Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Human Sacrifice in Ancient Religious Practice?

The ancient practices often includes strange things for today,like human sacrifice. How should this be interpreted? If the gods were formerly pleased by this kind of rituals, why are they so "friendly" today? I guess most of the pagan community today is worshiping gods of Celtic or Norse origins. And we all know about the Celtic sacrificial pyres or the hanging sacrifices to Odin etc. So would it be...unethically to worship the ancient gods? Or the people then were wrong? I guess that all the gods were offered the war victims as a gift, even the so called good gods, because even fertility cults included life-gifts for continuity etc. And if those people were wrong, why did the gods not stopped them?

And anyway, what would a god do with a dead guy? what should his energy or his soul serve to? i can understand the purpose of the human sacrifice at the Dacians, where the victim would sacrifice himself willingly to take the people's prayers and askings to Zalmoxis. But the post-war sacrifices, what did they served for?

And most of all, how should we see this today? Should we accept it as a dark side of a cultural phenomena we are into or should we blame it as wrong? Or simply try to forget about it and speak no more in order not to cause trouble and possible attacks from non-pagan communities?

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