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From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (tyagi/TOKUS)
Newsgroups: alt.satanism,alt.magick,alt.magick.tyagi,alt.pagan,talk.religion.misc,talk.religion.buddhism
Subject: Sacrifice (Was Re: Animal Sacrifice)
Date: 5 Apr 1995 10:50:35 -0700
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Kali Yuga 49950405


Namdrol and I write:

|>|  The reason animal sacrifice is rejected in general is that it is
|>|causally ineffective. In other words there is no relation between
|>|sacrifice and desired benefit. 

|>...It depends on what one looks for in terms of benefits and how one 
|>sees 'effectiveness' in religious and/or magical terms.  

|...If one beleives [one] is feeding the deity, it has never been seen 
|that these 'deities' actually consume any of the feast 'offered' to them. 

That is false.  You are just characterizing religion in terms of your
bias.  People see gods consume offerings all the time.  Your possibly 
materialistic requirements are just silly exclusionary tactics.


|There is a misconception about cause and effect. 

Only as seen by the dogmatic materialist.

 
|>For example, some want the thrill of head-on encounter with death.

|This is not sacrifice, this is simply murder. 

I see that you are discussing the ideal of sacrifice (and perhaps atonement
which is popular in some Western religions).  I'll address your writings
with this in mind.


|>Some want to use the animal as the vessel for their attachments and
|>therefore as a symbol of their liberation (contacting the deep mind
|>so as to inspire their own dropping of the ego).  

|This is self indulgence and again a misunderstanding of the nature of
|bondage and liberation. 

Fine.  Self-indulgence is part of the religion of Satanism.  Also, as
I understand it, the practice of infusing animals with symbolic
significance and then using them to attempt a change in oneself is
mysticism and/or magick.  Certainly it is objectifying the animal.  
We objectify it when we call it an 'it' or when we refer to it as 
'an animal'.  Some would call this 'black magick' as it transgresses
the animal's presumed desire for freedom and life.  

You speak like you think you know the 'true understandings' of things.
I think you're deluding yourself with your certainty. ;>


|>Some may wish to find a spiritual way to produce eating-flesh without 
|>butchers.

|This is just plain silly. 

This is a meaningful response?  It is too easy to dismiss that which is
beyond one's understanding or values.


|Magick is nothing more nor less then understanding the principals of
|causal relations. Often glossed as 'the magickal link'. 

I think magick is more than some intellectual comprehension of things.
It seems to me that mechanism is by and large secondary to intention
and dedication.


|All one needs to do Magick successufully is understand the cause and 
|effect relations of any act of will one wishes to accomplish. 

This understanding is superfluous.  Forgetting about the way home, I
linger in the fields of the glorious present.


|Not at all mysterious, or mystical. 

If you weren't sounding so generalizing (i.e. this is more than what
works for you, this is what is true) then I wouldn't argue the point.
I don't think your expostulations extend much beyond your nose in
their truth value.  My experience supports much broader working
hypotheses than you are suggesting and many within the occult community 
whom I admire for their experience don't share your extremity.


|"Whatever works" is a poor excuse for an understanding of Magick IMNSHO. 

Understanding magick and doing it are two different things.  An armchair
dilettante like me can 'understand' it all we want, but if we don't get
to the nitty gritty and *do* it, then it isn't Magick.  Understanding
what we are doing is neat, but not necessary at all.


|If one does not have precise understanding of what one is doing,
|one ought not be doing it. 

This works for the overly intellectual, those who are run by our heads.
We need to understand everything before we begin and then we can use
'not completely understanding it' to stop us from ever doing anything.


|This is the problem with the todays modern mage, very little 
|understanding of the basic principals of Magick. 

I agree, actually, but I don't see that everyone operates the same way,
only that lust for results is prevalent.


|>|...sacrifice appears puerile precisely because it turns its back on 
|>|real relations.  

|...in the sense that the victim is taken out it's context of utility. 
|It is withdrawn from thingness. 

I don't see how 'the sacrifice' is withdrawn from thingness.  Do you
mean that it is DESTROYED?  Well, that's no problem.  Destruction is
an important element of many activities, some of them supremely
beneficial.  

