Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Temple >

Theory of Sacrifice

18:41 / 20.03.04

I've kicking around a problem in my head, and I've posed it to a few of my 'worker friends, but with no satisfactory conclusions. The question is simple: what makes sacrifice effective in magick?

For reference, there have been two main takes on this thus far:

a) The Gods Angle: "Tim the discarnate entity is pleased with your gift of spilled beer, and will engage in combat with his Power Cosmic on your behalf!"

b) The Subconscious Angle: The loss associated with a personal sacrifice draws regret emotions and determination attention to the problem at hand, fueling the structure of the work.

The latter strikes me as stronger than the former, but still not...exhaustive, somehow. Thoughts?

Shanghai Quasar

04:44 / 22.03.04

The Subconscious Angle could be extended beyond feelings of loss, if you really want to be elaborate about it. You may feel elation, anger and whatever other emotion is appropriate to your character. Sacrifice as an attempt to inspire strong emotion and that strong emotion being projected into the working, becoming the fuel to your magical fire.

rising and revolving

10:30 / 22.03.04

And, if nothing else, sacrifice implies (in fact, pretty much demands) investment. If you give up something that has value to you in order to provide a result, you're moving it from the realm of "desire" to "desire I'm willing to give other things up for," ie, sacrifice.

In one sense, that's stating the bleeding obvious. In another sense ... well, it's still stating the bleeding obvious, but you know, gotta start somewhere.

Hi everyone, btw. Been lurking around for a while and figured it was time to finally stick my head in a little.

14:18 / 22.03.04

I'm inclined towards a version of a, myself - not necessarily that a particular entity is pleased with your "gift," but that in making that gift you've started a conversation/relationship with that entity. It can be a casual exchange (like random conversation at a bus stop) or an ongoing relationship, with true intimacy, jokes, and gossip...

Of course, you can use this "relationship" model with b as well - building a relationship with the problem that's something other than head-on confrontation.

15:36 / 22.03.04

Sacrifice means turning a physical thing into an idea. Humans are the only things that can perform that transformation. I'll go on about that later

16:42 / 22.03.04

OK off the top of my head. When something dies energy is released. So if you've got a little brother and kill him on some hill somewhere, energy will be released, add the word sacrifice and make up a song and dance, you've got intent. The more energy poured in and the bigger the sacrifice you make, the more this will energise the god/entity/thing, and therefore the more influence you, will ultimately have on the univerce.

ps
akira will not be held responsable for any little brothers that go missing. Or fish...

17:45 / 22.03.04

It is all about the conservation of energy. Sacrifice puts energy into the working. You can dance in circles for hours, or you can kill a chicken. People do it because its efficient.

Shanghai Quasar

00:11 / 23.03.04

One might argue that all physical things are ideas, but I want to hear what Chesed has to say so no one argue that until it's been done.

Hola, entrippy, and them is some good thoughts. Contribute more of them.

16:32 / 23.03.04

I'm interested in Chesed and Iszabelle's lines of thinking; I'm less sure about the "energy" talk. I mean, are we using the word in some kind of cop-out hazy New Ager slang, or are we referring to something specific? Aside from trace amounts of heat that get released from said dead brother's body while he rots, a corpse does not release any significant extra energy, insofar as physics uses the word, at least to the best of my knowledge. Now if we're using energy (like progressive Christians) as some kind of substitute for "spirit", then I feel we're simply begging the question: how does releasing spirit aid our work? If its efficient to sacrifice why is it efficient?

However, I must say I'm interested in this idea of the Transubstantiation of the Physical...do expand, Chesed.

17:12 / 23.03.04

Lord... I feel as if I'm being called out. Listen guys, I'd love to flesh it out, but I don't got the time right now... why don't you beat the idea up between you two for a while, and then I'll jump in and ref it?

00:26 / 24.03.04

Okay, we'll talk amongst ourselves...

sacrifice implies (in fact, pretty much demands) investment caught my eye. It calls to mind a version of the first case which is much more crude than giving a gift, it's the idea of barter. "I've given up something that is important to me, so g'dammit the Universe/[insert Deity here] owes me!" I think this is very dependent on a zero-sum-game model of life, and not particularly productive or respectful...

