Matador - Fucking With The Gods

The definition of membership is participation in a cult.
This begins with the family, for which Greek has no special word: one
speaks of house and hearth, thus consciously designating the domestic sacrificial site.” Greek Religion - Walter Burkert
… In order to be like God knowledge would have to be some

form of wisdom where secret processes were unfolded. This
would then give Adam, as we have pointed out, a range of
choice, a godlike independence which he did possess before.
The Knowledge Of Good And Evil
Therold S. Stern
Page | 1
The polis was consistently concerned with bringing the world

of human affairs into alignment with the affairs of the gods.
Cult and ritual were quite simply considered essential for the
continuing existence and health of the Athenian polis.
Feasts, Citizens, And Cultic Democracy In Classical
Athens - Nancy A. Evans
MATADOR
Fucking With The Gods -
how men usurped menstruants as
the original priests
- devising methods of bloodshed
sought to become like the gods in
their engagement with them
curated by
amma birago
… kingship everywhere and at all times has been in some

degree a sacred office. Rex est mixta persona cum sacerdote.
This is because a king symbolizes a whole society and must
not be identified with any part of it
Issues in Divine Kingship
G. Feeley-Harnik
…The Phoenicians and Carthaginians gave up their children because

these were their dearest treasures, and hence the devoting of them was most
likely to secure divine favor." Similar explanations of the same rite by Greek
and Roman writers make it clear that such was the notion held in classical
antiquity
George Goodspeed
Atonement in non-Christian religions
The sacred bulls and cows were related to the mother goddess. These animals were then converted into monetary units. In
acquiring money one unconsciously gained the protection of the mother. Origin of Money in the Animal Sacrifice - Desmonde
The definition of membership is participation in a cult. This begins with the family, for which Greek has no special word: one
In order to demonstrate their masculine ritual potency

men must “menstruate” and “give birth”.
Menstruation And The Origins Of Culture

Chris Knight
Page | 2
Male “menstruation” is in fact central to initiation-
rites throughout much of the world.
[They] "are drawn from edible substances, and indeed from such
substances as form the ordinary staple of human food." He adds:
"All sacrifices were taken by the ancients as being
literally the food of the gods."
Substances in Semitic sacrifices
Professor W. Robertson Smith.
A cut is required, both Nancy and Bataille suggest, a circumcision,

to institute "Man" (and "animal"), "the West," "the rest of humanity,"
and so forth. The "distanced and repetitive relation" that such a situation
implies presupposes a "mimetic rupture," or cut, between "the West"
and its other.
Hawthorne, sacrifice, sovereignty
T Deines
The challenge for individual citizens in a global society is to

hold the several versions of sacrifice that may be operating
simultaneously within current events or as cultures clash.
Martha Blake. Psychotherapist and Jungian Analysis
It was the religion that exacted a bloody sacrifice that
made the Romans of pagan times strong and that
invested them with their character of conquerors
and rulers.
Discourses on Livy by Machiavelli
… the blood spilled from a victim's body was truly a holy substance, one that the deities who were presiding over
the ceremony required. To ensure the gods received their ration, the blood was sometimes smeared on stone images
of gods, collected on bark paper strips and burnt so the smoke could ascend into the heavens, or consumed by the
ruler, the representative of the deities.
Professor W. Robertson Smith
"The gods confronted man just as a creditor Page | 3

confronted his debtor; each of them had a duly acquired right to certain
performances and payments; "'The gods were partners in
a contract with their worshipers."
Development of atoning practices in ancient religions
George S. Goodspeed. Atonement in non-Christian religions
“The practice of self-laceration, of being prepared to offer up their own blood,

was common to the zealous of both Mexico and Phoenicia.”
James Baily
The God-Kings & the Titans
… In Mesopotamia, kingship itself was the gift of the gods,

and seems to been conceived as a means have of overcoming primeval disorder.9
Indeed, to a considerable extent, kingship was the possession of the gods
as much as their gift: already in the early Second Millennium,
we find the state god conceived as the true king,
the earthly ruler being merely his vicegerent.
The rise of blood sacrifice and priest-kingship in Mesopotamia:

A ‘cosmic decree’?
Gunnar Heinsohn
The first stage of civilization appeared in the Bronze Age with temple centred urban settlements. It is not known
why priest-kings were suddenly accepted as hierarchically superior rulers entitled to provisions by their fellows who
thereby turned themselves into mankind's first commoners. … Sophisticated blood rituals became the most
prominent activities of the first permanent lords. The origin of these sacred procedures remained equally enigmatic.
The spirits demand attention, and they are not to be satisfied

with cucumbers. They demand bloody offerings. And if they
are not given animal sacrifices they seize their devotees and
make them sick.
E. E. Evans-Pritchard.
The Meaning of Sacrifice Among the Nuer.
This seriality of exchanges is transformative

in that I lose something in order to get something in exchange.
The articulation of desire is thus truly cosmological.
Page | 4
John Morton. The Effectiveness of Totemism:
'Increase Ritual' and Resource Control in Central
Australia
The sense of the bargain is always the same: if we

give you an ox or a sheep or a goat will you leave
the sick man alone that he may recover, or what do
you require of us this year in sacrifice that we may
not be troubled by you?
The Meaning of Sacrifice Among the Nuer
EE Evans-Pritchard
The polis was consistently concerned with bringing

the world of human affairs into alignment with the affairs
of the gods. Cultic behaviors and rituals were the means
to bring about this balance.
Feasts, Citizens, And Cultic Democracy
In Classical Athens - Nancy A. Evans
But why and how did mortals, human beings, gain such a holdover "the affairs of the gods"? It turns out that among
these people, … the gods, the gods of Olympus and the whole world, never thought of inventing such a thing as a
"city." Cities were an invention of men, of mortals, and one fine day the gods … jostling at the gate, clamoring for
the privileges of a so-called poliad deity as it were, a better paid "chair" than an ordinary seat in the pantheon.
The Gods of Politics in Early Greek Cities
Marcel Detienne and Janet Lloyd
Tylor. The origin of sacrifice.

"The suppliant who bows before his chief,
laying a gift at his feet, and making his humble
petition, displays the anthropomorphic model
and origin at once of sacrifice and prayer."'
The outcome of wars, crop harvests, and the weather were all
determined by the whims of the gods, whims which required
appeasement on the part of mortal humans. Sacrifice was
incorporated as a way of 'feeding' these ever-hungry gods.
Peter Gose. The American Society for Ethnohistory Page | 5
Oracles, Divine Kingship, and Political Representation in
the Inka State
The City As An Element In The International System

Kenneth E. Boulding
… before the invention of agriculture man was too near the margin of subsistence in most places to have any surplus
left over, either for more elaborate organization or for organized fighting. The domestication of plants and animals
seems to have led at first to a degree of relative affluence in which productive activity paid off better than predatory,
and hence the threat system seems to have been fairly well muted. A great many neolithic villages seem to have
been undefended. As long as population was sparse in relation to agricultural land, this idyllic Garden of Eden could
persist.
The rise of cities may well have been associated with population pressure that made simple expansion of the old way
of life impossible. The first cities seem to have been created by internal threat systems. In the early days, this
appears to have been mainly a spiritual threat. A charismatic priesthood somehow persuades the farmer to hand over
some of his surplus food, and with this food the priests, the artisans, and the builders of temples, houses, and walls
are fed, but not much comes back to the farmer. The simplest model both of the city-state and of the international
system would suppose each city to have a small agricultural hinterland around it, from which the surplus of food
flows into the city and which receives from the city primarily spiritual goods or threats.
At this stage at any rate, the city would have little in the way of products to export. The spiritual threat of the priest
is usually succeeded by the more material threat of the king who uses the food that he extracts from the farmers to
feed soldiers who can extract the surplus that feeds them by material threat. … A system of city-states is only stable
if what I have called the "loss of strength gradient -that is, the decline in threat capability and (or credibility)' per
mile of distance traveled away from its origin - is very high. Thus, for the system of city-states to be stable, the
threat capability of the city must be exhausted once it has covered an area that is capable of feeding the city from its
food surplus.
The City As An Element In The International System
Kenneth E. Boulding
… in Boltanski’s and Thevenot’s work, where each cité is structured around an

ideal typical form of sacrifice, a “greatness” by which the “worth” of other
sacrifices are measured. and to analyse how these cités are distributed.
Death at the Building Site: Construction Sacrifice in Southeast Asia

