual
involved eating human flesh and drinking human blood. In the modern west, even if we're not Christians, we
instinctively understand the symbolism involved in this, but it wasn't so
obvious to the Romans.
So maybe the king was
sacrificed annually, or maybe it was never anything but a symbolic ritual. Maybe it was real in some places and
symbolic in others — we'll probably never know for certain.
I hope, though, this has
made you think, as it's made me. We
don't necessarily have to like customs and religious practices in other
societies, and we can certainly be glad we don't have some of them, but they
usually make sense in context. And
maybe they'd be just as shocked and disgusted at us. It's always worth remembering that.