"Investing" in an idea/ritual/process is a good thing, but the term does imply a certain expectation of results; it's something to be aware of when crafting intent.

rising and revolving

03:52 / 24.03.04

iszabelle : it's interesting - I really wasn't thinking of investment in the "Spend now to benefit later," fashion as much as I meant the "commit to a process," definition. Ah english and it's many meanings.

Which is to say - sacrifice only has meaning if you give up something of value to you. Therefore you are, if nothing else, taking things seriously enough to give up something. Now sure, you can look at it as "well, I've paid the price, now gimme the funny hat and the lightning bolt eyeballs," and in some sense I think that a lot of magic works in exactly that fashion. You make the effort, you get the reward.

By the same token, I think it makes more of a statement about priorities. You are telling the world, and most importantly yourself, that you consider your magic more important than whatever it is you've sacrificed. That allows realignment of your personal priorities and makes things "serious" in a way they may not have been previously. In other words, you're making a statement to the Gods/Universe/Insert Metaphor of Choice/HGA that you are committed to the path you have chosen.

So yes, you can look at any sacrifice as either "paying the neccesary price," or "making the necessary commitment,". I personally don't think most entities have a price, least of all in fresh chickens - but I do think that they have a requirement of commitment.

To put it another way - doing Resh four times a day when you could be sleeping, masturbating, drooling, eating, or posting on message boards is a sacrfice of your time and effort. I don't think you manage to log up Reshie points with the great Thelemic Bank, Astral Branch - but I do think you change yourself by making that commitment. That internal change may allow you to achieve things you couldn't have previously, but that isn't necessarily why you do it.

06:53 / 24.03.04

I like the commitment/realignment take; it neatly reconciles the two angles I dropped at the outset. The microcosm change of your attitudes and affirming priorities effects a corresponding shift in your relationship to and dialogue with macrocosmic powers. The sacrifice tells "them" what you really want and how much you want it, and it doesn't matter whether "them", the macrocosmic forces, are independent entities or subconscious capacities (or both).

I think iszabelle's zero-sum criticism is interesting, and may lead to a fascinating secondary question..."Sacrifice: Can you get somethin' for nuthin'?"

Didn't mean to put you in the hotseat, Chesed, just curious as to your thoughts. As for mine: the first thing that occured to me was echoed in Shanghai's idealist suggestion. Nevertheless, it is obvious that if things are thoughts, they are thoughts with pretty solid properties ("I refute it thusly!"). What really grabs me by the horns here is the Gnostic overtones of a Transubstantiation Model for sacrifice, the notion that by scraping the physicality off of a valued object or person, we free it and empower it to act psychopomp-by-proxy. This finds the most direct example in those shamanic practices where the sacrificial lamb was sent out into the spirit world to put in a good word; the inert made spirit (smashing my prize pocket watch, burning a fistful of cash) might act as a sort of focus for intent. However, for more abstract sacrifices (swearing off post boards for Lent), where do we place the translation into "idea"? After all, post board attendance is presumably "idea" to begin with...still, I think the idea has promise, and I'm interested to hear what take others have on it.

15:03 / 24.03.04

So yes, you can look at any sacrifice as either "paying the neccesary price," or "making the necessary commitment,". I personally don't think most entities have a price, least of all in fresh chickens - but I do think that they have a requirement of commitment.

entrippy - I'm not picking on you, really I'm not... I'm puzzling over my reaction to the term "sacrifice" and the associations it has; just kind of thinking out loud.

There's something about the "necessary price/commitment," expecially in the context of sacrifice that seems really rigid; it may be the Old Testament associations stuck to sacrifice together with the idea that you must put in x amount of effort/time/sweat/money to get anywhere...

The occasional boon does just fall from the sky; we all know people who are "lucky" without giving a thought to magickal practices. We also all know people do magick with the intent of making it easier for those "random" goodies to come their way but never think in terms of sacrifice, operate instead in terms of "practice" and "work" and choices.

Aha! The thing that bugs me about sacrifice is that it comes from a mindset of scarcity! It promotes a mindset of scarcity as well - doing without, giving up something important...

Is "sacrifice" necessarily more effective than putting in the same amount of time/effort/money whatever without the overtones of self-denial?

(I'll get back to magick as dialogue sometime, really, I will...)

16:31 / 24.03.04

Iszabelle- I think a lot of what you have said points the way to a future (utopian?) state of magick in a post-scarcity world (or reality tunnel)...like I said above, getting "somethin' for nuthin'".