Robert Wessing and Roy E. Jordaan
… “discourses” … in a way that lies very close to Boltanski’s & Thevenot’s understanding of “cité”. There may be
differences, of course. Differences that are not quite caught by the English translation, “world”, either. Strictly
speaking, discourses define linguistic aspects of sociality, aspects which I assume have an impact beyond the sphere
of language, but aspects that are, nevertheless, linguistic. Boltanski’s and Thevenot’s concept on the other hand,
seems to imply a structure of thought, which metaphorically can be understood as a confined physical place, as a
walled city, hence the term “cité”.
… in Boltanski’s and Thevenot’s work, where each cité is structured around an ideal typical form of sacrifice, a
“greatness” by which the “worth” of other sacrifices are measured. and to analyse how these cités are distributed. Page | 6
Death at the Building Site: Construction Sacrifice in Southeast Asia
Robert Wessing and Roy E. Jordaan
The polis was consistently concerned with bringing the world of human affairs into
alignment with the affairs of the gods. Cultic behaviors and rituals were the means to
bring about this balance. And it can no longer be assumed, as some classical scholars and
ancient historians have done for decades, that these rites and behaviors were empty
rituals; nor were they taboos or ways of magically assuring divine support. Cult and ritual
were quite simply considered essential for the continuing existence and health of the
Athenian polis.
Feasts, Citizens, And Cultic Democracy
In Classical Athens - Nancy A. Evans
the whole of "traditional" West Africa, which does not appear to have any "public
places."… there is no space at all there between the power of the king or royal chieftain
and society, which is organized into clans. The king accumulates in his person all the
powers that are disseminated among the clans and lineages.
Thus, men have an anxiety about women’s reproductive powers due to their reliance upon women for the
continuation of their society. Therefore, in patrilineal societies, men take control and regulate the reproductive
power and rights of women by establishing a lineage system to control inheritance and the means of production. The
emphasis on sacrifice in patrilineal societies allows for the development of social reproduction, instead of relying on
biological reproduction (childbirth); descent becomes social and ritual in nature and, therefore, is no longer
dependent on women.
Reclaiming The Role Of The Old Priestess
KM Gentile
But why and how did mortals, human beings, gain such a holdover "the affairs of the gods"? It turns out that among
these people, "our" Greeks, the gods, the gods of Olympus and the whole world, never thought of inventing such a
thing as a "city." Cities were an invention of men, of mortals, and one fine day the gods woke up to this fact. In no
time, they were jostling at the gate, clamoring for the privileges of a so-called poliad deity as it were, a better paid
"chair" than an ordinary seat in the pantheon.
At the end of the sixth century, somewhere in the mountains of Crete, a little city engaged a scribe, for a large fee.
His name was Spensithios, and he was an expert in purple letters, that is to say Phoenician writing. His contract Page | 7
specified that he should set down in writing all public matters (demosia), or, to be more precise, both the affairs of
the gods and the affairs of men. The two were kept clearly separate, as it attested by scores of epigraphical
documents. The contract also stated that Spensithios of Crete should be responsible for the management of public
sacrifices, those known as "common" or "ancestral," which were an essential part of the communal affairs of any cit.
... But the essential point … is that "the affairs of the gods," the first section of "public matters," were debated,
discussed, and decided in the assembly and moreover in the first part of the assembly. The assembly decided by a
majority vote how the new calendar should be organized and the order in which the various gods would be honored.
… the practices of the deliberative assembly and the repeated and regulated exercises performed by a decision-
taking group that progressively comes to think of itself as a unity made from a plurality and that creates for itself this
new public space. All these practices sooner or later, depending on the circumstances played their part in forging the
by no means ordinary idea of the group's sovereignty over itself. Yes, sovereignty, and I am of course thinking of
those first Greek cities, which never needed to be head a sovereign or to abolish an Ancien Regime. … the whole of
"traditional" West Africa, which does not appear to have any "public places."… there is no space at all there
between the power of the king or royal chieftain and society, which is organized into clans. The king accumulates in
his person all the powers that are disseminated among the clans and lineages.

They mock these upstart monotheists for their insistence on "having to believe" and their proselytizing efforts. As
we all know, the field of polytheisms constitutes a vast continent, one that awaits all those wishing to experiment in
the world of the possible relations that link divine powers.
In a polytheistic system, a god is always plural, constituted by the intersection of a variety of attributes. In this sense,
a god is conjectural, a figure with many angles and many facets. Greek culture presents observers with well-
established arrangements and organized relations between two or more powers, relations of explicit partnership and
complementarity between deities.
The challenge for individual citizens in a global society is to hold

the several versions of sacrifice that may be operating simultaneously
within current events or as cultures clash.
Martha Blake. Psychotherapist and Jungian Analyst.
Between Man and God:

Sacrifice in the Roman Imperial Cult.
S. R. F. Price
Similarly Taylor wrote that Augustus, in succession to the 'divine kings of the Hellenistic monarchies', in the Asiatic
provinces and the Greek lands was 'frankly worshipped by cities and leagues of cities as a deity incarnate '.
Imperial sacrifices were made on a variety of occasions, public and private, by individuals or by representatives of
city or province. Sometimes libations or ritual cakes' were offered but the burning of incense, perhaps on special
altars,' or the killing of an animal, normally a bull, were the standard offerings at public festivals. We are fortunate
to possess some representations of these scenes of sacrifice, both of libations and of the sacrifice of a bull before an Page | 8
imperial statue or temple.
On sacrifices to and sacrifices on behalf of emperor Gauis.

and the continuities between ruler cult and the traditional cult of the gods.

S. R. F. Price
Philo, who went on an embassy of Alexandrian Jews to the emperor Gaius, says that when they finally succeeded in
gaining an audience with Gaius in connection with the troubles in Alexandria, they were greeted by an emperor who
accused the Jews of being godhaters who refuse'd to acknowledge his divinity.22 The opposing embassy of
Alexandrian Greeks then accused the Jews of not having offered sacrifices of thanksgiving for Gaius. The Jews
denied this vehemently, pointing out that they had done so three times. 'All right', Gaius replied, 'that's as may be,
you have sacrificed, but to another, even if it was on my behalf. What good is that if you have not sacrificed to me?
In the sphere of sacrifice there is an amount of

direct sacrifice to specific, living Hellenistic kings which is
very striking in comparison to the Roman material.
My account of imperial sacrifices shows how the system was modified to accommodate the ambiguous figure of the
emperor within the traditional division between god and man. … Politics obviously lies at the root of ruler cult, but
to impose a distinction between politics and religion, as is conventionally done, is to make it impossible to see how
ruler cult consisted in the accommodation of power in traditional religious terms.
S. R. F. Price
At the apex of this hierarchy was

the Sun, tutelary deity of the Inkas and "father" of all their sovereigns.
Naturally, the Sun always received the most important sacrifices and was
the most authoritative in the entire panoply of imperial oracles.
Peter Gose on Oracular Representation
Sacrifice and the Commodity Form in the Andes
1 . Primarily the slaughter of an animal as an offering to God or a deity. …

4. The destruction or surrender of something valued or desired for the sake
of something having a higher or more pressing claim; the loss entailed
by devotion to some other interest,
b. a victim.
SACRIFICE - Page | 9
Oxford English Dictionary
On the theory of essences, representations or symbols.

The legitimization of such an economic rebate has very important implications for the practice and the theory of
sacrifice. On the one hand it allows the sacrifice to be performed with much greater frequency than would certainly
be the case if the sacrificial material was always destroyed. On the other hand it necessitates special beliefs about the
manner in which the gods or spirits take their fill. Either they must be satisfied with the killing and display of the
sacrificed object, or they must be satisfied to consume its least valuable portions, or to absorb some immaterial
aspect or equivalent of it. In other words, the practice of reservation of the sacrificial material for the human
participants almost inevitably demands some theory of essences, representations or symbols.
Offering and Sacrifice:
Problems of Organization
Raymond Firth
The spirits demand attention, and they are not to be satisfied with cucumbers. They
demand bloody offerings. And if they are not given animal sacrifices they seize their
devotees and make them sick. Nuer, therefore, do not hesitate to bargain with these
spirits, speaking through their mediums, in a downright way which astonished me. The
sense of the bargain is always the same: if we give you an ox or a sheep or a goat will
you leave the sick man alone that he may recover, or what do you require of us this year
in sacrifice that we may not be troubled by you?
Development of atoning practices in ancient religions.

George S. Goodspeed. Atonement in non-Christian religions.
The legal or commercial aspects of the relations emerge. The old Roman religion was of this type.
"The gods confronted man just as a creditor confronted his debtor; each of them had a duly acquired right to certain
performances and payments; "
2 or, again: "'The gods were partners in a contract with their worshipers."
3 Compensation for affronts committed was made by sacrifice, which, as Baring Gould says, "is in religion what
mulct is in law."
Robert Kastenbaum. On sacrifice.

… sacrifice is a form of communication with a deity for
similar purposes. The word itself means "to make holy." ….,
sacrificial offerings include objects of value and symbolic
significance that are given to the gods to earn their favor.
Page | 10
In Africa, however, the need for scheduled consumption shaped the development of food production.
African cattle were domesticated during the tenth millennium BP by delayed return Saharan hunter-gatherers in
unstable, marginal environments where predictable access to resources was a more significant problem than absolute
abundance. Pastoralism spread patchily across the continent according to regional variations in the relative
predictability of herding versus hunting and gathering.
Philo (De sacrificiis !I36) tells us that in sacrifice what is offered up is

not the victim but the mind and purpose of the sacrificer (Colson tr.
I929, p.I93), and identification of sacrificer with victim is a common
interpretation by writers on the subject, including modern students of
sacrifice.'
It is fairly common in the literature to state that sacrifices are performed in proportion to the issue at stake (e.g.
Herskovits I938, II, p. 49; Evans-Pritchard I940, p. 26). This involves the concept that the less important the issue
the less valuable the object sacrificed. But it leaves untouched another side of the question-granted that the issue was
of major importance, how then were resources handled, and in particular were they so organized as to reduce as far
as possible the economic loss?
T. O. Beidelman. The Ox and Nuer Sacrifice:

Some Freudian Hypotheses About Nuer Symbolism.
Their salvation at every crisis depends on the small herd with which they share their home. When, therefore, we
seek to estimate what their cattle are to Nuer and how they see them, it would be fatal not to recognize that among
other things they are the means by which men can enter into communication with God and obtain by prayer and
sacrifice that divine aid without which they are helpless, and especially and on all critical occasions by sacrifice; for,
as Father Crazzolara puts it, cattle form 'the link between the perceptible and the transcendental' ….
…. Another theory, current at the time, reduced sacrifice,

whether human or animal, to the status of a bribe to the gods.
This view of the human victim as a mere commodity,
immolated in exchange for tangible benefits, takes little
account of the complex links that bound him both to the priest
who took his life and to the community for which he died.
La violence et le sacré.
René Girard
Sacrifice. On Death and Dying.