This notion of sacrifice as 'victim' is a recent phenomenon.  The hard
fact is that life is sustained on the death of others.  Killing beings
for food can become a very important act if/when it is done in association
with religious principles and values.


|...In a predominately meat-eating culture, animal sacrifice is useless 
|act with very little meaning. 

It is unimportant whether the culture is meat-eating or veggie-eating.
The important element is the culture's relation to slaughter.  In a
predominantly death-denying, repressed culture, animal sacrifice is
outlawed.  Performing sacrifices in association with the desires of
the culture for meat, especially publically, could be a personally
and socially transformative act.


|Buying a Lexus and burning it in the middle of the street, now that 
|would be a real sacrifice! Again, because sacrfice is based on the 
|principal of withdrawing a thing from it's thingness, sacrifce 
|necessarilty turns its back on real realtions. 

Like 'kill your television'.  I can see this interpretation of
sacrifice has value.  Giving up something one has for some motivation
(feeding the god, repentance, whatever) sounds right, but I don't 
think that it has much to do with 'making it sacred'.


|This is why sacrifice is before any thing else a function of economy. 

Fascinating.  I tend to favor associating sacrifice with religion and
personal discipline, regardless of economics (unless you carry this
ideology of 'economics' to include the 'economics of personal energy'
and other blandiose justification-schemes.


|Sacrifice is all about transgrssion and taboo. 

Here I'll agree with you.


|Their is no tabbo against killing animals in our culture, by and large, 

1) there is more than one culture on the planet
2) there are major taboos against killing mammals and oneself


|this is another reason whyh animal sacrfice is without numinous value 
|for us. 

Maybe without (numinous?) value for you.  I think your assertion is
unsupported as it applies to the American culture at least.  The Western
world has forbidden killing of animals as an element of religious rite
for so long that it has MADE it taboo.


|...The principal of stopping animal sacrfice is extremely old and time 
|honered in Buddhism.  

Agreed, though this doesn't mean that the Buddha prohibited or rebuked
alternatives.  The sacredness of the cow and the value of vegetarianism
were around before the Buddha in Indian culture, weren't they?


|Thre is absolutley no reason to doubt that such a prohibition orignated 
|from the Buddha himself. 

I'll provide a couple:

1) Everything we hear about the Buddha is second-hand at best and thousands
   of years old

2) Some buddhists (like myself) don't engage in an attempt to know what is
   the 8-fold Path for others.  I think it unlikely that the Buddha would
   do any more than suggest the minimization of coercion/damage in response
   to hir compassion.  Prohibition and rebuking are the mark of the profane.


|One reason for this is that most Hindus primarily remember the Buddha for 
|precisely this reasn, that he forbad animal sacrifice. 

It is quite possible that there developed within the movement which
extended beyond the Buddha the notion that she set out specific rules
and exclusions of behavior.  My understanding is that either you are
correct and this a sorry statement about not only Buddhism but about
the Buddha, or you are in error and the Buddha merely diagnosed the
malady and suggested a possible route to approach Nirvana.  The object
of proscription and restriction was a later development promoted for
a number of reasons, including rebellion.


|Why, because sacrificing animals did not in fact have the effect that 
|the brahmins claimed for it.  Fertility, freeedom from illness and so on,
|liberation. 

This is the conservative Buddhist line, yes.  I think it is an insult to
other Indians ('Hindus' if you like).


|...all this discussion of sacrifce is being done by amatuers who probably 
|have not really thought through very clearly what it means. 

Likely true, though I'm unsure that thinking through what it means is all
that important.  Between you and some Satanists as well as many other
religionists who proceed from their heads, there is a fallacious ideal
that all must first rationalize the religious process before embarking
upon it, when in fact most religion develops aside and prior to ideals
about it.


|...according legend every thirteen years these guys perform a human 
|sacrifce of a virgin boy, making incense out of his flesh that is highly 
|prized for operations of black magick. See _Nepal Mandala_

That's right.  The boy doesn't just 'cease to be a thing'.  He is transformed
into 'another thing' or 'a bunch of sacred things'.  A very wonderful
example of sacrifice.  This demonstrates that it is not 'turning its back on
real relations' so much as an transgression of social taboo which expresses
real relations.


|>Most Satanists and Neopagans are scared shitless of blood (take me, for 
|>example), let alone sacrificial rites of this sort.

|I hope so. They should be. 