We regularly make sacrifices (i.e. commitments of limited resources) without the self-denial: we call them "gifts". I agree that its bad to self-program for scarcity and toil rather than abundance, providence and effortless action, but we must nevertheless acknowledge that "sacrifice" with all of its connotations of scarcity has been oft deemed among the biggest guns a 'worker could pull...certainly offerings of deprivation seem to have more punch than gifts in my own work. Does anyone have a contrary or supporting experience in their work?

16:39 / 24.03.04

It also occurs to me that a Gnostic, Transubstantive model of sacrifice does not suffer from a sense of scarcity in the same way as a self-denial model. Because in this interpretation you are not destroying the offering but transmuting it, you don't lose anything, at least, not in the same way. I imagine I'll fill that thought out later...I'm straining for a good metaphor to illustrate the difference.

rising and revolving

22:59 / 24.03.04

izabelle - regarding the mindset of scarcity... I think you're onto something, but it's going to take a while to process. Certainly in my case the only real thing that's scarce is time - I can easily afford the price of bread, wine, and a few chickens. Which means I do tend to view (at some subconcious level, at the very least) every ritual as a sacrfice of my time.

On the flipside, I generally look at it from the "well, I'd be watching tv otherwise, so I'm glad I'm using this time for something important instead,". So the time I give up, I give up with joy.

And I also realise that by suggesting sacrifice is "giving up something important to you," I'm actually compressing the bounds of the debate a little. For example, many traditional animal sacrifices were immediately followed by eating the animal sacrificed. In which case, you really miss out on nothing - but it's still a powerful rite, traditionally speaking.

As for semantic differences between a gift and a sacrifice - well, I don't much care, honestly. As much as possible, I'm trying these days to compress as many concepts into each other as possible, rather than seperating them on the basis of minutiae of defintion. I find some of the ancient languages really appealing in their ability to deliver a concept with five seperate implications at the same time, rather than the more precise, word for each concept, nature of english. Although I'm starting to drift off the point, so I'll call it there.

07:52 / 25.03.04

And I also realise that by suggesting sacrifice is "giving up something important to you," I'm actually compressing the bounds of the debate a little. For example, many traditional animal sacrifices were immediately followed by eating the animal sacrificed. In which case, you really miss out on nothing - but it's still a powerful rite, traditionally speaking.

Actually, I think you may have restored the boundaries of the debate. Given that we have a few good theories here for what is occurring in the act of "giving up something important to you", we can turn to the question: what is occuring to make the traditional example where we lose nothing effacacious? Is this an example of elevating the animal into psychopomp-by-proxy? Why is this a powerful rite?

As for semantic differences between a gift and a sacrifice - well, I don't much care, honestly. As much as possible, I'm trying these days to compress as many concepts into each other as possible, rather than seperating them on the basis of minutiae of defintion. I find some of the ancient languages really appealing in their ability to deliver a concept with five seperate implications at the same time, rather than the more precise, word for each concept, nature of english. Although I'm starting to drift off the point, so I'll call it there.

Actually, I've long mused that in languages with fewer phonemes the amount of internal repetition, aside from creating a massively greater frequency of pun and lending itself well to poetic associations, would be inherently more mystical; as the number of sounds and words shrank, the mental space for various "minutiae" would begin to blur and overlap, concepts running together in the preconscious moment where the brain hasn't distinguished context... This reminds me that Arthur Koestler thought coincidences were cosmic puns. Hence, the First Word, the Tetragrammaton, the Name of God or what have you, becomes a perfect language of a single utterance, meaning everything, excluding nothing, punning and punning itself to eternity and spinning infinite semantic webs of synchronicity within its monad sound...

And now I'm firmly off-course, and should also sign off.

20:02 / 25.03.04

Interesting thread. On the issue of scarcity, technically I think the word 'sacrifice' really means 'to make sacred', rather than 'a giving up of something'. It shouldn't be something that you grudgingly part with, like a miser storing up esoteric credits to spend on chocolate, but something that you willingly give of as a means of communion with divinity.

My own work pretty much revolves around the mechanisms of sacrifice, and I do think that the comments above about sacrifice as dialogue are spot on. I would speculate that the process of sacrifice is one of the key ways through which we can engage in meaningful conversation with 'entities' (whatever they may be), others being stuff like dance, playing music, etc... which in themselves could be considered a form of sacrifice. Making the dance sacred, making the drumming sacred, making the feast sacred. As it says in The Vodon Tantra Rocksteady Workbook: "there are many fine ways to nice up the dance."