Robert Kastenbaum.
Sacrifice keeps the world going. The most sweeping theory is based on an interpretation of history that pictures the
Page | 11
human condition as fearful and perilous, beset with threats to survival from starvation, attack, and events such as
earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and floods that were taken to be the work of angry gods. Possessing limited
knowledge and technology, societies tried to find a way of negotiating with rival, demanding, and frequently
unpredictable gods if the world and their own lives were to continue. Sacrifice soon became a significant form of
exchange with the gods, a sort of currency in an age before the establishment of a monetary system. In modern
parlance, sacrifice was a way of doing business.
"The gods confronted man just as a creditor

On Sacrifice and Society

Robert Kastenbaum
Human sacrifice is sometimes regarded as a bizarre practice carried out by a few scattered societies who either were
uncivilized or exceptionally cruel and violent. However, there is persuasive evidence that the sacrificial impulse has
been common throughout history and has played an important role in society.
The origins of blood sacrifice are lost in the mist of prehistory. Nevertheless, inferences can be drawn from
archaeological research and from the practices and beliefs of people whose rituals continued into the historical
period. The same societies usually performed other types of sacrifices as well, but these examples demonstrate the
widespread use of ritual murder as an approved component of social policy.
Human sacrifice was considered so crucial a measure that it persisted for some time even in societies that had
become more complex and sophisticated. For example, the practice of sacrificing the eldest son was a salient feature
of Mediterranean cults 5,000 years ago and still a powerful theme in Judaism and early Christianity. Sacrifice would
be tamed slowly as societies developed more effective ways to manage their needs and cope with their
environments.
The community typically is constructed out of the [male] bodies of those who are sacrificed,
and by those [men] who exercise killing power. Self-sacrifice defines the male-oriented
community via the deaths of certain chosen men. The efficacy of the sacrifice is maximalized,
it would seem, when the chosen victim is perceived as perfect.

Blood sacrifice and the nation: Revisiting civil religion
Carolyn Marvin David Ingel
The sacrifice is giving up something at a cost. This is indicated in dictionary equivalents-that sacrifice means 'the loss Page | 12
entailed by devotion to some other interest', or 'the destruction or surrender of something valued or desired for the
sake of something having a higher or more pressing claim'.
Raymond Firth

James Baily
The God-Kings & the Titans
Raymond Firth.
Offering and Sacrifice
As Gusdorf has pointed out, gift is a first approximation to sacrifice (I948, p. I7). Sacrifice is a species of offering or
oblation, but implies a relation between what is offered and the availability of resources. Offering indicates an
allocation or transfer of resources, but implies nothing about the degree or quality of allocation in relation to the
total resources at the command of the giver. 'Sacrifice' implies that the degree or quality is significant-that the
resources are limited, that there are alternative uses for them, and that there is some abstention from an alternative
use in making the offering.
The sacrifice is giving up something at a cost. This is indicated in dictionary equivalents-

that sacrifice means 'the loss entailed by devotion to some other interest', or 'the
destruction or surrender of something valued or desired for the sake of something having
a higher or more pressing claim'.
Raymond Firth
For without the cement of blood (it must be human, it must be innocent), no secular walls will safely stand. Hannah
Arendt asserts more directly, Cain slew Abel and Romulus slew Remus; violence was the beginning and by the same
token, no beginning could be made without violating. The tale spoke clearly: whatever brotherhood human beings
may be capable of has grown out of fratricide, whatever political organization men may have achieved has its origin
in crime.
Raymond Firth
The sacrifice is giving up something at a cost. This is indicated in dictionary equivalents-that sacrifice means 'the
loss entailed by devotion to some other interest', or 'the destruction or surrender of something valued or desired for
the sake of something having a higher or more pressing claim'.
Tylor. The origin of sacrifice.

"The suppliant who bows before his chief, laying Page | 13
a gift at his feet, and making his humble petition,
displays the anthropomorphic model and origin
at once of sacrifice and prayer."'
The outcome of wars, crop harvests, and the weather were all
determined by the whims of the gods, whims which required
appeasement on the part of mortal humans. Sacrifice was
Peter Gose. The American Society for Ethnohistory
the Inka State
We are not fortunate enough to possess a complete ethnographic account of any one imperial sacrifice. … Thus in
no case do we know the full details of the slaughtering of the animal and the division of the parts between emperor,
priest and others, an aspect of the process which could have been crucial evidence for ideas about the sacrifices.
Sacrifice in the Roman Imperial Cult
SRF Price

Sacrifice and the Commodity Form in the Andes.

S. R. F. Price
If the imperial cult is treated as an aspect of a decadent religion or as a counter in an elaborate game of politics there
is naturally no incentive to study the ritual itself. … sacrifices were a way of articulating a large body of
unformulated thought concerning the emperor by means of subtle modifications of the practices of divine ritual. In
other words the sacrifices formed an important part of a cognitive system, which should be seen as hovering on the
border between preconscious and conscious.
A cut is required, both Nancy and Bataille suggest, a

circumcision, to institute "Man" (and "animal"), "the West," Page | 14
"the rest of humanity," and so forth. The "distanced and
repetitive relation" that such a situation implies presupposes a
"mimetic rupture," or cut, between "the West" and its other.
Hawthorne, sacrifice, sovereignty - Document - Gale
T Deines


Gunnar Heinsohn
Sophisticated blood rituals became the most prominent activities of the
first permanent lords. The origin of these sacred procedures remained
equally enigmatic
Beidelman described the Swazi king as an intermediary, analogous in many ways to the sacrificial bulls that bridge
the sacred and the profane domains, in the sense that Hubert and Mauss employed these terms in their essay on
sacrifice: "The king, the bull of his nation, serves as the link between the supernatural world and the world of the
living".
Hierarchy and the Haya Divine Kingship:
A Structural and Symbolic Reformulation of Frazer's Thesis.
Robert G. Carlson
This seriality of exchanges is transformative

in that I lose something in order to get something in exchange.
The articulation of desire is thus truly cosmological.
John Morton. The Effectiveness of Totemism:
'Increase Ritual' and Resource Control in Central Australia
“ The Phoenicians and Carthaginians gave up their children because

these were their dearest treasures, and hence the devoting of them was
most likely to secure divine favor." Similar explanations of the same
Page | 15
rite by Greek and Roman writers make it clear that such was the notion
held in classical antiquity.
George Goodspeed

Gunnar Heinsohn
thereby turned themselves into mankind's first commoners.
Sophisticated blood rituals became the most prominent activities of the first permanent lords. The origin of these
sacred procedures remained equally enigmatic.
The development of this connection between sacrifice and patrilineality arises because social structures “idealizing
eternal‟ male intergenerational continuity meet a fundamental obstacle in their necessary dependence on women’s
reproductive powers.” Thus, men have an anxiety about women’s reproductive powers due to their reliance upon
women for the continuation of their society. Therefore, in patrilineal societies, men take control and regulate the
reproductive power and rights of women by establishing a lineage system to control inheritance and the means of
production. The emphasis on sacrifice in patrilineal societies allows for the development of social reproduction,
instead of relying on biological reproduction (childbirth); descent becomes social and ritual in nature and, therefore,
is no longer dependent on women.
KM Gentile
Raymond Firth. Offering and Sacrifice:

For without the cement of blood (it must be human, it must be innocent), no secular walls will safely stand. Hannah
in crime.
Each god may require his or her own type of sacrifice at a specific point during the year. For instance, this maize Page | 16
god stands on the chest of his unfortunate meal. Common belief held that blood possessed an essence, one of the
souls of a human, and therefore it contained special properties (Sharer). It was regarded as a sacred liquid. For
instance, the Aztecs held the sun god, Tezcoptipcoca, in highest regards; from him (and consequently the sun) all
life flowed. Sacrifices were performed in order to return this energy to its creator.
Oracles, Divine Kingship, and Political Representation in the Inka State

Robert Kastenbaum
environments.
It was the religion that exacted a bloody sacrifice that made the Romans of pagan times
strong and that invested them with their character of conquerors and rulers.
Discourses on Livy by Machiavelli
This seriality of exchanges is transformative in that I lose something in order

to get something in exchange. The articulation of desire is thus truly cosmological.
John Morton
The Effectiveness of Totemism
The development of Greek society, the unit of value. Still later, when gold came into circulation, its value was based
upon the value of the cow. The psychoanalysts make a connection between the acquisition of money and finding the
security of a mother substitute. The sacred bulls and cows were related to the mother goddess. These animals were
then converted into monetary units. In acquiring money, therefore, one unconsciously gained the protection of the
mother. Origin of Money in the Animal Sacrifice Journal of Hillside Hospital W. H. Desmonde
Page | 17

The legal or commercial aspects of the relations emerge. The old Roman religion was of this type. "The gods
confronted man just as a creditor confronted his debtor; each of them had a duly acquired right to certain
performances and payments; " or, again: "'The gods were partners in a contract with their worshipers."
Compensation for affronts committed was made by sacrifice, which, as Baring Gould says, "is in religion what
mulct is in law."
Robert Kastenbaum. On sacrifice.

