I'm sorry for hijacking and for talking in tones of authority. All of what I'm blathering on about here is my opinion and experience, open to question, debate, analysis, and refutation. I'm elaborating a little here, so you know where I'm coming from with this.
So, my understanding of sacrifice is based on the following components of my belief system:
The Divine is not removed from the ordinary world of the living, it permeates it.
Sacredness is a quality that sets things of the Divine apart from things of ordinary consciousness—in people's experiences of them.
Holiness is a quality of Divinity that permeates ordinary things and people.
To make something sacred, therefore, two things have to happen—it has to be removed from ordinary use, ownership, or existence, and it has to be surrendered over to the Divine (or its representatives) to use as the Divine wills.
To make something holy it is enough to recognize it as containing Divine essence. Holy is the default state of everything, in my worldview.
Following from this, since the Divine is present in the world of living things, to remove a person from the world of the living is not to give them to the Divine. The Gods may benefit more from having them here in the living world—in fact they almost certainly would, since a living person can make sacrifices to the Gods and a dead person probably cannot, since they own and use nothing to sacrifice. In my relationship with my Gods I have never known them to tell me that something should be offered them by its total destruction in the ordinary world. If you wish to offer the Gods a gift of song, the way to do that, in my worldview, is not to sever your larynx. I can't avoid making a judgment about this, even with respect to other people's practices, even if I accept that it's possible that I'm wrong.
The ritual taking of a human life removes a whole set of holy possibilities from the world of the living. In almost every case, I believe, it takes away from the Divine. One might as well be picking the Gods' pockets and then expecting them to be grateful.
There are a bunch of ways to remove something from the ordinary in order to make it sacred. It can be physically destroyed, in some cases, but that's only if having it physically intact is not part of the point of the gift. You could also cease to use it, and ceasing to be able to use it can increase the emotional impact of the setting aside. You could also give up sovereignty, ownership, or control over it. Let's say I decided to sacrifice my left hand to some God. I could cut it off (or have it bitten off by a wolf, maybe). It may or may not be useful to the God in that form. But let's say instead I took an oath to use my hand only for what the God willed. Maybe, further, I could wear a glove or bind my hand to constantly remind myself of my oath. The God might be able to make use of that gift in a practical way, and it would be a powerful reminder of my dedication and service. I could also, theoretically, make an agreement with the God that I would no longer own or control that hand, and when the God wished to make use of it, the God could use it without my intervention (partial body possession; don't know how often it's been documented). It all depends on what's appropriate to the situation.
I think it's important to have an equal emphasis on removing the thing from ordinary use, and making it available to the Divine in a practical, intentional, and appropriate manner. The emphasis on ritual killing or destruction as the most obvious and simplest form of sacrifice tends to be an emphasis on removing the thing from the ordinary world, without regard to whether this effectively makes it available to the Divine or not. |