I think sacrifice is often a bit like buying someone a beer. Throwing a party in honour of the God/dess or Spirit you want to get to know. Sharing a feast with them. Shooting the breeze. Decorating an altar in their colours and offering them their favourite food and drink. You don't do it begrudgingly, you do it as a celebration of what they are. Through this kind of interaction you seek to build a relationship with the God/dess in question. Regular service and offerings become the outward form of an ongoing communication between you and the Spirits.

All of this begs the question: what do the God/deses get out of sacrifice? Because they do seem to benefit from it, appreciate it, respond to it, etc..

Sorry for the garbled post, I'm having a garbled evening.

07:28 / 26.03.04

Hi all. Interesting thread. Just to chuck something into the debate - is it possible that there is a dynamic of sacrfice at work in other circumstances, where what we sacrifice is our desire and intention? Final giving up our worries and concern - "lust of result" - usually after a long hard struggle and exhaustion. This seems to me the essence of the whole paradox behind Spare's magick, the "forgetting" - he actually calls it "a great saving for a total spending" (IIRC). Obviously, this isn't easy to do, and to my mind requires regular contemplation and awareness of your hang ups, desires, kleshas etc. Perhaps it can't even be brought about delibratly? From my own experience, I feel that when I've finally been so fucking fed up with a situation that I've let it go, things have defintely "shifted". The logic in Spare's system is that this is when one lets go of the striving in the conscious mind, the struggle against circumstances the unconscious can act freely, and bring about the once-desired situation about. It's a tough paradox, "giving up to gain", but there's no such thing as a free lunch. As it says in The Voodoo Tantra Rocksteady Workbook "Ya wan' chicken an' dumplin'? You have fe give sumthin'!" Wise words, I think.

As to what Gods get out of sacrifice, there's a nice line out of Peter Redgrove's book The Black Goddess and the Sixth Sense, "The Goddess doesn't demand worship like an angry parent, but rejoices in being imagined". Not quite sure what it means, but I thought it was pertinent. I've read of the suggestion that entities like to be sacrifced to and worked with, as our engagement with them helps them grow and evolve toward complexity, and obviously, they want this rather than cessation and death. I've heard that entities such as the Goetia like to be used and once you set them in motion, they generate more work for themsleves to keep themselves in circulation. Spirits enjoy being used and celebrated because this helps them live,, and find out about the world. This is why they're tricky, as your simple spell can therefore have all kinds of side effects as the entity tries to give you reasons to keep using it. I feel this is reality to sacrifice to Gods, feeding them is keeping them alive and any boons they grant are a trade off with this.

Unconditional Love

22:14 / 28.07.07

I feel as if i have to give up lots of things, its a totally irrational feeling, its as if i have spent the last year or so trying to reconstruct a dead person, its not as if i did it for myself but others that remembered me that way, i gave up what i was becoming to help them, at least that is how it seemed at the time, the result has been a kind of self parody of what i once was.

I wonder about the sacrifice of identity and what it means to a person like me who does not have much sense of self but wears selves as a survival strategy. Its kind of like playing a part, taken seriously and felt for all it is, but knowing deep down that its a mask that once served a purpose, but with time you can see all the illusions for what they are now.

Yet behind the mask still remains what i was becoming, before i stepped back into the past, i had learnt to sacrifice the illusions of the past and take a step forward into a person i did not know too well, because i had never really lived as him. I feel as if i have alot of dreams to give up, delusions of self knowledge and understanding again, to move on.

But i am finding it harder to unattach, i know these masks serve me badly and why i used to wear them, but moving on feels like an admission to something i find hard to face, the truth of my own suffering and weakness, my inability to face my true self and cherish it.

I have been doing readings of late where the hanged man keeps coming up, i contemplate that card, especially Crowley's notion of what that means in the idea of a new aeon. I am not sure how to approach the letting go of dreams as being sacred. Letting myself as it is, parody thou it maybe, hurts, letting it die so to speak, more so.

Perhaps it was a futile dream to think i could reclaim what i had once been, yes it was. Perhaps this has been a learning process of learning to give up those false aspirations, Do the parts of ourselves we sacrifice/transmute become sacred? Is not everything sacrificed to time..... How then is it not that everything is sacred, with or without sacrifice?