… sacrifice is a form of communication with a deity for similar
purposes. The word itself means "to make holy." ... sacrificial offerings
include objects of value and symbolic significance that are given to the
gods to earn their favor.
In Africa, however, the need for scheduled consumption shaped the development of food production.
African cattle were domesticated during the tenth millennium BP by delayed return Saharan hunter-gatherers in
unstable, marginal environments where predictable access to resources was a more significant problem than absolute
abundance. Pastoralism spread patchily across the continent according to regional variations in the relative
predictability of herding versus hunting and gathering.
Philo (De sacrificiis!) tells us that in sacrifice what is offered up is not

the victim but the mind and purpose of the sacrificer (Colson tr. I929),
and identification of sacrificer with victim is a common interpretation
by writers on the subject, including modern students of sacrifice.'
It is fairly common in the literature to state that sacrifices are performed in proportion to the issue at stake (e.g.
Herskovits I938, II, p. 49; Evans-Pritchard I940, p. 26). This involves the concept that the less important the issue
the less valuable the object sacrificed. But it leaves untouched another side of the question-granted that the issue was
of major importance, how then were resources handled, and in particular were they so organized as to reduce as far
as possible the economic loss?
T. O. Beidelman.
The Ox and Nuer Sacrifice:
Their salvation at every crisis depends on the small herd with which they share their home. When, therefore, we
seek to estimate what their cattle are to Nuer and how they see them, it would be fatal not to recognize that among
other things they are the means by which men can enter into communication with God and obtain by prayer and
sacrifice that divine aid without which they are helpless, and especially and on all critical occasions by sacrifice; for,
Page | 18
…. Another theory, current at the time, reduced sacrifice, whether human or animal,
to the status of a bribe to the gods. This view of the human victim as a mere commodity,
immolated in exchange for tangible benefits, takes little account of the complex links that bound
him both to the priest who took his life and to the community for which he died.
La violence et le sacré. René Girard
Sacrifice. On Death and Dying.

Robert Kastenbaum.
parlance, sacrifice was a way of doing business.
"The gods confronted man just as a creditor

On Sacrifice and Society.

Robert Kastenbaum
Human sacrifice is sometimes regarded as a bizarre practice carried out by a few scattered societies who either were
uncivilized or exceptionally cruel and violent. However, there is persuasive evidence that the sacrificial impulse has
been common throughout history and has played an important role in society.
environments.
Page | 19
The community typically is constructed out of the [male] bodies of those who are sacrificed,
and by those [men] who exercise killing power. Self-sacrifice defines the male-oriented
community via the deaths of certain chosen men. The efficacy of the sacrifice is maximalized, it
would seem, when the chosen victim is perceived as perfect.
Blood sacrifice and the nation:
Revisiting civil religion
Carolyn Marvin. David Ingel
The sacrifice is giving up something at a cost. This is indicated in dictionary

equivalents-that sacrifice means 'the loss entailed by devotion to some other interest',
or 'the destruction or surrender of something valued or desired for the sake of something
having a higher or more pressing claim'.
Raymond Firth
The spirits demand attention, and they are not to be satisfied

with cucumbers. They demand bloody offerings. And if they
are not given animal sacrifices they seize their devotees and
make them sick.
The Aztec name for sacrifice was Ilextlaoalli ("the paying of the debt") and the victims were called Iletlallllaltm
("restitutions") showing that the sacrifices did not emphasize gifts but rather debts. Human children were sacrificed
in the first month of every ritual year. Women were sacrificed in a third of the yearly sacrificial ceremonies.
The term repeated again and again in the most reliable accounts provided by elders who participated in and
witnessed the spectacular ceremonies is debt payment.
Debts are a long way from "gifts," though many gifts were exchanged during the paying of debts in the many
ceremonial precincts where these performative scenarios were acted out (Carrasco 1999)·
There would be no man or liberty, no history or individual".

A cut is required, both Nancy and Bataille suggest, a circumcision, to institute
"Man" (and "animal"),
"the West," "the rest of humanity," and so forth. The "distanced and repetitive
relation" that such a situation implies presupposes a "mimetic rupture," or cut,
between "the West" and its other. Page | 20
Nancy is perhaps suggesting that the fictitiousness of origins, on the one hand,
combined with the historical collapse of sacrifice (in the name of West ern "progress"
and the end[ing] of the political) …
The hidden secret of sacrifice is positivism, scientific surrendering of individual energies to truth, truth which
subserves a future possession of happiness by humanity, which is a day the individual is not yet to see. For this
reason, Frazer declares that science itself 'is "the golden key,"
We are not fortunate enough to possess a complete ethnographic account of any one imperial sacrifice. … Thus in
no case do we know the full details of the slaughtering of the animal and the division of the parts between emperor,
priest and others, an aspect of the process which could have been crucial evidence for ideas about the sacrifices.
While the actual sacrifice could take several forms, the most common was to remove the heart of the victim. This act
was usually done with an obsidian blade, which for the Aztecs represented (if not actually became) the same
obsidian blade which impregnated their mother of Creation (Aztec Creation).
With these underlying beliefs, the blood spilled from a victim's body was truly a holy substance, one that the deities
who were presiding over the ceremony required. To ensure the gods received their ration, the blood was sometimes
smeared on stone images of gods, collected on bark paper strips and burnt so the smoke could ascend into the
heavens, or consumed by the ruler, the representative of the deities.
On the theory of essences, representations or symbols.

The legitimization of such an economic rebate has very important implications for the practice and the theory of
sacrifice. On the one hand it allows the sacrifice to be performed with much greater frequency than would certainly
be the case if the sacrificial material was always destroyed. On the other hand it necessitates special beliefs about the
manner in which the gods or spirits take their fill. Either they must be satisfied with the killing and display of the
sacrificed object, or they must be satisfied to consume its least valuable portions, or to absorb some immaterial
aspect or equivalent of it. In other words, the practice of reservation of the sacrificial material for the human
participants almost inevitably demands some theory of essences, representations or symbols.
Raymond Firth
The spirits demand attention, and they are not to be satisfied with cucumbers. They demand bloody offerings. And if
they are not given animal sacrifices they seize their devotees and make them sick. Nuer, therefore, do not hesitate to
bargain with these spirits, speaking through their mediums, in a downright way which astonished me. The sense of
the bargain is always the same: if we give you an ox or a sheep or a goat will you leave the sick man alone that he
may recover, or what do you require of us this year in sacrifice that we may not be troubled by you?
Page | 21
the principles of Andean divine kingship. Here

the goal of the ruler was to aggrandize himself in a manner that knew
of no distinction between the spiritual and the worldly. … Rather, his goal was to constitute
his own divinity through an irresistible display of imperialist might. He wanted to know whether his plans would
succeed, not whether they were right or wrong. Oracular advice was given privately to the elite because it concerned
their plans, and they were the ones considered strong enough to
speak directly to the deity.
These detached, omniscient deities predicted
the future because they were the creators and animators of their
peoples; they knew the latter's destinies because they lay at the very source
of their being.

Between Man and God: Sacrifice in the Roman

Imperial Cult. S. R. F. Price
If the imperial cult is treated as an aspect of a decadent religion or as a counter in an
elaborate game of politics there is naturally no incentive to study the ritual itself.
… My aim is to demonstrate that sacrifices were a way of articulating a large body of unformulated thought
concerning the emperor by means of subtle modifications of the practices of divine ritual. In other words the
sacrifices formed an important part of a cognitive system, which should be seen as hovering on the border between
preconscious and conscious.
Similarly Taylor wrote that Augustus, in succession to the 'divine kings of the Hellenistic monarchies', in the Asiatic
provinces and the Greek lands was 'frankly worshipped by cities and leagues of cities as a deity incarnate '.
Imperial sacrifices were made on a variety of occasions, public and private, by individuals or by representatives of
city or province. Sometimes libationsl4 or ritual cakes'6 were offered but the burning of incense, perhaps on special
altars,'6 or the killing of an animal, normally a bull, were the standard offerings at public festivals.17 We are
fortunate to possess some representations of these scenes of sacrifice, both of libations 18 and of the sacrifice of a
bull before an imperial statue or temple.
On sacrifices to and sacrifices on behalf of emperor Gauis.

and the continuities between ruler cult and the traditional cult of the gods.
Philo, who went on an embassy of Alexandrian Jews to the emperor Gaius, says that when they finally succeeded in
gaining an audience with Gaius in connection with the troubles in Alexandria, they were greeted by an emperor who
accused the Jews of being godhaters who refuse'd to acknowledge his divinity.22 The opposing embassy of Page | 22
Alexandrian Greeks then accused the Jews of not having offered sacrifices of thanksgiving for Gaius. The Jews
denied this vehemently, pointing out that they had done so three times. 'All right', Gaius replied, 'that's as may be,
you have sacrificed, but to another, even if it was on my behalf. What good is that if you have not sacrificed to me?