This would appear to contradict your contention that 'killing animals is
not a taboo in our culture'.


|>Well, economics aren't everything.  

|Au contrare, mon Tyagi, economics are everything. The entire basis for 
|all narrative mythology is economics. 

I have no idea what you mean by 'narrative mythology', nor do I think that
while economics *can* be a valuable dimension of understanding of many
phenomena, that it somehow establishes a precondition for ritual behavior.


|>Perhaps you ought consider an alternative meaning for 'sacrifice' here. 

|...The word sacrifice comes from the latin sacrare, (sacred) + ficus, 
|(to make). 

Now how we interpret this 'making sacred' can vary.  I'm no historian or
etymologist.  I don't know how the Latin was understood and I must say
that your extremity in other areas does not give me reason to presume you
a reasonable source, though I'd love to hear references.


|...a sacrifice *makes* that thing that one is removing from the world of 
|things, *sacred*, numinous.

That is one interpretation.  Another is that it gives a routine action
(often an action necessary for survival) additional substance, integrating
it into a religious and/or mythological framework, the depth of one's
mind, forcing the individual who performs and watches it to bring it to
surface-level consciousness.  This can apply from the ritual slaughter of
comestable animals to the killing of 'pets' and even humans.  Just as the
event of birth has tremendous symbolic significance, so does the event of
death.  Both are mysteries and the prevalence of violence and death in
popular media is a testimony to an attempt to reconcile a tendency to deny
death on one hand (mortician's tricks, sheets, ambulances, graves) and
glorify it on the other (crucifixes, martyrdom, heroism, etc.).

Your commentary is very important, and yet it participates in the
subdivision of life experience where religious rites need not do this.
I.e. it need not be a support for the removal of things but of their
infusement through transformation, accepting the cyclic round of
changing form and the role of the divine in determining that change.


|...In general animal sacrifice as religous practice has a tendencie 
|to move from a celebration of a culturally numinous event, to a 
|gratuitous excercise in appeasing gods, that if they do indeed enjoy 
|the fruits of sacrifce, may only do so by proxy. 

But I'm not sure this is a function of sacrifice so much as a function
of religion and human nature.  People tend to shirk active roles in
religious practice.  We want to become like Arjuna, the rider in the
chariot, and in many ways the quiescent observer, Siva.  Urbanization
makes sacrificial rite difficult for mass-observance and limited
resources give added incentive to the development of specialist priests.


|festival, while possesed by the goddess, the dancer (male btw), drinks the
|blood of cows, gouts of blood pulsing from the severed arteries of thier
|necks, bits the heads of ducks and geese in order to drink their blood.

Wonderful shit.


|article ...Shamans's drum.... They turned it down. "We don't do sacrfice"...

That is another demonstration of the taboo.


|>Remember, I was talking about raising a 'pet' and killing hir and then 
|>eating hir.  

|'Pet" is an economic idea, as is 'raising'.  

I think there are alternatives to economic understand here.  We also 'raise'
children.  In fact, there is a similar tendency to attempt control over, to
'tend' that which we are presumed to own.  'Pet' implies an emotional
relationship as well as one of economics.  The concept of 'raising' applies
to crops and many other developing entities toward which we apply our 
energies.


|>|as far as I can tell thier is no sophisticated narrative myth being enacted. 

|A ritual without a myth, is a pretty piss poor ritual in my estimation.  I
|am not saying that the myth has to be old, but there has to be some myth
|involved. Hell, this is a basic principal of sigilization 101 (another thread)

I don't get a sense yet of the way in which you are using 'myth' here.  Please
elaborate if you haven't already done so in response to queries above.


|>|and given a mytho-historic etiology to justify it...

|>Well, in our case, no justification necessary.  We get to do whatever we
|>like in any way we feel comfortable (barring societal proscriptions,
|>which don't presently seem to be a problem in the US at least).

|Oh, there is always a justification for every deliberate act we do. 

I'm sure one can be found, especially after the fact, but it is only 
important for those who are into self-justification and aren't secure 
in spontaneity.

tyagi/TOKUS
tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com