… imperial sacrifices shows how the system was modified to accommodate the ambiguous figure of the emperor
within the traditional division between god and man. … Politics obviously lies at the root of ruler cult, but to impose
a distinction between politics and religion, as is conventionally done, is to make it impossible to see how ruler cult
consisted in the accommodation of power in traditional religious terms.
incorporating the victim or the god. sacrifice in contemporary institutions.

the theory of Sacrifice which underpins that of incorporation.
Human sacrifice' could then be more loosely defined as the killing of people in order to secure the favour of
supernatural beings. A practice which, however, it seems necessary to distinguish from human sacrifice is that of
ritual cannibalist, that is, the killing and eating of people for magical or ritual rather than merely for food purposes.
In central America, it appears that the bodies of people sacrificed to the gods were normally eaten, and an attempt
has been made to interpret the exceptional scale of human sacrifice in Mexico as a system for the distribution of
human meat, in societies lacking abundant supplies of animal protein.
(a) that the thing given is personal to the giver, his own property, or something over which
he has rights of alienation;
(b) that the thing transferred must have some value for the person who hands it over; and,
(c) that it is transferred with some degree of voluntary initiative-it is not given by
compulsion nor does it occur as a technical part of a series of actions dictated by some
generally planned end.
… kingship everywhere and at all times has been in some degree a sacred office. Rex est mixta persona cum
sacerdote. This is because a king symbolizes a whole society and must not be identified with any part of it. He must
be in the society and yet stand outside it and this is only possibly if his office is raised to a mystical plane. It is the
kingship and not the king who is divine.
Page | 23
Scott Bradbury. On Julian's Pagan Revival and the Decline of Blood Sacrifice
Blood sacrifice was a not only in the Middle East but in other regions because the billions being spent on the war
must mean less funding for humanitarian and food distribution work in the poorer parts of the central rite of virtually
all religious groups in the pre-Christian Mediterranean, and its gradual disappearance is one of the most significant
religious developments of late antiquity.

Oracles, Divine Kingship, and Political Representation in the Inka State.

his own divinity through an irresistible display of imperialist might. He
The outcome of wars, crop harvests, and the weather were all determined
by the whims of the gods, whims which required appeasement on the part of
mortal humans. Sacrifice was incorporated as a way of 'feeding' these ever-
hungry gods.
the Inka State
These exemplary deeds mythically constituted political

authority. Their authors were expected to turn into stone on death and
to continue providing their subjects with life, agrarian fertility, and advice
about the affairs of state that was passed on to the living through oracles
and their mediums. The Inkas were committed to this image of life-giving rulership and Page | 24
expected all their sovereigns to earn their deified status as "sons of the Sun"
through conquest.
Thus an Andean divine king began his career as a living
warrior and matured into a dead deity. The body of a dead Inka sovereign
was mummified, and statues of him
were made of gold and cloth.
Rituals of Sacrifice and the role of violence

in organizing and maintaining enduring groups.
1. The purpose of ritual is to sustain the group by repeating (at various levels of intensity) the act of group creation.
A successful ritual stops time at the perfect creation moment. It repeats and freezes the retrospectively golden
moment when the group was created out of sacrifice. In this moment the debt to the bloodthirsty god was paid. The
group was pristine. This was the moment when sacrifice was truly enough, when we were delivered from time and
death.
2. Rituals may be contrived or opportunistic. The most powerful rituals of nation-group solidarity are opportunistic
responses, such as war, to group threat. But opportunistic rituals are unpredictable in their occurrence and expensive
in their prosecution. Their magic is great precisely because they are risky and costly. Contrived or pre-planned
seasonal rituals fill in the intervals between opportunistic group-forging rituals by rehearsing the drama of sacrifice
and regeneration.
3. Rituals have two major dynamics. They create the world by transforming chaos into cosmos, to use Mircea
Eliade's terms, or they remodel and recall the transformation of chaos into cosmos. All rituals model and transform
to one degree or another, but rituals may be classified by whether they are primarily transforming commemorative.
The outcome of wars, crop harvests, and the weather were all determined
by the whims of the gods, whims which required appeasement on the part of mortal humans. Sacrifice was

Robert Kastenbaum
parlance, sacrifice was a way of doing business. Page | 25
…Sacrifice and Society … Human sacrifice is sometimes regarded as a bizarre practice carried out by a few
scattered societies who either were uncivilized or exceptionally cruel and violent. However, there is persuasive
evidence that the sacrificial impulse has been common throughout history and has played an important role in
society.
Robert Kastenbaum
environments.
the blood spilled from a victim's body was truly a holy substance, …
To ensure the gods received their ration, the blood was sometimes smeared on stone images of
gods, collected on bark paper strips and burnt so the smoke could ascend into the heavens,
or consumed by the ruler, the representative of the deities.
Professor W. Robertson Smith
While the actual sacrifice could take several forms, the most common
was to remove the heart of the victim. This act was usually done with an obsidian blade,
which for the Aztecs represented (if not actually became) the same obsidian blade which
impregnated their mother of Creation (Aztec Creation).

… As the medium between his followers and the deities, the dynastic ruler was invested with supernatural powers.
While there was a hierarchy of priests and nobility, the 'ruler-god' reined supreme. The outcome of wars, crop
harvests, and the weather were all determined by the whims of the gods, whims which required appeasement on the
part of mortal humans. Sacrifice was incorporated as a way of 'feeding' these ever-hungry gods. Each god may
require his or her own type of sacrifice at a specific point during the year. For instance, this maize god stands on the
chest of his unfortunate meal. Common belief held that blood possessed an essence, one of the souls of a human, and
therefore it contained special properties (Sharer). It was regarded as a sacred liquid. For instance, the Aztecs held the
sun god, Tezcoptipcoca, in highest regards; from him (and consequently the sun) all life flowed. Sacrifices were
performed in order to return this energy to its creator. Most of the time, sacrificial victims were war captives,
marched to the top of the central temple in great ceremony under the public eye. While the actual sacrifice could
take several forms, the most common was to remove the heart of the victim. This act was usually done with an
obsidian blade, which for the Aztecs represented (if not actually became) the same obsidian blade which Page | 26
With these underlying beliefs, the blood spilled from a victim's body was truly a holy substance, one that the deities
who were presiding over the ceremony required. To ensure the gods received their ration, the blood was sometimes
smeared on stone images of gods, collected on bark paper strips and burnt so the smoke could ascend into the
heavens, or consumed by the ruler, the representative of the deities. In many accounts the body was rolled down the
temple, where it was prepared and consumed by the high nobility. Today, among the descendants of these cultures
the importance of sacrifice remains strong although ritual human sacrifice is no longer practiced. Commonly, small
animals are substituted when calling upon the gods for favors (Sharer).
To ensure the gods received their ration,

the blood was consumed by the ruler, the representative
of the deities.
This seriality of exchanges is transformative in that I lose something in order

to get something in exchange. The articulation of desire is thus truly cosmological. John
Morton. The Effectiveness of Totemism
On sovereignty, nations and corporations.

Inka and Andean oracular possession for politics.
Sovereignty incorporates both a drive toward freedom from the domination of another as well as a
particular understanding of power. Historically, much of the power of the concept of sovereignty lay precisely in its
encoding of the absolute, perpetual, indivisible power of a masculinized deity, a deity whose power was absolute
and from everlasting to everlasting, as a penultimate political form. State power, the power of the
legitimate ruler and promulgator of laws, tamed and ordered domestic politics even as it set the
boundary for autonomous self-sovereignty. The earthly sovereign shared many of the
attributes of his divine counterpart.
The constructions of sovereignty allow us to make more sense of the will-to-sacrifice

as it shifts from personal liege loyalty to a feudal lord to an abstract, juridical, imagined tie that nevertheless calls
forth sacrifice in its/his (the sovereign's) name.
Beidelman described the Swazi king as an intermediary, analogous in many ways to the sacrificial bulls that bridge
the sacred and the profane domains, in the sense that Hubert and Mauss employed these terms in their essay on
sacrifice: "The king, the bull of his nation, serves as the link between the supernatural world and the world of the
Page | 27
living". Hierarchy and the Haya Divine Kingship: A Structural and Symbolic Reformulation of Frazer's Thesis.
Robert G. Carlson
The Dimensions Of The Oracular Phenomenon And Oracular Representation

How did oracles represent the social groups to which they were connected? … Like electoral democracy, Andean
oracles were a form of political ventriloquism, in which a few people spoke for many more. By their very nature,
these systems of political representation confound any hard distinction between appropriation and articulation of the
group's voice. … the imperial hierarchy of deities and its system of sacrificial rewards. These outlays in goods and
services were considerable and would not have occurred if the motives behind oracular consultation were entirely
cynical. In short, we must assume that the Inkas and their subjects believed in oracles and gave them a certain
degree of political autonomy.

of their being.

The high priest of the Sun, an extremely powerful man who always came from the highest nobility of Cuzco, was
second in rank only to the Inka himself. He appointed and discharged priests below him and had charge of all the
oracles and shrines in the empire (ibid.; Ramos Gavilain). There is every reason to assume that it was through his
office that the track records of the imperial oracles were kept and their sacrificial rewards doled out.
But the high priest of the Sun was not the Inka, even if he was almost as powerful. One account describes him as the
"retainer of the Sun," as opposed to the Inka, who was "son of the Sun," and further specifies that he was the Inka's
"replacement" (Segovia 1968 [1553]: 75-76). … On so doing, he would have faced the impossible task of actually
living up to the myth of Andean divine kingship in which the sovereign, by the sheer force of his exemplary
personality, encompasses and even expands his entire realm. To be sure, the sovereign remained at the center, but it
was a center that extended back in time through descent from previous rulers and, finally, the Sun. As the empire
expanded outward in space and time through ever larger concentric circles, the living sovereign necessarily became
an increasingly junior and peripheral character in relation to those who went before him.
Page | 28
Moreover, the priest as sacrificer had a conspicuous role in the
religious life of the early empire.
Numerous reliefs of the period depict the Roman emperor
engaged in a conventional sacrificial ritual.
… how oracles and their priests

came to play a central role in Inka court politics and explores the distinctive
genre of political representation that they created in Andean society.
Sacrifices were performed in order to return this energy to its creator. Most of the time, sacrificial victims were war
captives, marched to the top of the central temple in great ceremony under the public eye. While the actual sacrifice
could take several forms, the most common was to remove the heart of the victim. This act was usually done with an
obsidian blade, which for the Aztecs represented (if not actually became) the same obsidian blade which

As the medium between his followers and the deities, the dynastic ruler was invested with supernatural powers.
While there was a hierarchy of priests and nobility, the 'ruler-god' reined supreme. The outcome of wars, crop
harvests, and the weather were all determined by the whims of the gods, whims which required appeasement on the
part of mortal humans. Sacrifice was incorporated as a way of 'feeding' these ever-hungry gods. Each god may
require his or her own type of sacrifice at a specific point during the year. For instance, this maize god stands on the
chest of his unfortunate meal. Common belief held that blood possessed an essence, one of the souls of a human, and
therefore it contained special properties (Sharer). It was regarded as a sacred liquid. For instance, the Aztecs held the
sun god, Tezcoptipcoca, in highest regards; from him (and consequently the sun) all life flowed. Sacrifices were
performed in order to return this energy to its creator. Most of the time, sacrificial victims were war captives,
marched to the top of the central temple in great ceremony under the public eye. While the actual sacrifice could
take several forms, the most common was to remove the heart of the victim. This act was usually done with an
obsidian blade, which for the Aztecs represented (if not actually became) the same obsidian blade which
The third element of Frazer's thesis was the idea that the king served as an intermediary between the transcend end
to main of spirits and the domain of living human beings (Grottanelli 1987:313-315). Significantly, Frazer
emphasized that the king's role as a symbolic mediator involved something different from shamanic or priestly
forms of communication between opposed cosmological domains. Frazer (1959[1890]:61) perceived that the king
interceded between opposed domains because his subjects believed that he took on the qualities of spirit-not in the
sense that he was possessed, but in the Frazerian sense that he was constituted as a "man-god." Much of the Page | 29
ambiguity in the symbolism of the divine kingship can be interpreted as a consequence of the antinomy inherent in
the king's unique mediating role as a "man-god," or "living-spirit."
Pre-Colonial Trade Between States In The Eastern Sudan, ca 1700 - ca 1900.
Jay Spaulding
Beidelman described the Swazi king as an intermediary, analogous in many

ways to the sacrificial bulls that bridge the sacred and the profane domains, in
the sense that Hubert and Mauss employed these terms in their essay on
sacrifice: "The king, the bull of his nation, serves as the link between the
supernatural world and the world of the living".
Hierarchy and the Haya Divine Kingship: A Structural and Symbolic
Reformulation of Frazer's Thesis. Robert G. Carlson
From this perspective, … consistent with Frazer's thesis, the underlying cosmology of divine kingship is clearly
composed of three hierarchically related terms, not just a binary opposition between the king and the kingdom: the
sacred, supernatural, or transcendent domain of the ancestors; the king as a symbolic mediator; and the profane,
natural, or normative domain-the kingdom. A hierarchical model that incorporates the king's role as a mediator,
then, is the appropriate starting point for an analysis of divine kingship.
The development of African kingships, according to Kopytoff (1987:62-63), can be explained in part as an
elaboration of this hierarchical ethic, which he implies is ultimately rooted in the corporate kin group. Thus, the
kingship is portrayed metaphorically as an extension of the king's homestead, thereby giving birth to the opposition
between the king and the kingdom.



… Under the Inkas, oracles were an important form of political representation. They spoke as deified dead rulers for
social groups removed from the current power center, allowing the living sovereign to govern while receiving advice Page | 30
and information from subordinate groups. Consultation had to be indirect because of the extreme social distance
separating Inka divine kings from their subjects. Inka rulers also delegated power to living substitutes and statues,
who governed in an oracular manner for the sovereign. In these ways the commemorative cult of divine kings
shaped the workings of Inka government.
From the perspective of Western individualism, oracular possession is doomed to appear as either pathological or
exotic (see Lambek i98i; Boddy i989). We find it difficult to see oracular possession as a practical way to get things
done because it undermines our very notion of human agency as something personal, bounded, and coherent. Under
the Inkas, however, Andean people had different working assumptions about the expansive agency of divine kings,
which made oracular possession not only "believable" but a uniquely "realistic" method of everyday political
decision making and maneuver.
How Inka politics took an oracular Ethnohistory form. The answer may lie in the broader institutional and
ideological realities of Andean divine kingship, in which the subjectivity of the sovereign tended to engulf and
obliterate that of his subjects. Under such conditions, those outside the current ruling clique found an effective way
to represent their sectional interests by attaching themselves to the oracular cult of a previous divine king. The
voices that spoke through oracular shrines and priests were held to be those of dead ruler-ancestors, particularly
those who founded or expanded political units. Oracular performances centered
on the mummified body or a statue of this ruler-ancestor. As illustrious and unimpeachable ex-rulers, oracular
deities spoke with an authority that might constrain, decenter, and fragment the power of the living sovereign, whose
relation to his predecessors was always at least potentially ambivalent.
Mummified sovereigns also spoke as representatives of the living descent groups or corporations (ayllus, panaqas)
that each founded during his reign. Oracles thus became an important channel for these groups to
influence and even challenge the living ruler's agenda.
Oracular possession provided the cultural model for this delegation of power and thus
became one of the few quasi-bureaucratic idioms available in an otherwise weakly
institutionalized and excessively personalistic political regime.
Oracles and Politics: Background


of their being.
Page | 31
The high priest of the Sun, an extremely powerful man who always came from the highest nobility of Cuzco, was
second in rank only to the Inka himself. He appointed and discharged priests below him and had charge of all the
oracles and shrines in the empire (ibid.; Ramos Gavilain). There is every reason to assume that it was through his
office that the track records of the imperial oracles were kept and their sacrificial rewards doled out.
But the high priest of the Sun was not the Inka, even if he was almost as powerful. One account describes him as the
"retainer of the Sun," as opposed to the Inka, who was "son of the Sun," and further specifies that he was the Inka's
"replacement" (Segovia 1968 [1553]: 75-76). … On so doing, he would have faced the impossible task of actually
living up to the myth of Andean divine kingship in which the sovereign, by the sheer force of his exemplary
personality, encompasses and even expands his entire realm. To be sure, the sovereign remained at the center, but it
was a center that extended back in time through descent from previous rulers and, finally, the Sun. As the empire
expanded outward in space and time through ever larger concentric circles, the living sovereign necessarily became
an increasingly junior and peripheral character in relation to those who went before him.
Moreover, the priest as sacrificer had a conspicuous role in the religious life of the early empire.
Numerous reliefs of the period depict the Roman emperor engaged in a conventional sacrificial ritual. As Richard
Gordon has argued, the focus of the reliefs is not the act of sacrificial killing, but the emperor himself dressed as a
priest and engaged in the ceremony of sacrifice. The focus is thus on the emperor in a ceremonial role as sacrificer
and benefactor. The sacrifices depicted on these reliefs, argues Gordon, become "paradigms or exemplars of public
sacrifice throughout the empire .... In this ideology of benefaction, the emperor's act of sacrifice is the act of
benefaction par excellence, in imitation of which provincial elites make their own sacrifices and benefactions.
If social prestige had been the only benefit to accrue to civic notables, priesthoods might nonetheless have been less
attractive since they could involve huge expenditures. Accordingly, cities made considerable efforts to make these
posts desirable by providing them with an income to help defray costs. Priests were often awarded stipends from
civic funds and/or sacred funds. They received exemption from a variety of other liturgies and were awarded fees
and taxes from sacrifices or mystery initiations. They also had rights to parts of the sacrificial animals and a portion
of other kinds of sacrifice such as fruit or vegetable offerings. It appears that of the various forms of income
available, the most significant and most reliable was that derived from the public sacrifices funded by the city.
… The parts of the sacrificial victims awarded to priests would normally be sold to retail butchers. Hence, it was
important that the city itself faithfully meet its obligations. Sacred laws carefully spelled out who was required to
offer what sacrifices, imposing fines on those who were derelict. The city also put pressure on private cult
associations and private citizens to offer sacrifices.
From this perspective, which I believe is consistent with Frazer's thesis, the underlying cosmology of divine
kingship is clearly composed of three hierarchically related terms, not just a binary opposition between the king and
the kingdom: the sacred, supernatural, or transcendent domain of the ancestors; the king as a symbolic mediator; and
the profane, natural, or normative domain-the kingdom. A hierarchical model that incorporates the king's role as a
mediator, then, is the appropriate starting point for an analysis of divine kingship.
incorporating the victim or the god. sacrifice in contemporary institutions. Page | 32

the theory of Sacrifice which underpins that of incorporation.
Human sacrifice' could then be more loosely defined as the killing of people in order to secure the favour of
supernatural beings. A practice which, however, it seems necessary to distinguish from human sacrifice is that of
ritual cannibalist, that is, the killing and eating of people for magical or ritual rather than merely for food purposes.
In central America, it appears that the bodies of people sacrificed to the gods were normally eaten, and an attempt
has been made to interpret the exceptional scale of human sacrifice in Mexico as a system for the distribution of
human meat, in societies lacking abundant supplies of animal protein.
On Julian's Pagan Revival and the Decline of Blood Sacrifice

Scott Bradbury
Blood sacrifice was a not only in the Middle East but in other regions because the billions being spent on the war
must mean less funding for humanitarian and food distribution work in the poorer parts of the central rite of virtually
all religious groups in the pre-Christian Mediterranean, and its gradual disappearance is one of the most significant
religious developments of late antiquity. Sacrifice did not decline according to any uniform pattern, since there was
a wide diversity in local customs and the impact of imperial and episcopal authority varied from region to region and
city to city. Moreover, it is important in considering these matters to distinguish between public and private
sacrifices.
The cities of sacrifice

Lopez Lujan and Olivier
The term repeated again and again in the most reliable accounts provided by elders who participated in and
witnessed the spectacular ceremonies is debt payment.
Debts are a long way from "gifts," though many gifts were exchanged during the paying of debts in the many
ceremonial precincts where these performative scenarios were acted out (Carrasco 1999)·
The hidden secret of sacrifice is positivism, scientific surrendering of individual energies to truth, truth which
subserves a future possession of happiness by humanity, which is a day the individual is not yet to see. For this
reason, Frazer declares that science itself 'is "the golden key,"
Robert Kastenbaum.
On sacrifice.
… Sacrifice is a form of communication with a deity for similar purposes. The word itself means "to make holy." …
sacrificial offerings include objects of value and symbolic significance that are given to the gods to earn their favor.
The gifts can take many forms, becoming sacred themselves through ritual consecration. The gods might be offered
the most desirable foods or provided with the finest vessels, carvings, tools, and weapons. Historians, however, have
often regarded blood sacrifice as the most powerful way to appease the gods. It was not unusual for societies to
engage in both animal and human sacrifice, although the historical trend has been toward a sharp reduction in the
latter. Page | 33
Participants in blood sacrifice rituals experience a sense of awe, danger, or exaltation because they are daring to
approach the gods who create, sustain, and destroy life. The buildup of tension prior to the blood sacrifice gives way
to a festive sense of triumph and relief. Morale is strengthened by the ritual killing because the group has itself
performed the godlike act of destruction and is now capable of renewing its own existence. The underlying
philosophical assumption is that life must pass through death.

and seems to have been conceived as a means of overcoming
primeval disorder. Indeed, to a considerable extent, kingship
was the possession of the gods
Professor W. Robertson Smith.

Substances in Semitic sacrifices.
[They] "are drawn from edible substances, and indeed from such substances as form the ordinary staple of human
food." He adds: "All sacrifices were taken by the ancients as being literally the food of the gods."
"These gifts might therefore be either vegetable or animal, grain or flesh. The latter were most common, because
flesh, regarded as the most desirable human food, would naturally be most agreeable to the higher powers. Indeed,
Professor Simon goes so far as to derive the custom of animal sacrifice from this root when he says: "The primary
occasion of animal sacrifices, and others rooted in them, was probably the desire to gratify the gods with the best
that man himself enjoys.'"
The importance of blood in sacrifice.

… It seems the purpose of a religious sacrifice is to sanctify the taking of a life, usually marked by the spilling of the
victim's blood, as is the case with animals and humans. It is a ceremonious act linking mortals to their gods. The
blood is a required 'food' for the gods. Being not of human flesh, they require the very life-force of humans to
nourish and appease them. Sacrificial blood has divine powers which can sanctify mortals and nourish deities.
… the blood spilled from a victim's body was truly a holy substance, one that the deities who were presiding over
the ceremony required. To ensure the gods received their ration, the blood was sometimes smeared on stone images
of gods, collected on bark paper strips and burnt so the smoke could ascend into the heavens, or consumed by the
ruler, the representative of the deities. In many accounts the body was rolled down the temple, where it was prepared
and consumed by the high nobility.
Page | 34


Sacrifice in the Roman Imperial Cult
SRF Price
My account of imperial sacrifices shows how the system was modified to accommodate the ambiguous figure of the
emperor within the traditional division between god and man. … Politics obviously lies at the root of ruler cult, but
to impose a distinction between politics and religion, as is conventionally done, is to make it impossible to see how
ruler cult consisted in the accommodation of power in traditional religious terms. A similar case has been brilliantly
argued by Burridge as regards the so-called cargo cults, and if power is built into one's definition of religion, as
Burridge suggests, it is easier to see the continuities rather than the discontinuities between ruler cult and the
traditional cult of the gods."

Sacrifice and the Commodity Form in the Andes

"The God-Kings & the Titans,"
James Baily

Raymond Firth
As Gusdorf has pointed out, gift is a first approximation to sacrifice (I948, p. I7). Sacrifice is a species of offering or
oblation, but implies a relation between what is offered and the availability of resources. Offering indicates an
allocation or transfer of resources, but implies nothing about the degree or quality of allocation in relation to the
total resources at the command of the giver. 'Sacrifice' implies that the degree or quality is significant-that the
resources are limited, that there are alternative uses for them, and that there is some abstention from an alternative
use in making the offering. The sacrifice is giving up something at a cost. This is indicated in dictionary equivalents-
that sacrifice means 'the loss entailed by devotion to some other interest', or 'the destruction or surrender of
something valued or desired for the sake of something having a higher or more pressing claim'.
For without the cement of blood (it must be human, it must be innocent), no secular walls will safely stand. Hannah Page | 35
in crime.
The development of Greek society, the unit of value. Still later, when gold came into
circulation, its value was based upon the value of the cow. The psychoanalysts make a
connection between the acquisition of money and finding the security of a mother
substitute. The sacred bulls and cows were related to the mother goddess. These animals
were then converted into monetary units. In acquiring money, therefore, one
unconsciously gained the protection of the mother.
Origin of Money in the Animal Sacrifice
Journal of Hillside Hospital W. H. Desmonde

The legal or commercial aspects of the relations emerge. The old Roman religion was of this type. "The gods
confronted man just as a creditor confronted his debtor; each of them had a duly acquired right to certain
performances and payments; " or, again: "'The gods were partners in a contract with their worshipers."
Compensation for affronts committed was made by sacrifice, which, as Baring Gould says, "is in religion what
mulct is in law."
The sacrifice is giving up something at a cost. This is indicated in dictionary

equivalents-that sacrifice means 'the loss entailed by devotion to some other interest',
or 'the destruction or surrender of something valued or desired for the sake of something
having a higher or more pressing claim'.
Raymond Firth
“ The Phoenicians and Carthaginians gave up their children because these were
their dearest treasures, and hence the devoting of them was most likely to secure
divine favor." Similar explanations of the same rite by Greek and Roman
writers make it clear that such was the notion held in classical antiquity.
George Goodspeed
Page | 36
T. O. Beidelman.
The Ox and Nuer Sacrifice
His cattle, in fulfilling this role, shield a man and his family from disaster, and he conceives of them also
collectively as a herd which from the beginning of time has helped his fathers in distress, performing in each
generation the same sacrificial service.
In the time of the ancestor of his clan the 'cow' gave her life for his salvation
and so it is with his descendants today and so it will be with their descendants tomorrow.
Whence springs the identification of man with ox, of lineage with herd,
and of men with cattle.
… the ideal equivalence is preserved in speech. The goat or sheep is an 'ox' in this context because it takes the place
of an ox. God is asked to accept it as an ox. This is also the case even when a fruit, a lump of tobacco, a bead, or
some other object is offered in sacrifice. The object is always referred to as a ' cow ' (bovine beast) in the sacrificial
situation and not by the word by which it is otherwise called, for in sacrifice these objects are regarded, like sheep
and goats, as surrogates for cattle on occasions of small importance or in conditions of great urgency or poverty.
A Nuer … his relationship to his beasts is complicated by their reservation for sacrifice. And it is not simply that he
must not kill cattle except in sacrifice because, if he were to slaughter them for meat, he would lower his resources
for food, marriage, and religious purposes. It is not merely a negative injunction. It is a positive injunction. It is not'
thou must not kill' but 'thou must sacrifice '. It is not that they must only kill for sacrifice but that they must sacrifice
to kill.
His cattle, in fulfilling this role, shield a man and his family from disaster, and he conceives of them also
collectively as a herd which from the beginning of time has helped his fathers in distress, performing in each
generation the same sacrificial service.
In the time of the ancestor of his clan the 'cow' gave her life for his salvation and so it is with his descendants today
and so it will be with their descendants tomorrow. Whence springs the identification of man with ox, of lineage with
herd, and of men with cattle?

Therold S. Stern
… In order to be like God knowledge would have to
be some form of wisdom where secret processes were
unfolded. This would then give Adam, as we have
pointed out, a range of choice, a godlike

independence which he did possess before.

Therold S. Stern
Page | 37
If animals do not have the capacity for committing evil that humans do, then the entry of evil into the human
organism can only be explained by those characteristics with which the human organism differs from the animal-his
higher mental powers.
The biblical position thus poses a challenge to Western civilization which fundamentally believes that man as a
result of his higher mental powers should be master of his own destiny. Today, when man is approaching the climax
of his experiment to guide his own destiny, and holds in his hand the awesome product of his intellect, the biblical
parable of Eden returns to haunt us.
Therold S. Stern
The meaning of "the knowledge of good and evil" in the Garden of Eden story remains one of the most difficult and
yet intriguing problems of the Bible. … In order to be like God knowledge would have to be some form of wisdom
where secret processes were unfolded. This would then give Adam, as we have pointed out, a range of choice, a
godlike independence which he did possess before. Cassuto notes that when God punishes Adam by sending him out
on his own He seems to be fulfilling a common OT view
As Reicke puts it: … the paradise narrative regards knowledge as a dangerous matter. This negative aspect of
knowledge reappears in New Testament polemics against egoistic gnosis and sophia. But in the canonical writings
of the Old Testament, Adam's criminal theft of knowledge is an isolated event, although it has brought about
consequences for all mankind
If animals do not have the capacity for committing evil that humans do, then the entry of evil into the human
organism can only be explained by those characteristics with which the human organism differs from the animal-his
higher mental powers.
The biblical position thus poses a challenge to Western civilization which fundamentally believes that man as a
result of his higher mental powers should be master of his own destiny 1). Today, when man is approaching the
climax of his experiment to guide his own destiny, and holds in his hand the awesome product of his intellect, the
biblical parable of Eden returns to haunt us.
Therold S. Stern
A Cross-cultural Test of Nancy Jay’s Theory About

Women, Sacrificial Blood and Religious Participation
Often women’s clearer bodily claim to creating connection was “undone” in the ritual logic. The blood sacrifice of
animals undid the blood let during a birth to a woman. Men ritually transcended their dependence on women’s
reproductive, creative and connective powers.
In order to demonstrate their masculine ritual potency

men must “menstruate” and “give birth”.
Menstruation And The Origins Of Culture

Chris Knight
Page | 38
Male “menstruation” is in fact central to initiation-
rites throughout much of the world.
Sacrifice is nearly always performed exclusively by men. Correct and regular sacrificial
ritual is always characterized as being essential for the continued well-being of the
community. Thus sacrifice is, among other things, a realm of purely male activity which
men can compare favorably to women’s essential reproductive work. This fits sacrifice
within the first possible response to womb envy, called “compensation” ...
Brutal: Manhood and the Exploitation of Animals
Brian Luke
The Dependent Variable - Restriction from Religious Rituals

Religious rituals are a public, prestige-conferring situations where cultural knowledge is acted out and reaffirmed.
Who is allowed at the ritual is an important fact in the creation of status and power. Who leads the rituals is usually
also a status matter. Even simple spatial segregation has been identified as part of the gender status process. With
women excluded from the “knowledge” production done in rituals, men can comfortably accrue status and power
and define the cosmos.
A Cross-cultural Test of Nancy Jay’s Theory About
Women, Sacrificial Blood and Religious
Participation
Virginia S. Fink
The development of this connection between sacrifice and patrilineality arises because social structures “idealizing
eternal‟ male intergenerational continuity meet a fundamental obstacle in their necessary dependence on women’s
reproductive powers.” Thus, men have an anxiety about women’s reproductive powers due to their reliance upon
women for the continuation of their society. Therefore, in patrilineal societies, men take control and regulate the
reproductive power and rights of women by establishing a lineage system to control inheritance and the means of
production. The emphasis on sacrifice in patrilineal societies allows for the development of social reproduction,
instead of relying on biological reproduction (childbirth); descent becomes social and ritual in nature and, therefore,
is no longer dependent on women.
KM Gentile
Symbolic opposition between sacrifice and childbirth is a feature of many unrelated traditions (e.g. Lev. xii). Rights
of membership in a matrilineage (including rights to productive property) may be determined by birth alone, but no
enduring social structure can be built only upon the shifting sands of that uncertain relation, biological paternity.
When the crucial intergenerational link is between father and son, sacrificing may be seen as essential for the social
order. Page | 39
Ancestral sacrifice especially defines patrilineage boundaries ritually by distinguishing between those who have
rights to participate and those who do not. Ancestor cults are not simply "worship" of the dead; they are ways of
organizing relations among the living. Claims that the maintenance and continuity of the social order are dependent
on sacrificing are made by sacrificers from many unrelated patrilineal traditions. Fustel de Coulanges was only
taking the ancient Romans at their word when he said that Roman patrilineal descent was "established" by sacrificial
worship: "It was not by birth, it was by the cult alone that one recognized the agnates [persons related patrilineally]."
Sacrifice, Descent And The Patriarchs
Nancy Jay Cambridge, Massachusetts
… that an offertory ritual may involve bloodshed, without

having a specifically violent character.
Is Sacrifice Necessarily Patriarchal?
A Reappraisal of Sacrifice in Relation to Social Reproduction
Leslie Goode
Nancy Jay's theory … negative characterization of sacrifice as violently appropriative of female reproductive
powers. The evidence we have offered for the performance of lineage sacrifice among the Ashanti compels us to
envisage the case of male matrilineal elder offering a blood sacrifice to matrilineal ancestors. This could be regarded
as patriarchal and reproductive of a "specifically male form of intergenerational continuity." But it could scarcely be
said to "transcend continuity through women."
Sacrifice as Remedy for Having Been

Born of Woman
Nancy Jay
Feminist scholars cannot limit themselves to studying
the participation of women in culture, society, or history,
important as this is nor can we, like traditional scholars,
take for granted the exclusion of women
from vast areas of cultural life.
Only a deep understanding

of our propensity to retreat
to misogyny in time of crisis
can help us transcend
this pattern.
Diane Jonte Pace

as much as their gift: already in the early Second Millennium, Page | 40

Gunnar Heinsohn
thereby turned themselves into mankind's first commoners. … Sophisticated blood rituals became the most
prominent activities of the first permanent lords. The origin of these sacred procedures remained equally enigmatic.
The biblical position thus poses a challenge to Western

civilization which fundamentally believes that man as a result
of his higher mental powers should be master of his own
destiny. Today, when man is approaching the climax of his
experiment to guide his own destiny, and holds in his hand the
awesome product of his intellect, the biblical parable of Eden
returns to haunt us.
Therold S. Stern

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The definition of membership is participation in a cult.

… In order to be like God knowledge would have to be some

The polis was consistently concerned with bringing the world

… kingship everywhere and at all times has been in some

…The Phoenicians and Carthaginians gave up their children because

In order to demonstrate their masculine ritual potency

Menstruation And The Origins Of Culture

A cut is required, both Nancy and Bataille suggest, a circumcision,

The challenge for individual citizens in a global society is to

"The gods confronted man just as a creditor Page | 3

“The practice of self-laceration, of being prepared to offer up their own blood,

… In Mesopotamia, kingship itself was the gift of the gods,

The rise of blood sacrifice and priest-kingship in Mesopotamia:

The spirits demand attention, and they are not to be satisfied

This seriality of exchanges is transformative

The sense of the bargain is always the same: if we

The polis was consistently concerned with bringing

Tylor. The origin of sacrifice.

The City As An Element In The International System

… in Boltanski’s and Thevenot’s work, where each cité is structured around an

Death at the Building Site: Construction Sacrifice in Southeast Asia

The Gods of Politics in Early Greek Cities

The challenge for individual citizens in a global society is to hold

Between Man and God:

On sacrifices to and sacrifices on behalf of emperor Gauis.

Between Man and God:

In the sphere of sacrifice there is an amount of

At the apex of this hierarchy was

1 . Primarily the slaughter of an animal as an offering to God or a deity. …

On the theory of essences, representations or symbols.

Development of atoning practices in ancient religions.

Robert Kastenbaum. On sacrifice.

Philo (De sacrificiis !I36) tells us that in sacrifice what is offered up is

T. O. Beidelman. The Ox and Nuer Sacrifice:

…. Another theory, current at the time, reduced sacrifice,

Sacrifice. On Death and Dying.

"The gods confronted man just as a creditor

On Sacrifice and Society

it would seem, when the chosen victim is perceived as perfect.

“The practice of self-laceration, of being prepared to offer up their own blood,

The sacrifice is giving up something at a cost. This is indicated in dictionary equivalents-

Tylor. The origin of sacrifice.

At the apex of this hierarchy was

Between Man and God:

A cut is required, both Nancy and Bataille suggest, a

… In Mesopotamia, kingship itself was the gift of the gods,

The rise of blood sacrifice and priest-kingship in Mesopotamia:

This seriality of exchanges is transformative

“ The Phoenicians and Carthaginians gave up their children because

The rise of blood sacrifice and priest-kingship in Mesopotamia:

Raymond Firth. Offering and Sacrifice:

On Sacrifice and Society

This seriality of exchanges is transformative in that I lose something in order

Development of atoning practices in ancient religions.

Robert Kastenbaum. On sacrifice.

Philo (De sacrificiis!) tells us that in sacrifice what is offered up is not

Sacrifice. On Death and Dying.

"The gods confronted man just as a creditor

On Sacrifice and Society.

The sacrifice is giving up something at a cost. This is indicated in dictionary

The spirits demand attention, and they are not to be satisfied

There would be no man or liberty, no history or individual".

On the theory of essences, representations or symbols.

the principles of Andean divine kingship. Here

At the apex of this hierarchy was

Between Man and God: Sacrifice in the Roman